Words on Bathroom Walls * * * *

 Every few years another brave soul decides to tackle a film on schizophrenia.  As it effects so many lives (one in a hundred) it's an immensely important subject, but not an easy one to dramatise without getting it wrong. Fortunately, Words on Bathroom Walls gets it very right.

Adam in the bathroom, looking for my review.

Adam lives with his Mum.  His Dad shot through many years earlier.  At the age of seventeen the first tell-tale signs appear, though he does not tell anyone about the voices he keeps hearing. What Adam does discover is that cooking calms him.  And so he develops a culinary obsession.  

In the meantime his behavior, due to his psychotic episodes, results in him being expelled from his local high school.  So his mother has him enrolled at an upmarket private catholic school.  There he meets a girl who he can relate to.  She is the smartest student in the school and has developed her own business legitimately tutoring some students, and sometimes getting paid to illegally write essays for other students. 

Adam volunteers to take a new medication which is remarkably effective but has some side effects which he does not like.   As is the case with many people who are suffering from a mental illness, the illness itself advises them not to take the prescribed medication, consequently the effectiveness of the medication is undermined.

His lonely mother meets someone and falls in love with him, which makes Adam feel more alienated. Now it's not just the world he feels separate from, it's also his own family. 

The experiences of Adam is portrayed with just the right amount of drama as we see and hear things as he might. 

It would be a spoiler to tell you if Adam works his way through this, or how.  But this is an intelligent, very moving drama with an ending that is both logical and rewarding.