Do you take delight in watching films, listening to pop music, or reading books? For English learners, movies, songs, and books are one of the most wonderful sources to explore the language! You can indulge in your favorite wisdom, and oftentimes good lessons while you’re at it.
The film
follows Ulysis Veron, a psychoanalyst who dares to step beyond the boundaries
of therapy to save his patients from their darkest moments. By doing what they
fear most, he hopes to prevent tragedy. But as he becomes increasingly
entangled in their lives, one intervention after another sets off a chain
reaction of unexpected consequences.
“I don’t
know…should I have reached out? Was there more I could have done?”
ð This
is the first scene of the movie where Ulises Verón is rejecting an award presented
to him, delivering a speech that shows his doubt in his capability as a professional
psychoanalyst. Haunted by the death of a patient, he begins to question whether
listening and offering advice are sufficient to save those who are suffering.
His guilt drives him to step beyond the boundaries of traditional therapy and
intervene directly in his patients’ lives.
“Eugenio, you’re 62 years old. You still have time. You have plenty of
life left. When will you stop lying to yourself everybody else, out here dating
girls, who could be your daughters? Huh? You also believe that you’re the smartest
man in the world because you’re leading a double life when in reality you can
barely handle one. You built a cage all around you, and now you’ve trapped yourself…..Eugenio,
the keys to the cage are in your hands. Let yourself out. Only you can do that.”
ð
This
scene shows powerful confrontation challenges Eugenio to face aging, emotional
avoidance, and self-deception. Rather than accepting his double life as a sign
of cleverness, he is forced to recognize how his own choices have trapped him
in a cycle of lies and isolation. Ulysis is letting Eugenio realize that he has
built his own prisons through fear and denial, but the key to freedom lies in his
willingness to face the truth and change.
(Ulysis
is on a TV counseling show and saying to a caller who asks how to parent a
wanton kid): “Why is it that right now at 3:00 P.M. you’re sitting there on
your ass, messaging a television show about your parenting problems, pretending
that we can fix your parenting life? That’s not how it works. You have to get
involved. You have to be willing to get your hands a bit dirty.”
ð In
this scene of a TV Counseling show, Ulises’ blunt confrontation satirizes a
culture that seeks convenient, quick-fix solutions to deeply rooted problems.
By calling out a parent for turning to a television show instead of actively
addressing their child’s struggles, he emphasizes that real change requires
presence, effort, and a willingness to get your hands dirty. The scene
challenges our tendency to outsource responsibility and mistake distant advice
for meaningful action.
“This
book is the result of well-kept secrets. – M. Bouchard”
ð Published
under Bouchard’s name, the book carries the dedication, “This book is the
result of well-kept secrets.” The statement becomes a darkly comic punchline,
concealing a web of betrayal beneath the appearance of literary success. The
novel itself is born from a carefully concealed deception. The celebrated
author Bouchard is not its true creator, while his therapist Ulysis has
secretly orchestrated the entire enterprise. On the surface, both men seemed to
appear to achieve their ambitions—Bouchard regains his literary prestige, while
Ulises seemingly validates his radical methods. Yet their apparent triumph
comes at the expense of honesty, professional integrity, and personal
accountability.
** Jean’s Small Thoughts:
This film
brings back memories of my own experience as an English educator in Korea. One
of my teaching philosophies was to help struggling students speak correctly
from the very beginning, before their verbal errors became fossilized. I paid
close attention to every mistake they made and corrected them on the spot. To
make matters worse, I often lacked the patience to give them enough time to
think and formulate complete sentences before responding to my questions or
joining a conversation.
Looking back,
I realize that my well-intentioned approach did not necessarily lead to the
progress I had hoped for. Instead, my constant corrections may have raised my
students’ affective filters, making them more anxious and less confident about
speaking English. Sometimes, in our eagerness to help others improve, we
unintentionally create the very barriers that hold them back.
In this film,
psychotherapist and psychoanalyst Ulises Verón decides to take a radical new
approach to his work. Yet, as his interventions become increasingly intrusive,
his good intentions set off a cascade of unexpected consequences. As I watched
the film, one compelling question stayed with me: Where does genuine compassion
end and the dangerous illusion of controlling another person’s life begin? Ulises’s
question to the audience during the award ceremony continued to echo in my mind
long after the film ended: “How the hell are we going to fix this?”
Bouchard, a stuck-up and celebrated novelist struggling with alcoholism and severe writer’s block, turns to Ulises Verón, a disillusioned psychoanalyst who has abandoned conventional therapy in favor of intrusive and ethically questionable interventions in his patients’ lives. The final irony lies in the relationship between therapy and art themselves. Both seek to uncover the hidden dimensions of human experience, but when personal vulnerability becomes a tool for manipulation, insight can turn into exploitation. The film leaves us with a lot of unsettling question: Can a seemingly perfect result ever justify the ethical compromises and human betrayals that made it possible? Where does the desire to help another person end and the impulse to control that person begins? The film challenges the most popular belief or assumption that a successful outcome justifies the means used to achieve it.
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