To the Bone expos­es the shock­ing real­i­ty of liv­ing with an eat­ing disorder

Warn­ing: This arti­cle con­tains mild ref­er­ence to symp­toms per­tain­ing to anorex­ia and bulim­ia as pre­sent­ed in the film.

Mar­ti Nox­on, best known for her role as a writer and co-pro­duc­er of Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er, turns her atten­tion to a dis­or­der clos­er to home in the new Net­flix film To the Bone. This semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal work fol­lows 20-year-old Ellen (Lily Collins), a young woman wedged between her war­ring birth moth­er Judy (Lili Tay­lor) and her step­moth­er Susan (Car­rie Pre­ston), with whom she lives while fight­ing a dai­ly bat­tle against her own body dysmorphia.

Susan is hor­ri­fied by her anorex­ic step daughter’s weight loss and takes her to a clin­ic where the straight-talk­ing, charis­mat­ic Dr William Beck­ham (Keanu Reeves) rec­om­mends that she enter a res­i­den­tial pro­gramme with oth­er young peo­ple with eat­ing dis­or­ders. She soon devel­ops a close rela­tion­ship with one of the res­i­dents, Luke (Alex Sharp), who intro­duces her to the ways of the pro­gramme and the house includ­ing the ​“tor­ture cham­ber”, also known as the din­ing room. To the Bone sheds light on eat­ing dis­or­ders through the expe­ri­ence of both Ellen and her fel­low house­mates with­out shy­ing away from pre­sent­ing the real­i­ty of recov­ery. It is at once hope­ful and dev­as­tat­ing; dif­fi­cult to watch yet essen­tial viewing.

This is a par­tic­u­lar­ly raw study of eat­ing dis­or­ders and the rea­son­ing of a suf­fer­er who wants to be healthy but fears the weight she must gain to achieve this. As some­one who has not expe­ri­enced such a dis­or­der Noxon’s film is at times des­per­ate­ly infu­ri­at­ing. As Ellen’s sis­ter Kel­ly (Liana Lib­er­a­to) express­es with love and sup­port but also igno­rance, ​“I just don’t real­ly get it… you know, just… eat”. To the Bone presents a woman who is wast­ing away before our eyes; a poignant and ter­ri­fy­ing way of stress­ing that eat­ing dis­or­ders are not a glam­orous choice but a life-threat­en­ing sickness.

Any film that expos­es the pri­vate lives of young peo­ple avoid­ing food in pur­suit of a skin­ny ide­al is sure to be met with con­tro­ver­sy, but the film shows just enough to shock view­ers with­out pro­vid­ing moti­va­tion for suf­fer­ers. As Dr Beck­ham says in a moment which speaks direct­ly to the audi­ence, ​“there’s plen­ty of stuff out there for peo­ple to fetishise”, and To the Bone works very hard not to fall into this trap.

Collins, who pre­vi­ous­ly suf­fered from a eat­ing dis­or­der, has made it a mat­ter of pub­lic knowl­edge that a fam­i­ly friend com­pli­ment­ed her on her weight loss for the role. But the film itself goes to painstak­ing lengths not to pro­mote her fig­ure as any kind of female ide­al. That said, you’d be for­giv­en for think­ing that Collins doesn’t look dan­ger­ous­ly under­weight in the film’s open­ing scenes, sim­ply because over­sized jumper hides the truth beneath. Before she steps in front of the scales, she doesn’t appear that much small­er than plen­ty of oth­er film and TV stars. It’s scary – and more to the point.

The film reveals some dis­turb­ing strate­gies employed by peo­ple with eat­ing dis­or­ders; once again, things that will already be known to those affect­ed but impor­tant for oth­ers to wit­ness. Ellen does sit-ups until her pro­trud­ing spine is bruised, and rou­tine­ly wraps her hand around the top of her arm to see if she can get her thumb and mid­dle fin­ger to touch. Ellen’s house­mates attempt to slip in any exer­cise they can while under watch in the house; a place where doors are removed and toi­lets are on lock­down for 30 min­utes after mealtimes.

The most upset­ting scenes involve admis­sions of purg­ing, with one young girl con­ceal­ing ​“a trea­sure chest of puke” under her bed in a large brown bag while a girl being fed through a tube pan­ics over the num­ber of calo­ries she is being admin­is­tered. The film offers a fright­en­ing glimpse into the mind of some­one suf­fer­ing from an eat­ing dis­or­der; a world in which there is no such thing as skin­ny enough and where, in extreme cas­es, fear­ing for your life may not be enough to save it.

But by far the most trou­bling image of the film is that of Ellen’s naked body. She is curled up on the floor, as though dis­posed of – a shell of a human being. It’s a haunt­ing sight which is jux­ta­posed by an imag­ined image of Ellen on the road to recov­ery, a girl who has colour and life in her cheeks again. It is a glo­ri­ous­ly mov­ing dream sequence from Nox­on, a mes­sage of hope that seeks to sup­press the inter­nal voice which leads women and men to hate instead of nur­ture them­selves in the pur­suit of the ​‘per­fect body’.

To the Bone is avail­able on Net­flix from 14 July.