What struck me about Silver Linings Playbook wasn’t just that, as star Bradley Cooper suggested during the Oscar campaign for the film, many more of us could benefit from therapy than is publicly acknowledged. I was even more drawn in by the way the movie treats the relationship between sex and mental health. The film could have easily fallen back on the cliché linking mental illness and promiscuity, as if all mental health problems turn women sexually insatiable. But instead Silver Linings Playbook reminds us that mental illness works in many directions, and depression can destroy sex drives just as easily as other mental-health problems can supercharge them. The movie’s a striking illustration of how much harder it can be to admit to having no sexual desire than to defend having a lot of sex.
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Wow, now I really want to see this. Why haven’t I seen this yet?!
