Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase

TV-made adaptation of the autobiography "When Rabbit Howls: by the Troops for Truddi Chase", chronicling Chase's diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. A commercial artist who married her boss and had one daughter, Chase was haunted by the sexual and psychological abuse afflicted on her as a child by her stepfather. The different personalities she later manifested--her "troops"--soon began interrupting her life so frequently that it ruined her marriage and drove Chase to a therapist. Overextended, lumpy drama preconceived as an acting tour-de-force for its leading lady, however Shelley Long is too calculating as an actress to be convincing as a woman with a serious, frightening mental disorder (and it's her performance that has to carry this project a long way). Too often, Long just seems snippy--in a rotten mood--talking in different rhythms with different accents. Tom Conti is a welcome addition in the film's second half as Truddi's doctor, but other supporting performances are weak. Lamont Johnson's direction is equally mediocre; he mounts the past-and-present proceedings well enough, but allows scenes such as the young Truddi being chased around the farm by her leering stepfather to go on forever (he also gets docked a star for a quite unnecessary baby photo slide-show). Interesting subject matter has been explored more successfully before, yet there is a certain amount of fascination with a topic like this, if one is able to find the heart of the piece amongst the false histrionics.