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Blog > Thoughts > Other's Thoughts > Claire's Thoughts > Quid Pro Quo: my review

Quid Pro Quo: my review

Written by Claire on Friday, September 12, 2008

Quid Pro Quo is now out on DVD, and so I figure it’s finally time to post my own review of the movie. WARNING: this review contains MAJOR SPOILERS.

Isaac is a paraplegic (since age 8, in a car crash) radio reporter who finds out about the wannabe community and asks himself the question "Why would someone want to be paralyzed, that isn’t?"

My initial reaction was one of utter horror. The portrayal of this secret "underground" of wannabes/pretenders was, indeed, totally sick. They meet in a dark basement of some warehouse and discuss their activities as one might imagine a mob gang discussing some upcoming crime. They are discussing someone named Ginger Jake who, apparently, will paralyze people, but often with less than ideal results. They have this wild look to their eyes and the quad wannabe reminds me of Hannibal Lecter. When Isaac (the para) finds them they are horrified to see him and treat him with deep suspicion, but at the same time, intrigued. They act like they are quite out of touch with reality, and start bombarding him with questions. When Isaac admits that he wants to walk again, a woman pants with feverish zeal in her eyes: "You’re perfect……"

This is so totally NOT what having BIID is about and I’ve never heard of people gathering late at night in dark warehouses. Dr. Michael First is the man who has done the largest study on people with BIID (of all types) and indeed coined the term Body Integrity Identity Disorder. In the recent Newsweek article on BIID, Dr. First "found that they were far from psychotic." and states: ""You almost have to see it to believe it," First says. "These people say, ‘Every minute of my life I feel like something is wrong.’ But it doesn’t impair their ability to relate to other people. They are completely in touch with reality."" Yet the movie portrays these people as having deep psychosis. They are scary, and weird, and do, indeed, seem perverted. I can’t even begin to describe my dismay at this portrayal. I feel it could be quite damaging to people who have BIID.

Isaac finds out about "Body Integrity Identity Disorder" but says that’s only for people who want to be amputees, and that the desire to be paralyzed has "no known pathology". This was true at the time the film was written (in 2000) but now we know that researchers are starting to include the desire for other impairments under the BIID umbrella (Drs. McGeogh, and First in the Newsweek article, for example). A bit of up-to-date research before filming would have been in order.

Later, we meet Fiona, who wants to talk to Isaac about "her friend who is a wannabe". She’s incredibly nervous about talking about it with him…something that I think most of us can indeed relate to. She takes him back to her apartment to "introduce him to her wannabe friend" and disappears for a minute, to reemerge clad in almost nothing but a pair of KAFO braces. Isaac remarks, with some dismay, "So this is something sexual for you". Fiona answers that the people who "get off" on wheelchairs and braces are called devotees and that they are the lowest of the rung, the bottom rung of the hierarchy. First of all, I’ve never heard of this "hierarchy" in my life. Second of all, usually for devotees it’s not so much the hardware but the person in it, so she misses the mark there. She then goes on to prove herself to be, indeed, a devotee when she practically jumps on Isaac to give him a wildly passionate kiss, completely out of the blue as there seems to have been no romantic connection between the two until this moment. She seems to have totally lost control of herself, and the only conclusion that can be drawn from this advance is that she’s totally hot and bothered by being in her braces (although she has to remove them to jump on Isaac) and by Isaac sitting there in a wheelchair. When he pushes her away she says "You’ll think that I’d jump anything in a wheelchair." Upset and freaked out, she tells him "I need to use my wheelchair right now and I can’t do that with you here," and tells him to leave. The wheelchair is an emotional crutch for her that she needs to use when she encounters emotionally difficult situations. This is not entirely accurate, as that is not what using a wheelchair is about for people with BIID; however, that can happen, if you’re terribly upset, you want to go somewhere comfortable, and your chair can be that place, sometimes.

The next day Fiona takes her first public outing in her wheelchair and she invites Isaac along. Isaac does indeed accompany her, with a wry grin at her enthusiasm. I thought that they did this bit particularly well, they seemed to capture that "first time" quite well: the exhiliration, the wonder of discovery ("that woman is staring at me!!" and "X building wasn’t accessible and I chewed out a public official over it!"), and the concern over doing everything right. However, Fiona fails to take into account that her enthusiasm over all these new experiences is likely a difficult thing for Isaac to witness, and after running in to his ex-girlfriend and having a spat, Isaac abandons Fiona. At the end of the day she finds him in his appartment, and he clearly doesn’t want to be with her, but she presses on, so excited by her day that she seems unaware of his discomfort, and she seduces him, and they end up in bed. I was impressed with this whole scene. They captured Fiona, the "first time pretending" to a "T"; I was indeed much like that, and my first time wheeling with a wheeler who had a physical disability was much like that (without the seduction at the end). Unfortunately, we only get to see a glimpse of the first time, and don’t get to see her making mistakes that she regrets and learning to curb her enthusiasm and finding out that it is not all fun, but can be exhausting (physically), maddening (when things are inaccessible), frustrating (when people treat you different), painful (shoulder, wrist and elbow injuries) and causes difficulties of all kinds…and through all that, finding out in the end the real reason that she is wheeling, what keeps her going in spite of all of that. But that takes time, and this movie takes place over a short period of time, and so, none of this whole process is shown.

Fiona seems much more in touch with reality than the group of wannabes in the warehouse, yet she is not entirely all there. I think you could call her neurotic as opposed to psychotic. Wikipedia has a great explanation of the clinical difference between the two, and I am using the clinical definition of neurosis here, not the common usage where people just mean that anyone who is neurotic is crazy. That is probably a bit fair, but as far as representing me and the other people with BIID that I know personally, she takes even neurosis way too far. If anything, it’s more like depression. I do like that they portrayed Fiona as a professional, as successful, and as someone with a sense of humour…they make her human, and likable, if somewhat eccentric (which is fair). During the intial "reveal" scene, they do a creditable job portraying the guilt and shame that many people with BIID feel, as well as the secrecy which is a by-product of the shame: "I’ve never shared this with a single human soul," she tells Isaac.

The movie takes a bit of what seems to be a strange turn when a pair of wingtip shoes purchased at a pawn shop enable Isaac to walk (with difficulty, first with crutches, then with a cane). Credibility is totally lost, because he calls them "magic shoes" and is unable to walk without them. The viewer is left thinking "Oh, come on!". Isaac wheels into her work and surprises her by standing up, and she is flabberghasted, but at the sime time, seems quite upset. One wonders, does she not want him to walk? And if that’s true, is that because she’s a devotee, or because she has BIID? This is never made entirely clear, and leaves me a bit uncomfortable. As a devotee, would I be upset if my wheeler lover was healed? As a person with BIID, how would I feel if he got what he wanted, but I didn’t? I can’t answer those questions. In a strange and almost comical switch, she sits in his wheelchair and he pushes her around in it, both of them laughing. She finds as much joy in wheeling as he does in walking.

When Fiona demands that he paralyze her or else she’ll destroy his magic shoes, Isaac balks but eventually does the research. He finds out that Ginger Jake is not a person, but a chemical that when ingested can paralyze limbs; legs usually, but also sometimes arms, and that’s why going to "Ginger Jake" to take care of you is not a step to be taken lightly. This is actually true, that chemical does exist. Isaac obtains some of this for Fiona and they start arguing over it. He says "Whatever f*cked up thing happened to you, you don’t deserve to be paralyzed!" She responds hotly "And you do????" Isaac clearly believes that she wants to be paralyzed because soemthing "f*cked up" happened to her, but that is not the case with most people who have BIID. Few of us have had major trauma in our lives, especially not at the age (very young) when we first started to have these feelings. In fact, recent research (in which I’ve participated) has shown that BIID is very likely neurological in origin (see the Newsweek article again) caused by a problem in the area of the brain that processes body image. So Isaac’s assumption that she is a wannabe because of something dark in her past is off-base. Fiona’s response seems to indicate that she views being paralyzed as some kind of a privilege. Yes, we can and do feel envious (and feel guilty about that), but I’ve never talked to anyone who actually believed that paralysis is a privilege enjoyed by those who never wished to be paralyzed.

However, near the end of the movie we see that Fiona didn’t mean that in the way it sounded. Fiona has seen (as Isaac has not) that the reason he can walk is that he suffered from hysterical paralysis (now known as conversion disorder) all along. Isaac never was totally paralyzed. We then have to turn his original question back on him: "Why would someone want to be paralyzed, who isn’t?" Was he, in fact, a wannabe in his own way, all this time? It’s an interesting reversal of fortune…Isaac gives her the ability to use her wheelchair in public, and also gives her the means to become paralyzed (which she doesn’t do, in the film) and Fiona in turn gives him back the use of his legs.

We also find out that Fiona is the underaged person who was driving the car that caused the accident that paralyzed Isaac over 20 years ago. We are made to believe that the reason that she wanted Isaac to paralyze her was because she paralyzed him. This part was very disappointing to me. It’s an interesting idea for the film and provides us with a nice pat explanation and ending, but doesn’t have anything to do with BIID. We don’t want to be paralyzed (or amputees, or blind, or deaf, or whatever) because we once caused this to someone else. Most of us have memories going back to very early childhood; age 5 for me, ages 3 to 8 for others. I don’t even remember ever seeing a paraplegic before I started to pretend that my "legs don’t work". You just can’t explain BIID that simply, and this aspect of the film didn’t work at all for me. Totally missed the mark.

In the end, Isaac is walking very laboriously and slowly with a cane, and that’s as far as his recovery goes. I can’t help but wonder if that is an improvement over the speed and agility with which he manipulates his wheelchair. Is walking so utterly important that it’s better to walk with great difficulty than to use a chair that you can handle with ease? The director apparently thinks so. I am not so sure, but I’ll admit that my judgment may be clouded on that issue.

Fiona disappears and we never learn what happened to her. Isaac got his legs back. Fiona got…what? Did she ever take the Ginger Jones? Is she cured of her wannabeism? Does she become a full-time pretender? We’ll never know.

Or maybe we will. The DVD purportedly contains deleted scenes. I’m ordering mine as soon as I figure out how to get it delivered to my home without anyone noticing…

Tags: BIID, Quid Pro Quo

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