BYPASS

"I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

                                                                                                                            -Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”

Katie Baker, a 3rd year pre-med student, is popular, high-achieving and obese.  She has tried every diet and exercise fad, but remains a slave to her weight, which is upwards of 300 pounds.  As a budding scientist, Katie decides to redesign herself, undergoing a series of radical plastic and gastric surgeries.  Within a matter of months, she emerges as a paragon of beauty, but the satisfaction is short lived and she finds herself more self-critical than ever before.  As Katie falls down a rabbit hole of quick-fix surgeries and begins to render herself unrecognizable, we start to question what the limits of self-improvement really are.

BYPASS delves into the dark underbelly of our culture’s obsession with weight loss and perfection in a low-budget, modern day twist on 'Frankenstein.’  It is through Katie's odyssey towards glossy perfection, examined in macro close-up, that we recognize desires more strange than we can imagine and some monsters of our very own.

Liliana’s feature screenplay BYPASS was recently awarded the 2011 Sloan Foundation Feature Film Grant.  For more information please contact the filmmaker at info@lilygs.com