OUTPATIENT
Alec Carlin
2002, USA, 109 minutes
www.outpatientthemovie.com

“I have always been fascinated by the gap between the story we have about ourselves and the story that everyone else has about us, and how, in a sense, everyone else’s story is the ‘real’ story, because we live (for the most part) in the real world.” —Alec Carlin

Outpatient is a multiple award-winning, extremely stylish psychological thriller that seamlessly weaves fiction, fantasy, flashbacks, dance, hallucinations, truth and lies into the riveting tale of one man’s escape from madness.

Morris Monk, a soft-spoken young mystery writer—who was inadvertently committed to an asylum for years, and may have gone mad in the process—is finally scheduled for release into the “real” world.

Upon release, he begins writing his new mystery novel. At his weekly outpatient therapy session, his therapist reads the draft and discovers that she is a character. His fiction is blurring the boundaries of reality, and may be a thinly veiled confession of his own crimes. Dr. Farrow suspects that Monk has been prematurely released, and she may be responsible for putting a serial murderer on the streets.

Meanwhile Monk develops a relationship with his neighbor, a dancer named Raven. He piques her interest by making her the subject of his latest novel, but being in a Morris Monk mystery might be fatal.
A great performance from Justin Kirk anchors the film. Recently he worked with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in Angels in America playing bedridden AIDS patient, Prior Walter.

—Bruce Fletcher

In attendance: Director/writer Alec Carlin,
Producer Scilla Andreen-Hernandez