55 Steps

Eleanor Riese, a patient in the psychiatric unit of a San Francisco hospital, is living with paranoid schizophrenia and knows that medication is what allows her to manage her life. Troubled by the side effects of her treatment, she insists on having a say in her own medication. When her doctors refuse, she hires the patients' rights lawyer Colette Hughes to take on her case, and together the two women challenge a system backed by the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry. What begins as a difficult legal battle also changes the life of the workaholic lawyer who takes it on.

The drama is directed by Bille August, the eleventh of the fifteen films credited to him, following The Chinese Widow and preceding A Fortunate Man. Mark Rosin wrote the screenplay, and Helena Bonham Carter plays Eleanor opposite Hilary Swank as Colette; Jeffrey Tambor, Johan Heldenbergh, Michael Culkin and Tim Plester appear in supporting roles. The production was mounted by companies in Germany, Belgium and the United States, with Sara Risher, Rosin and Lesley Neary producing, and the credited cast numbers twenty-six.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 4,100 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.7 out of 10 from roughly 174 votes. Both figures point to a modest but positive response, with the far larger IMDb sample suggesting the film found a steadier audience there than the smaller TMDB group indicates.