Parents' Guide to Pure

Charly Chive is radiantly mesmerizing as a young woman with an unusual mental illness in this high-quality British import about intrusive thoughts and the havoc they can cause. Her condition sounds like a dirty joke, and Pure could have gone so, so wrong if it attempted to wring comedy out of her distress. Instead, Pure is on her side, and so are we, after we get a load of what Marnie's particular psyche does to her. Unable to relax in even typical situations, she's bedeviled both by her thoughts and by recriminations over the thoughts. What kind of person would think the things she does? She must be a perv, a loser, utterly unsalvageable; there's something wrong with her, and she can't even figure out what, much less how to handle it.

The scene in which a new pal nails down what's going on with Marnie is a tearjerker, plain and simple. Finally, with a name for her condition, she has hope. "There are millions of people as f--ked up as I am. I've finally found my community," she thinks to herself joyfully. And it's true: this is a turning point in which she can begin to understand why her mind works as it does, and begin to shift both her thoughts and her perspective to ease her pain. It's a slow process, and it might be painful to watch if Pure focused solely on Marnie's mental strife. Instead, we also see Marnie as a whole person: new to a city, casting about for a career and friends and a purpose. It's funny, and it's sad, and you'll want to watch every beat of her story, which is tortured and difficult, but as we see, rather ordinary all the same.