Customer Reviews

Sins of the Mind [VHS]

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This hell and redemption saga about a "sexaholic" is lifted
one step above trash exploitation by the heroine having some insight
into her behaviour. Her "acting out" is a result of a car
accident, where brain damage after a coma alters her previous
behaviour so now she has no control over her sexual impulses. Purists
might balk at how we are told of but not shown her first incarnation
as "little miss perfect" but the outrage of her family,
headed by father Mike Farrell (who also exec produced) is enough to
clue us in. Anyone portrayed as sexually aggressive who isn't married
and directing this energy to their spouse is always problematic in
American films since it raises lots of mixed morality issues. That's
probably why the girl also gets to lie and steal, so that the
"crimes" are not totally victimless. There is a suggestion
that the behaviour is hereditary, since her mother (Jill Clayburgh) has
left one man to marry his best friend, Farrell, and we are told by one
psychiatrist - Louise Fletcher in one of two scenes where she appears
with pitiful material - that the behaviour is "growth", a
classic response to a near-death experience. However any kind of
psychological empathy is abandoned when a second psychiatrist
diagnoses the poor girl as a sexual offender, and she is grouped with
rapists and pedophiles. You might think a nymphomaniac finding a
rapist is a match made in heaven but the group sessions are bereft of
humour. In fact they are unintentionally hilarious, the nadir being
the doctor stating at one point "I can detect some tension in the
air". If the doctor's fatuous tone and trembling voice isn't
enough to make any aware person run a mile, his sessions where the
group screams at each other as he coaches "control" and
"stay with it" as if they are acting classes, is. I was
particularly amused when one rapist yelled to another "Get to the
point!". Farrell seems to have been attracted to this project for
it's daddy quotant, though writer Sharon Elizabeth Doyle errs in
naming the other (good) daughter, Allegra. Since he is a photographer
we hope for some payoff but the only one comes when he prints off
multiple images of the bad daughter. At first what might have revealed
some obsession is revealed to have a missing persons use. I think I
most enjoyed seeing Farrell when he is beaten up, since up to that
point his performance had been so noble and dull, and it's odd that
director James Frawley lights his big breakdown scene in shadow. As
the sinner, Missy Crider is better than expected, provides some
welcome dimension to her tramp role, and is lucky enough to have to
endure a succession of gorgeous sexual partners. As her mother,
Clayburgh brings emotional truth and some memorable anger to a Mildred
Pierce-ish stairway mother-daughter confrontation.

wow. THe acting etc. probably so-so but the message is one that I have not seen or heard anywhere else and is INVALUABLE for people with brain injuries, and their loved ones. TBI is hard to accept and a lot of that's through misunderstanding and this film sheds a lot of compassion.