Delivers exceptional work from Collins, who's finally challenged as an actress, submitting to the part with startlingly gaunt physicality and sharp dramatic response.
For young people suffering, the movie offers both hope and clarity; for more experienced viewers, it may come off a little too much like Girl, Interrupted through a Lifetime lens.
Her bones stick out like the blades of a prehistoric reptile. Her stomach - or, at least the area where her stomach should be - seems to have had air sucked out of it with a vacuum. When she moves, you almost expect a clanging noise.
An admirable and empathetic work that does not romanticize anorexia or the young woman being ground into nothingness by the disease, as some have feared.
Without judging or romanticizing, Noxon presents a heartfelt and heartbreaking portrait of a 20-year-old girl trying to cope with the challenges of growing up by obsessively restricting calories.
Addiction creates a messy, tangled web of anguish, where the hurt is spread far and wide, and while there are several narrative points that are short-shifted, "To The Bone" works hard to do justice to that reality.
Collins commits herself physically to the role while adeptly slinging Noxon's caustic one-liners, and Reeves, as Ellen's doctor, strikes the right note between genuine sympathy and a sobering sense of where she might be headed.
