Pure

Pure is the true story of Rose Bretécher's life and struggle with 'Pure O', a rampant but little-known type of OCD whereby sufferers experience intrusive, 'unthinkable' thoughts, often sexual or violent in content. It tracks her farcical, decade-long path to redemption, from the moment she was first seized by incessant sexual mental images to her eventual recovery through therapy, acceptance and love. Rose tells the story of how fear, confusion and an obsessive search for her own identity dogged her for over a decade, with both humour and grace. She describes how intrusive thoughts coloured even the most euphoric experiences of her youth – how Jake Gyllenhaal's face melted into a chubby vagina even as she danced with him in a music video, and how she sat in the mansion of the founders of Lonely Planet, all the while imagining them bumming across the patio… Eventually, after stepping back from the iron railings of a snow-swept balcony in east London, Rose learns to find joy in the insurmountable truth that when it comes to who we are, there are no neat conclusions. Ultimately, Pure is about uncertainty and insecurity, and how trying to banish these things in the pursuit of happiness will paradoxically make us unhappy. It is about finding beauty in greyness, and embracing the unfathomable weirdness of the human mind.