Quid pro quo

“Quid Pro Quo” hovers in a noir-shaded twilight zone where repressed memories, dreams, desire and guilt merge in an obsession with physical and emotional paralysis. The first feature written and directed by Carlos Brooks, this small, intensely acted film is a psychological detective story that suggests a boutique version of David Cronenberg’s “Crash” or David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” but it eventually runs out of courage.
Its narrator, Isaac Knott (Nick Stahl), is a reporter for a New York public radio station who tells his story over the air. Isaac has been in a wheelchair since age 8, when a car accident that killed his parents also left him disabled. He navigates the city with consummate skill, his major complaint being that most cabdrivers won’t pick him up. This semisurreal movie flashes back several times to the moment of the crash on a nearly empty road bordered by tulip fields.
The most intriguing scenes from “Quid Pro Quo” are in its first half, when it resembles a metaphysical Dashiell Hammett-like yarn minus the hard-boiled argot. One day Isaac receives an anonymous tip from a source who identifies herself as Ancient Chinese Girl, informing him of a man who tried to bribe a surgeon to amputate one of his healthy legs.
Following Ancient Chinese Girl’s instructions, Isaac attends a sinister meeting of a support group of able-bodied people who secretly gather to use wheelchairs and crutches; they long to appear disabled in public, but are too ashamed to live out their fantasies. To these so-called wannabes, being handicapped is an exalted status and the wheelchair a kind of mobile throne.
Isaac’s correspondent turns out to be a slinky blond bombshell, Fiona (Vera Farmiga), who works in a museum restoring priceless Chinese artifacts, some of which adorn her Manhattan apartment. After he pressures this Veronica Lake-style femme fatale to explain her fascination with paralysis, she confesses her overwhelming desire to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
Their relationship (answering an unspoken question in many people’s minds, Isaac says, “Yes, I can have sex”) becomes a perverse tango in which they play at exchanging roles. Isaac acquires a pair of magic shoes that mysteriously restore sensation to his legs and feet, and he begins to walk, unsteadily. Fiona reacts to his sudden mobility with a mixture of happiness and resentment; she wonders if he has been suffering from “hysterical paralysis” all along. Under Isaac’s tutelage, meanwhile, Fiona dares to appear in public in a wheelchair.
Ms. Farmiga’s performance might be described as radioactive — her character, in which she uncovers many conflicting emotional layers, has a glow-in-the-dark phosphorescence that is sexy, but also scary. In Fiona’s mind the medical paraphernalia of paralysis has an erotic power similar to that of the accoutrements of sadomasochism. An elaborate brace, for instance, is the ne plus ultra in sexy lingerie.
After spinning out metaphors of paralysis and eroticism in its characters’ feverish imaginations, “Quid Pro Quo” decides at the last minute that it has to explain everything. The moment it pulls away from the fantastic, it lands with a thud.
“Quid Pro Quo” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes sexual situations and some nudity.
Da The New York Times, 13 giugno 2008