Silver Linings Playbook -2013- -

The film opens with Pat Solatano Jr. (Bradley Cooper) being released from a Baltimore psychiatric facility. He has spent eight months inside after pleading guilty to assaulting the lover of his wife, Nikki (Brea Bee). The crime? Pat came home early from work to find Nikki in the shower with a history teacher. Pat then beat the man nearly to death.

Pat secretly stops his medication early in the film — a choice that could be demonized in lesser movies. Instead, the film shows both the necessity of meds (for his violent outburst) and their side effects (emotional flattening, sexual dysfunction). The film neither romanticizes illness nor reduces characters to diagnoses. Pat’s mother (Jacki Weaver) handles his condition with weary love, not martyrdom — a rare, quiet portrayal of family accommodation. silver linings playbook -2013-