Award-winning experimental filmmaker Su Friedrich screens her terrific new film, The Odds of Recovery, a film about six surgeries, one bad hormone problem, a fifteen-year relationship and the onset of middle age. Acclaimed filmmaker of Sink or Swim and Hide & Seek, Su Friedrich documents her personal journey through a multitude of often unexplained illnesses and the problems she faced while encountering the medical establishment.
The journey through an exasperating health care system is just part of the story, which also exposes ways in which Friedrich had ignored her body, as she now is forced to consider the spectres of middle age, menopause and death.
Friedrich takes a very direct approach to the subject by showing herself in numerous doctors’ offices dealing with an assortment of problems, ranging from diseased organs to broken bones to a major hormone imbalance. As she endures a seemingly endless string of standard Western treatments, she also explores alternative preventive methods in her daily life: T’ai Chi, acupuncture, Chinese herbs and the Zen of gardening. Friedrich lays bare her medical history while acknowledging her all too human inclination to avoid conflict and to deny the need for radical change.
Friedrich makes flinty and form-minded, extremely pragmatic, highly personal, affecting movies.