It’s the kind of ‘vocational irony’ that has become a particularly popular premise on television over the years – doctors who can’t cure their own heartbreak, lawyers who constantly break the law and, here, psychotherapists whose own issues surmount their patients’. In the evocative title sequence of Michael Petroni’s Backtrack (2015), the camera glides elegantly through an illustrated scene speckled with snow, birds perched on naked branches, and dark, silhouetted figures. The orchestral score, characterised by a sea of discordant tremolo and glissando violins, gives the sequence a sinister wash, brief incursions of children’s laughter adding to the atmosphere. The camera zooms towards an illustrated window into blackness, cutting rapidly to its first shot: a close-up of the film’s star, Adrien Brody, waking and sighing in bed.
The progression of…
