Spanking the Monkey

Spanking the Monkey (1994) is the debut feature from director David O. Russell — watch online on iFILM. College student Raymond Aibelli comes home for the summer expecting a break. His father leaves on a business trip the next day, and Raymond is stuck caring full-time for his mother Susan, who is recovering from a broken leg and going nowhere fast.

The days blur into each other. Raymond hauls her to the bathroom, skips a prestigious medical internship, finds brief distraction with a neighborhood girl named Toni. Then the dynamic between mother and son quietly, uncomfortably shifts in a direction neither of them speaks out loud. Russell shot it on a shoestring and walked away from Sundance 1994 with the Audience Award — an early sign that he was drawn to exactly the situations where there is no clean way out. Watch Spanking the Monkey (1994) online on iFILM.