If you’ve run the wellness hype gamut from dropping your rent money on cold-pressed juices, quitting sugar forever for one week, getting in your friends’ faces about paleo/keto/colonics/Goop shit, and wanted to genuinely spew in a spin class, you might want to watch this Netflix film.
Based on Australian writer Brigid Delaney’s novel Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness, and co-written for the screen by the author with fellow Australian writer Benjamin Law, Wellmania takes a good hard look at the billion-dollar wellness industry through our noble protagonist Liv.
Played by comedian Celeste Barber, Liv is a food critic whose dream job in New York as a cooking show judge is put in jeopardy when she heads home to Australia on a green card mission. There, she’s given a bad health diagnosis, meaning she can’t be approved for the all-important permanent resident card. So, she embarks on a hardcore wellness journey, trying every last thing on the trending list to turbo charge her health — for example, a “Bondi Cleanse,” a “four-day regime of fasting, herbal laxatives, acupuncture, cupping, and faecal purge—” whether it works for her or not.
