On DVD: Quid Pro Quo

Is it my imagination, or was the term ‘quid pro quo’ virtually nonexistent in movie dialog prior to Silence of the Lambs? Ever since Jodie and Sir Anthony’s tit-for-tat, QPQ has maneuvered its way into the vernacular, though I doubt I’d trust anyone who’d ham-fist it into everyday conversation. First-time writer-director Carlos Brooks uses it often in — what else? — Quid Pro Quo (2008), wherein beautiful twenty-somethings employ the thousand-yard-stare while uttering it as a challenge. They’re part of an alleged subculture of paraplegic wannabes lining the streets of lower Manhattan in their wheelchairs, and on more than one occasion the whole thing had me thinking of David Cronenberg’s Crash. I love that movie, because it’s about pain, sex, degradation and mutilation, the cornerstones of my pickled brain. Quid Pro Quo, on the other hand, is about delusion and metaphor and the colorless victims of self-inflicted, guilt-ridden whimsy. It’s also one of the few times I felt embarrassed for actors (Vera Farmiga in particular — although she often looks wonderful) who seem to be straining to believe all this nonsense.