movie review to the bone

To the Bone

The “Karen” in Sonic Youth’s 1990 “Tunic (Song for Karen)” is singer/drummer Karen Carpenter, who—famously—suffered from anorexia and died of heart failure in 1983. In the opening verse, Kim Gordon drones in a flat-affect voice:

“Dreaming, dreaming of a girl like me Hey what are you waiting for, feeding, feeding me I feel like I’m disappearing, getting smaller every day But I look in the mirror, I’m bigger in every way.”

Two years before Carpenter’s death, there was a TV movie about the struggles of an anorexic girl ( Jennifer Jason Leigh ) called “The Best Little Girl in the World.” If you were of a certain age, you probably remember seeing it. It was a TV event! When Carpenter died, “The Best Little Girl in the World” was often mentioned as a reference point, almost like the culture was trying to put the baffling pieces together: “Karen Carpenter died of that thing we all were just talking about two years ago. Remember that?” We know a lot more now.

The new Netflix-produced drama, “To the Bone,” written and directed by Marti Noxon , tells the tale of a young anorexic using the inside-joke gallows humor of the “rexies” (anorexics) themselves. Instead of approaching the topic in a solemn “issue of the week” way, “To the Bone” tries to lighten the mood. There are aspects of this approach that are refreshing. Noxon clearly knows the territory. But the end result is confusing and unfocused. Individual scenes shine, but the overall arc suffers. “To the Bone” isn’t all that interested in the actual treatment of the condition, even though the majority of the film takes place in a treatment program. The film also gets hugely distracted by a romantic sub-plot, a sub-plot that is pushy and awkward from the jump.

In the opening scene, Ellen ( Lily Collins )—a 20-year-old artist with clothes hanging off of her like a scarecrow—is booted out of a treatment program for her “defiant attitude.” She goes to stay with her father (who never appears in the film), stepmother ( Carrie Preston ) and stepsister ( Liana Liberato ). She’s been sick for so long that her entire family, scared and exhausted, has given her up for dead. Ellen’s mother Judy ( Lili Taylor ) came out as gay when Ellen was 13, and now lives in Phoenix running a horse therapy farm with her partner Olive ( Brooke Smith ). Moving away was an abandonment of her troubled child, but also an act of self-preservation. Ellen’s cheery yet firm stepmother is the only one on the ball in the extended parental unit, and she gets Ellen a place at Threshold, a treatment center run by a doctor known for his unconventional methods. This is Dr. Beckham, played by Keanu Reeves with his trademark simplicity.

There are six other patients in the Threshold house, each one defined by their particular issue. There’s the pregnant anorexic. There’s the girl who stashes her barf in a paper bag under the bed. There’s the girl with the feeding tube. Luke (Tony-award winning actor Alex Sharp , in his film debut) is an anorexic ballet dancer, who takes Ellen under his chatty wing, showing her the ropes. They speak in the code of their illnesses. Two girls talk about binging, one saying, “Ice cream comes up the easiest.” There’s a discussion about whether or not Emma Stone is fat. Ellen says she thinks Stone just has “big bones.” A lot of this dialogue has the unmistakable queasy ring of truth, of dirty dark secrets being told.

Dr. Beckham’s unconventional approach involves taking them to an art installation where water falls through the ceiling and then encouraging his patients to dance under the indoor rainfall. It’s a major sequence, with inspirational music. Other than that (and what, exactly, was that?), we rarely see him at work with the patients. There are elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy involved in his approach, mixed with some “tough love” tactics. He tells Ellen that she needs to tell her brain to “fuck off.” Ellen responds well to this sort of thing. She’s a straight shooter, too. But we don’t see enough of his work to see what it is, how it works, how it might not work. “To the Bone” gets interested, instead, in the budding relationship between Luke and Ellen.

The script has Luke, a version of the famed “manic pixie dream girl,”  insisting  on things a lot, insisting that Ellen go out to dinner with him, insisting she eat a chocolate bar even though she tells him multiple times she doesn’t want to, insisting they kiss even when she’s clearly not really into it, insisting, insisting, insisting … it’s hard to tell what Noxon was going for here. This subplot takes up a lot of bandwidth. It doesn’t help that Noxon’s staging of a couple of scenes is so awkward that you can still see the blocking.

“To the Bone” does not get at root causes. It does not try to explain why. It does not lecture. All of this is in its favor, to a degree. But Ellen herself remains a cipher. There’s a lack of interest in who she is, what she’s about, where she’s coming from. We see what she does, we see her outward “attitude,” but that’s about it.

There have been plenty of “eating disorder” movies since “Best Little Girl in the World,” but the narrative hasn’t embedded itself in storytelling culture in the same way that drug or alcohol addiction narratives have. Eating disorders are a thornier issue, stranger, more intractable, scarier. The wider culture participates in perpetuating these illnesses, and so maybe that’s one of the reasons why Hollywood—a place filled with thin women—is hesitant to address the issue. Thinness is so equated with beauty norms that it’s a culture-wide propaganda bomb. Two months after a celebrity gives birth people start making fun of what she looks like in her bathing suit. Girls get the message very young. To address anorexia (in particular), you would have to address the entire culture’s preoccupation with weight, its obsession with policing what women look like. Eating disorders are symptoms of the sickness of society. “To the Bone”‘s self-awareness about the illness and those who suffer is laudatory, and some of the scenes will undoubtedly be revelatory to those unfamiliar with the lingo and behavior of eating disorders. These scenes will also ring true for anyone who’s suffered. “To the Bone” does not treat its lead character as a poor and passive victim, sick though she may be. But the film loses focus in fits and starts along the way. The girl at its center cannot hold the center.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O’Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master’s in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Maya Eshet as Pearl
• Lili Taylor as Judy
• Alex Sharp as Luke
• Lindsey McDowell as Kendra
• Don O. Knowlton as Jack
• Michael B. Silver as Dr. Weiner
• Kathryn Prescott as Anna
• Liana Liberato as Kelly
• Hana Hayes as Chloe
• Brooke Smith as Olive
• Alanna Ubach as Karen
• Keanu Reeves as Dr. William Beckham
• Carrie Preston as Susan
• Ciara Bravo as Tracy
• Lily Collins as Ellen
• Joanna Sanchez as Rosa
• Rebekah Kennedy as Penny
• Elliot Greenberg
• Marti Noxon

Cinematographer

• Richard Wong

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To the Bone

Where to watch.

Watch To the Bone with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

To the Bone offers an insightful, empathetic look at a widespread issue, led by exemplary work from Lily Collins in the central role.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Marti Noxon

Keanu Reeves

Dr. William Beckham

Lily Collins

Alanna Ubach

Liana Liberato

Carrie Preston

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Film Review: ‘To the Bone’

In a film that's not much fun to watch but could save lives all the same, established TV writer turned feature director Marti Noxon takes an honest look at anorexia.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Point a camera at someone in the far, far distance, but keep the focus trained on the foreground, and that person takes on an almost extraterrestrial quality, like some sort of spun-sugar stick figure, or a walking skeleton. “ To the Bone ” opens with just such a shot: That reed-thin silhouette advancing toward us is Ellen (an alarmingly frail Lily Collins ), an anorexic young woman who’s been through four different treatment centers for her eating disorder. The film tells the story of Ellen’s fifth, and final, in-patient experience — it’s not an easy sit, nor a terribly entertaining one, but in the hands of writer-director Marti Noxon , it delivers painful insights in a relatively fresh way.

While not downright irreverent, this is the kind of anorexia movie where characters crack jokes about not wanting to visit the Holocaust Museum, lest they feel guilty for starving themselves. “To the Bone” would hardly qualify as a comedy, but it doesn’t take the kid-gloves approach either — in fact, its attitude seems almost ruthlessly pitiless at times — owing to the fact that it was inspired at least in part by Moxon’s own experience (as a teen, she starved herself so severely that her heart stopped briefly).

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Considering Moxon’s accomplished CV as a writer/producer on such feisty shows as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “UnREAL,” and “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce,” it’s a bit counterintuitive that she chose the most TV-appropriate subject of her career to serve as her big-screen directorial debut. And yet, Noxon’s sharp enough to know just how to avoid the melodramatic pitfalls that would have made her script play like just another disease-of-the-week special.

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As far as Ellen’s family is concerned, she may as well be dying before their eyes — and it’s hard not to agree with them. Through some combination of weight loss, visual effects, and makeup (darkened eye sockets, exaggerated shadows around the cheekbones and collarbone), Collins looks more like a Goth zombie or corpse than your typical moody teen. Ellen is a talented artist, but doesn’t sketch much — not since an incident with her Tumblr feed had a disastrous impact on a fellow “rexie.” And she’s got a clever take on the world, even if she hasn’t quite decided that she wants to stick around and live in it.

That latter aspect of her personality is both the crux of her condition and the thing that makes her a somewhat frustrating character to watch. After all, movies are most compelling when they serve up a motivated character with clear-cut goals and a ticking-clock deadline on which to achieve them. Ellen’s problem is that she’s impassive, disengaged from life, and potentially suicidal in one of the slowest-motion means possible. Everyone else — from her step-mom (Carrie Preston) and half-sister (Liana Liberato) to her biological mom (Lili Taylor), now a lesbian — is clearly rooting for Ellen’s recovery. But as any therapist can tell you, healing only happens when the patient wants to get better.

Speaking of therapists, “To the Bone” supplies a rather unconventional one in the form of Keanu Reeves’ Dr. William Beckham. He runs a Los Angeles-based group home called Threshold, where Ellen agrees to spend at least six weeks with a mix of other girls. From the opening scene, we know that she doesn’t typically mix well with other eating-disorder patients, and yet, something is different about this gang — though it’s not at all clear what, exactly. There’s a pregnant woman at risk of losing her fetus, and an emotionally stunted girl in such critical condition that she’s been intubated (Ellen freaks her out further when she divulges that each feed sac packs 1,500 calories). And then there’s Luke, Threshold’s lone male resident, an ex-Londoner whose dance career was cut short after he injured his knee.

In a more conventional, crowd-pleasing version of this story, Ellen would bond with her housemates and fall in love Luke — and Noxon works in enough of that to keep audiences interested. But the idea isn’t to make Ellen’s recovery seem fun. Fortunately, Collins possesses that inner brilliance, call it “star quality,” that conveys the potential that might be snuffed out if Ellen did succumb, which helps keep us invested, even amid the movie’s weakest stretch, when her character hits rock bottom. Meanwhile, its strongest part, which takes place in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Rain Room, leaves both Ellen and the audience feeling blissfully alive.

Ultimately, “To the Bone” works because Noxon has been through what Ellen is experiencing, right down to picking a name that suits her better (“Marti” was born Martha, and Ellen rechristens herself “Eli” at Dr. Beckham’s suggestion). And though the film is thick with scenes of counseling and introspection, it never crosses into that toxically self-indulgent zone of therapy-through-filmmaking. Instead, it feels as if Noxon has long since worked out these issues herself, and now she’s paying it forward, offering the world a film with some of the wisdom she learned. That still doesn’t make it an especially pleasant movie to watch, but it is one that just might save a few lives.

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (competing), Jan. 22, 2017. Running time: 107 MIN.

• Production: An Ambi Group, Sparkhouse Media presentation, in association with Foxtail Entertainment, Ambi Distribution, of a Mockingbird Pictures, Sparkhouse Media production. Producers: Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, Karina Miller, Andrea Iervolino, Monika Bacardi. Executive producers: Talal Al Abbar, Joseph Lanius, Matthew J. Malek, Anita Gou. Co-producer: Allison Avery, Jordan Shea Kammer.
• Crew: Director, writer: Marti Noxon. Camera (color): Richard Wong. Editor: Elliott Greenberg.
• With: Lily Collins, Carrie Preston, Lili Taylor, Alex Sharp, Liana Liberato, Brooke Smith, Kathryn Prescott, Keanu Reeves.

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‘to the bone’: film review | sundance 2017.

Lily Collins headlines 'To the Bone,' from Marti Noxon ('Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce'), a feature inspired by the writer-director's own struggles with anorexia.

By Boyd van Hoeij

Boyd van Hoeij

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A young woman with anorexia checks into a group home overseen by a rather unconventional medical professional in To the Bone , the feature debut from screenwriter and small-screen writer-producer Marti Noxon ( Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce, UnReal ). This semi-autobiographical story is an occasionally harrowing but sometimes also surprisingly warm and funny tale that, while the characters focus a lot on eating (or, rather, not eating), is really more about finding the will and self-love necessary to live rather than about dealing with an eating disorder.

This impressively accessible take on some very difficult issues benefits from the measured but relatable performances from Lily Collins and Alex Sharp, with the latter playing a young British dancer who is also a “rexie” and who becomes the lead’s confidant and maybe more, and an avuncular turn from Keanu Reeves as the youngsters’ doctor. With the right marketing and outreach, this could be a conversation starter on the art house circuit.

The Bottom Line Occasionally harrowing but also surprisingly warm and funny.

Gaunt and expressionless, Ellen (Collins) is first seen making a humorous but also offensive sign at what turns out to be her fourth in-patient treatment, which leads to her being kicked out again. A few quick scenes establish the situation back home in Los Angeles, where her father is never present; her occasionally borderline inappropriate, endlessly talkative but also somewhat frosty step-mom, Susan ( Carrie Preston ), tries to overcompensate; and Ellen’s half-sister, Kelly (Liana Liberato ), is kinder but has secretly been suffering, too, from having to deal with having a “freak sister” with a disorder. Her real mom, Judy ( Lili Taylor), “a lesbian with bipolar disorder,” as per Susan, has moved to Arizona to be with her no-nonsense girlfriend, Olive (Brooke Smith).

An unconventional program run by Dr. Beckham (Reeves) is a last attempt to try and help the young woman, orchestrated by Susan. Finally caving in when her half-sister asks her in the most sincerely straightforward manner to give it a go, Ellen finds herself in a home with six other young women and one guy, Lucas (“rhymes with mucus”) or Luke (Sharp), who all have eating disorders, too. They share rooms without doors, are weighed each morning and are expected to all come down for dinner, whether they want to eat or not. As the woman overseeing the house (Marietta Sirleaf ) explains, all toilets are locked for 30 minutes after each meal.

Noxon , who also wrote the screenplay, manages to explore dark and complex issues while frequently leavening them with unexpected moments of humor, such as when Dr. Beckham organizes a family therapy session — with, besides Ellen’s half-sister, also her step-mom, mom and mom’s girlfriend present — and the doctor dryly remarks that this must be a “record number of moms” for a single family session. In that one short sequence, Noxon impressively manages to telegraph a lifetime of hurt and complex interfamily dynamics.

There’s another sequence much later in the film between Luke and Ellen that also impresses. After the obligatorily awkward meet-cute at the group house, the two strike up an unlikely friendship — or perhaps a sense of kinship is a better way of putting it. Luke then starts signaling he’s interested in Ellen through various food/sex metaphors that remarkable newcomer Sharp manages to sell with a lot of goofy charm and not an ounce of ick , essentially setting him up as the potential male romantic lead.

In one well-observed and even, yes, heart-warming scene, the two go on a date to a Chinese restaurant, where Ellen keeps spitting out her food into her napkin but is otherwise having a good time, suggesting how the illness doesn’t prevent her from the occasional happy moment, even though that doesn’t mean that one such moment makes all her problems magically disappear. But the standout sequence is one in the home’s yard at night, where the two confess some intimate secrets to each other, get closer and are then pulled apart, with Collins’ performance and Noxon’s writing providing Ellen with such emotional transparency that it’s crystal clear how her feelings and thinking evolve and then escalate.

(Spoilers ahead in this paragraph.) The third act necessitates a point-of-no-return but a few more hints earlier on that this was coming would have made its arrival more credible. Similarly, the idea of a potential rebirth sees Noxon leave the almost documentary-like reality of the rest of the film behind for a moment, but this major tonal shift would’ve felt more organic and tethered to Ellen’s whole journey if it had been more clearly foreshadowed. However, these are small issues in a work that manages to suggest so much about how eating disorders are not necessarily about food or body image and about how no ill person can be healed if they resist, for whatever reason, to be helped.

In terms of the visuals, Noxon and cinematographer Richard Wong ( Colma : The Musical ) opt for a simple but elegant metaphorical solution, with much of the home, where Ellen struggles with her issues, filmed in dimly lit, heavily shadowed shots and moments of hope or grace often taking place outdoors or in brighter light. Elliot Greenberg’s editing makes the 107-minute running time feel surprisingly pacey , while the rest of the film’s technical credits are likewise solid for an indie production.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Dramatic Competition) Production companies: AMBI , Sparkhorse , Mockingbird Pictures Cast: Lily Collins, Keanu Reeves, Carrie Preston, Lili Taylor, Alex Sharp, Liana Liberato Writer-director: Marti Noxon Producers: Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, Karina Miller, Andrea Iervolino , Monika Bacardi Executive producers: Talal Al Abbar , Matthew J. Malek , Anita Gou Director of photography: Richard Wong Production designer: Maya Sigel Costume designer: Maria Tortu Editor: Elliot Greenberg Music: Fil Eisler Casting: Rich Delia Sales: WME / AMBI

Not rated, 107 minutes

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Parents' guide to, to the bone.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 4 Reviews
• Kids Say 17 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Compelling but mature drama about eating disorders.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that To the Bone follows Ellen (Lily Collins), a 20-year-old woman with an eating disorder, as she embarks on an uncertain and difficult journey toward recovery. It's not easy to watch; many intense, disturbing scenes show Ellen's struggles with food and body image, as well as those of…

Why Age 15+?

Frequent cursing, profanity, insults, and body references, including "f--k," "s-

Kissing and embracing. Frank sexual talk includes reference to masturbation, org

Disturbing scenes include -- spoiler alert -- a character's bruises (self-inflic

Young man and woman drink beer. Cigarette smoking.

Mega Gulp, Tsing Tao beer, Tumblr.

Any Positive Content?

People are challenged to make life-saving changes in the worst circumstances. In

The main character, who has an eating disorder, is encouraged to find the will t

Frequent cursing, profanity, insults, and body references, including "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "grow a pair," "balls," "Jesus Christ," "crap," "retarded," "p---y," "vagina," "boogers."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kissing and embracing. Frank sexual talk includes reference to masturbation, orgasm. A young woman is nude; no graphic nudity. Women shown in bras and panties.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Disturbing scenes include -- spoiler alert -- a character's bruises (self-inflicted by overexercising), fainting in a public space, and someone shown struggling to survive in a desert. A young woman is shown on a bathroom floor after a bloody miscarriage. References to suicide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive messages.

People are challenged to make life-saving changes in the worst circumstances. In spite of past behavior and/or others' negative conduct, each character must ask, "How do I want to live?" Focuses on eating disorders as more a problem of the soul than the body. Themes include compassion, empathy, and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

The main character, who has an eating disorder, is encouraged to find the will to live. She learns that no one can be healed if they're resistant to being helped. Those in support of characters who are working through serious issues are asked to be unselfish, loyal, and clearheaded. Professionals charged with caring for people in crisis are shown to be responsible, determined, and compassionate. Most family members are portrayed as people who, despite their intentions, put their own emotional needs first -- but they seem to learn something about what their roles and conduct should be by the end of the movie. Father has distanced himself from his daughter. Diversity within the cast.

Parents need to know that To the Bone follows Ellen ( Lily Collins ), a 20-year-old woman with an eating disorder, as she embarks on an uncertain and difficult journey toward recovery. It's not easy to watch; many intense, disturbing scenes show Ellen's struggles with food and body image, as well as those of others who are forced to confront their illnesses. Language is strong, including "f--k," "s--t," "p---y," and more. Characters kiss, cuddle, and have frank conversations about sex (expect references to orgasms, masturbation, and the like). There's also nonsexual nudity related to the main character's continuing health issues. Two scenes include underage drinking and cigarette smoking. Writer-director Marti Noxon tackles a very sensitive issue with the honesty and authenticity that come from having been there herself. While it's clear that her intentions aren't exploitative, there has been concern (some based on the movie's trailer) about the film's possible stereotyping or triggering of negative behavior among those with eating disorders. But rest assured that the movie has thoughtful messages about finding joy and beauty in life, discovering value in ourselves, and learning to survive the bad things that inevitably happen to everyone. It also promotes compassion, empathy, and perseverance. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (4)
• Kids say (17)

Based on 4 parent reviews

Terrible recovery model

"to the bone" review, what's the story.

Ellen ( Lily Collins ) hasn't responded to several rounds of intense rehab to help with her anorexia in TO THE BONE. While well-intentioned, Ellen's family -- including mom Judy ( Lili Taylor ), stepmom Susan ( Carrie Preston ), and Olive ( Brooke Smith ), her mother's partner -- proves ineffectual, actually managing to make matters worse, since each has issues that affect everyone's behavior. Only Ellen's half-sister, Kelly ( Liana Liberato ), seems to connect with the troubled young woman. A referral to Threshold, an in-patient facility for eating disorders that's headed by the unconventional Dr. William Beckham ( Keanu Reeves ), may be Ellen's last hope. She arrives with a chip on her shoulder and in a physical condition that's clearly fragile. Ellen firmly believes that she cannot eat and that she cannot change or succeed. It's a staggering challenge. And her housemates, including British dancer Lucas (Alex Sharp), are equally at risk. What follows, for Ellen and all those who interact with her, is a precarious journey, with both missteps and small victories that ultimately reveal the resilience of the human spirit.

Is It Any Good?

Despite its controversial subject matter, Marti Noxon's drama is a moving, believable film made with earnestness, sensitivity, and skill, as well as riveting performances. Candid, painful scenes are intercut with moments of sharp-edged humor and touching romance. Over the course of To the Bone , a largely dysfunctional family is treated with compassion rather than ridicule.

Given that both Noxon and Collins have acknowledged past histories of eating disorders, it's clear that their intention is to bring authenticity and insight to the subject. To the Bone is a well-made film that should find a wide audience, encouraging empathy and compassion for Ellen and others who face similar challenges.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the nature and toll of eating disorders. What starts them? Ask teens if they know people struggling with these issues. If they do, have they told anyone? If not, why? Is To the Bone an accurate portrayal? What resources can you use if you or someone you know has an eating disorder?

Writer-director Marti Noxon has said that "[e]ating disorders are problems not of the body but of the soul." Do you agree with her? Why, or why not? Do you think she succeeds in presenting this point of view in To the Bon e?

Were you surprised that Lucas had an eating disorder? How does that challenge commonly held stereotypes about those who suffer from eating disorders? Does the media have the responsibility to question stereotypes like these?

How would you describe Ellen's ultimate goal? Does the movie say clearly whether she is/will get there? Which character traits must she call on to achieve it? How does the movie emphasize the importance of compassion , empathy , and perseverance ?

Which characters are role models in this movie, and why? Do characters have to be "perfect" to be role models?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : July 14, 2017
• Cast : Lily Collins , Keanu Reeves , Alex Sharp
• Director : Marti Noxon
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Asian actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Empathy , Perseverance
• Run time : 107 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 18, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Review: Lily Collins plays an anorexic in the sardonic, empathetic drama ‘To the Bone’

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At the beginning of “To the Bone,” Ellen (Lily Collins), a moody 20-year-old struggling with anorexia nervosa, is kicked out of a Los Angeles inpatient treatment center after expressing her brutally honest thoughts about a fellow patient. It’s the fourth such facility from which she’s been dismissed, and neither her health nor her outlook has improved much by the time she enters the fifth: By that point, she’s seen and endured too much to get her hopes up.

“To the Bone,” the first feature written and directed by television veteran Marti Noxon (“Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce,” “Unreal”), affects a similarly sardonic, seen-it-all attitude. It does this in part to inoculate itself against the charges of cloying earnestness and maudlin sentimentality that can plague so much disease-themed film and TV fare.

But the movie, which Noxon based partly on her own history with anorexia and bulimia, also wants to seem sufficiently authoritative on a tough and relatively underdramatized subject. It means to convey some essential, hard-won truths about the experience of those who struggle with eating disorders, even as it filters that experience through one not-so-ordinary young woman’s story.

To tell that story, Collins, who incarnated the radiance of a classic Hollywood ingenue in movies like “Mirror Mirror” and “Rules Don’t Apply,” has undergone the sort of startling physical transformation that usually winds up being praised for its bravery or dismissed for its awards-baiting self-regard. Both reactions are understandable, even if neither, in this case, seems entirely adequate.

Collins, who has spoken out about her own experience with eating disorders, reportedly took special care in slimming down into the skeletal presence we see on-screen, her emaciated frame not quite concealed by loose knitted sweaters and baggy overalls. Noxon’s camera accentuates the visible evidence of her star’s weight loss — gaunt cheeks, stick-like limbs, sharply protruding bones — with a gaze that can be clinical but never fetishistic, and which scrupulously avoids telling us how we should feel about what we see.

Ellen may be a gorgeous ideal to some and a grotesque aberration to others, but the filmmakers ... try to see her clearly for who she is.

“Do you think that’s beautiful?” asks Ellen’s overbearing, well-meaning stepmother, Susan (Carrie Preston), perhaps not realizing the double-edged nature of her question. You may recoil from Ellen’s sallow complexion and ravaged physique, and still be struck by Collins’ beauty — a beauty that, according to some early critics of “To the Bone,” runs the risk of glamorizing her struggle and turning Ellen into an avatar of what is known online as “thinspiration,” an anorexic’s physical ideal.

At one point, we learn that Ellen, a gifted artist, recently posted some drawings of her body online, with controversial results. You can read a hint of defensiveness into this subplot, as if the filmmakers were preempting attacks on their own representational choices. Yet one of the movie’s insights, tossed off in a group discussion between Ellen and the other patients, is how deeply eating disorders are rooted in psychology and perception. The gravely ill Ellen may be a gorgeous ideal to some and a grotesque aberration to others, but the filmmakers, to the best of their abilities, try to see her clearly for who she is.

They are also keen to suggest, and then immediately discard, some obvious root causes of Ellen’s struggle — particularly in her family life, which is tumultuous in ways that flirt with cliché. Ellen used to live in Phoenix with her mother, Judy (Lili Taylor), and Judy’s partner, Olive (Brooke Smith), but then moved to L.A. to be with her stepmother and half-sister, Kelly (Liana Liberato). Ellen’s father lives with them too but is almost entirely absent from the picture — a decision that pointedly keeps the many women in the story front and center.

Most of Ellen’s fellow patients are young women roughly her age, though there are a few men in the mix as well. Some levity and romantic interest are provided by the center’s sole male patient, Luke (English actor Alex Sharp), who has a sufficiently firm grip on his demons to be able to mock the center’s various rules and restrictions while still basically upholding them. The doctor who heads up the facility is also a man, one apparently renowned for his unconventional treatment methods, though apart from the fact that he’s played by Keanu Reeves, nothing about his live-your-best-life bromides seems especially radical.

“To the Bone,” for its part, hews closely to formula in a way that’s easy to forgive, in part because Noxon hits even her most obvious notes with a light, sure touch. Part character study, part PSA, the movie chronicles a brief but meaningful period in its protagonist’s healing journey, and if there are few surprises along the way, there are equally few easy answers or miraculous breakthroughs. In a different film, Ellen’s sharp tongue might have made her an insufferable fount of wisecracking negativity — picture a hungrier, angrier Juno — but Collins’ performance is subtler than that, and the script gives her ample opportunity to reveal the character’s more complicated, vulnerable edges.

“I’m sorry that I’m not a person anymore,” she says during an especially fraught family-therapy session. “I’m a problem.” To some extent, the movie agrees with her — there is calculation aplenty in its empathy — but it also has the wisdom to leave that problem unsolved.

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‘To the Bone’

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Playing: iPic Theaters, Los Angeles

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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To the Bone  is an admirable story, but missing some depth: EW review

“I don’t really get it, you know?” a baffled relative snaps in one of To the Bone ’s early scenes. “Just…eat.” But an anorexic like Ellen (Lily Collins) can’t let an unexamined calorie pass her lips any more than an arachnophobe would crawl into a box of spiders, or someone contemplating suicide might suddenly decide to turn that frown upside down.

An arty, hollow-eyed Angeleno who swaddles her gaunt frame in heavy layers of wool and cynicism, Ellen has already burned through multiple failed rehabs when her tightly wound stepmother ( True Blood ’s Carrie Preston) pushes her toward one more last-ditch treatment. This one, she swears, will be different: an in-patient program overseen by a renegade sort of specialist.

And the good doctor — played by Keanu Reeves as a beardy, brutally honest sage whose voice sounds like a burbling Zen fountain even when he’s dropping F-bombs — does have his own methods: There are no doors in the rooms, to discourage secret purging and cardio binges; mealtimes are mandatory, but every “guest” can eat what they want. Writer-director Marti Noxon ( Buffy the Vampire Slayer, UnREAL ) fills the house with characters, including Leslie Bibb’s pregnant, high-strung bulimic and Tony winner Alex Sharp as a British ballet dancer sidelined by injury. They mostly remain eccentric outlines, though, as do Ellen’s absentee father and her earnest, earthy mom (Lili Taylor), now a happily partnered lesbian living a new life of nut milks and backyard yurts in Arizona. That remove might be partly a function of Ellen’s isolation — a life narrowed down to brittle pinpoints of denial and deprivation. (Though it’s hard not to wonder, too, exactly how Collins’ emaciated frailty was achieved safely on screen).

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. B

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Metacritic reviews

To the bone.

• 80 The Hollywood Reporter Boyd van Hoeij The Hollywood Reporter Boyd van Hoeij Noxon, who also wrote the screenplay, manages to explore dark and complex issues while frequently leavening them with unexpected moments of humor.
• 80 Salon Salon The film itself is 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.
• 75 Slant Magazine Chuck Bowen Slant Magazine Chuck Bowen One of the film’s great qualities is its casualness and willingness to be simply human and to not let sociological politics dominate.
• 75 Entertainment Weekly Leah Greenblatt Entertainment Weekly Leah Greenblatt 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.
• 70 Variety Peter Debruge Variety Peter Debruge It’s not an easy sit, nor a terribly entertaining one, but in the hands of writer-director Marti Noxon, it delivers painful insights in a relatively fresh way.
• 70 Los Angeles Times Justin Chang Los Angeles Times Justin Chang Part character study, part PSA, the movie chronicles a brief but meaningful period in its protagonist’s healing journey, and if there are few surprises along the way, there are equally few easy answers or miraculous breakthroughs.
• 70 Village Voice April Wolfe Village Voice April Wolfe Though To the Bone isn’t quite enjoyable to watch, it’s acted well and is, in its depiction of this all-too-pervasive disorder, essential.
• 50 The Film Stage John Fink The Film Stage John Fink With its predicable beats, one wishes this drama doubled down on the alarming effects of eating disorders. The film doesn’t make light of them, but it also doesn’t shed much new light on the process of recovery.
• 50 The A.V. Club Ignatiy Vishnevetsky The A.V. Club Ignatiy Vishnevetsky It’s snarkier and a little more self-conscious than the rest, but just as cornball.
• 20 The Guardian Peter Bradshaw The Guardian Peter Bradshaw It’s a dismal TV movie of the week: trite, shallow, cautiously middlebrow and blandly complicit in the cult of female prettiness that it is supposedly criticising.
• See all 14 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for To the Bone

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