‘The Hypnosis’ Review: An Uncomfortably Funny First-Hand Experience of Second-Hand Social Embarrassment
variety.comJessica Kiang There are certain moviegoers who can face onscreen murders, maimings and the grisliest of mutilations and scarcely bat an eyelid, but who feel every cell in their body die a little whenever a character is rude in a restaurant.
If you happen to suffer from this condition, consider yourself warned about Swedish director Ernst De Geer’s feature debut “The Hypnosis” — a witty, incisive satire on the modern obsession with self-actualization, which is also, to those of us with heightened sensitivity to social awkwardness, 98 masochistic minutes of second-hand squirm.
Many’s the film offered up as evidence for Roger Ebert’s often quoted assertion that cinema is “a machine for creating empathy”; fewer are the titles, like this one, that make one question if that’s necessarily a good thing.
Vera (Asta Kamma August) is carefully rehearsing her English-language pitch opener for Epione, a noble-sounding app that does something or other regarding women’s health in developing countries.
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