Complete with confusing plot twists that somehow work, crazy yet irresistible characters and a ton of sexual content, ‘Choke’ is painfully fun and the ideal guilty pleasure.Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, author of the bestseller ‘Fight Club,’ ‘Choke’ is nothing short of a demented hilarity. The movie proves to be a fine example of when great writing hooks up with solid acting to make cinematic gold.Starring independent-film pioneer Sam Rockwell (‘The Green Mile,’ ‘Charlie’s Angels’), Academy Award-winner Angelica Huston (‘The Addams Family,’ ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’) and Golden Globe-nominee and Emmy-winner Kelly MacDonald (‘No Country for Old Men’), the cast brings a dirty, confusing and occasionally uncomfortable chemistry to the silver screen.The movie opens with a therapy group for, of all things, sex addicts. Victor Mancini (Rockwell) kicks off his hour-and-a-half long journey by having sex with one of his fellow group members on the bathroom floor. This explicit scene is a mere taste of what is to come, and it serves as a great opener for a movie about emotional and sexual depravity.Victor spends the next 89 minutes searching for answers he never really finds, while sleeping with nearly every female who comes onto the screen. It’s difficult for one to leave the theater without being impressed, disturbed and turned on.Victor’s mother, Ida (Huston), is on her deathbed at a nursing home for what appears to be the insane elderly. It’s filled with old women trying to both molest and persecute Victor, who visits his mother often. Ida’s dementia causes her to forget who Victor is just as she is about to reveal the truth about his father, a story Victor was denied as a child.Flashbacks to Victor’s youth progressively reveal something isn’t right about Ida. Victor bounced from foster home to foster home, while Ida watched in the shadows, stealing him from his step-in parents at any chance she could, though never committing to motherhood. Victor tries to trick his mother into telling him who his father is, as a desperate attempt to rectify his past and prove he is half ‘normal.’ During the process, Victor falls for Paige Marshall (McDonald), who cares for Ida at the hospital. Paige misleads Victor into believing he was conceived through a freak experiment involving the preserved foreskin of Jesus Christ, a conclusion she supposedly reached by reading Ida’s journal, which had been written entirely in Italian. (No, Paige doesn’t actually read Italian.)Paige also convinces Victor to have sex with her, so she can get pregnant and use the embryos as a cure for Ida’s illness, but Victor’s deep affection for Paige renders him unable to get it up.Meanwhile, Victor’s sexual escapades begin to numb him, and push him into a state of perpetual depression and loss. Sex is no longer a recreational hobby for Victor – it’s a real addiction; an illness he no longer enjoys and from which he cannot break free. ‘Sweet nothing,’ he calls it.The film balances comedy and drama quite well, mixing Victor’s sad youth and his current predicament with the deviances of everyday life. Rockwell’s monologue as Victor to his mother not long before she dies is heart-wrenching and soul-touching – nothing less than award-worthy.The film makes no judgments about sexuality other than the clear statement that using sex to fill a void can lead to an even bigger void. The film ends with an intimate and sensual sex scene that completes Victor’s journey majestically: It’s with someone he loves. ‘Choke’ is sexy, provocative, confusing and enlightening. While some of the post-production editing could have been cleaned up, this Sundance hit deserves its place on the big screen. It delivers something unusual to popular film these days: A real story about a taboo topic, told in an unconventional way.Rdjone03@syr.edu