Dramaturgy in Side Effects

The movie Side Effects is about a woman named Emily who starts taking anti-depressant medication after she tries to kill herself by driving into a concrete wall. Her husband, Martin, who is played by Channing Tatum, was just released from a four year sentence in prison and ever since the suicide attempt she has been seeing a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist she has been seeing is name Jonathan Banks, who is played by Jude Law. Jonathan prescribes Emily with a specific antidepressant called Ablixa. Emily has been trying tons of different medication because many of them don't work or cause her to do things that are very unlike her. One example is in the middle of the night she stabs and kills her husband Martin and she claims it was because of the medication she was taking. Little do we know that she was going behind her psychiatrist's back and seeing her old psychiatrist named Victoria, who is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Emily and Victoria end up having a romantic relationship together and they both faked the side effects of Ablixa so that they could manipulate the prices of the drug making them rich. As you can see Emily is a bad character in the movie even though tries to portray she is good. The idea of dramaturgy is very visible with her character. You can see her front and back side. Her front side is that she is Martin's wife who is depressed and can't find the right medication to make her feel better. Her back side is that she is really manipulating her husband (before she kills him) and her psychiatrist. Emily is two completely different people in the same story and in both roles she is trying to change the way people perceive her. Have any of you seen this movie? What do you think about this? Do you think dramaturgy is present in society today? I have put the trailer of the movie below which will hopefully better explain the plot to those of you who haven't seen it.