Silver Linings Playbook

A film set in Philadelphia. Pat spent eight months in a psychiatric hospital. He had found his wife with another man and beaten him; he was diagnosed bipolar and is released on condition of treatment. He goes back to his parents' house. His father takes bets and watches the team's games by systems of superstition; the house is permanently tense. Pat is trying to reach his wife. There is a restraining order and he ignores it. At a dinner he meets Tiffany. She has just lost her husband and has already abandoned her own rules. Tiffany makes an offer: she will get a letter to his wife if he enters a dance competition with her. From there the film is a story of rehearsal. A studio, repeated steps, and two people getting used to each other. What the narrative is interested in is not love but illness: the film says neither character is cured, only that they have become able to work together, and it promises no recovery. The father line is the second subject. His own compulsions are less accepted than his son's because nobody has given them a name. The finale rests on a bet and a dance score, and the narrative keeps that deliberately absurd. Jennifer Lawrence won an Academy Award for the part. The film was nominated in all four main acting categories at once, the first time in many years. The source is a novel by Matthew Quick. Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker are in the cast. David O. Russell directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants character comedy and good performance. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable with mental illness fitted into a romantic comedy; the film ends up where the genre expects.