Clean Review

Directed by: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Martha Henry and James Dennis
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rated: R

Clean begins with the heroin overdose and subsequent death of a formerly successful rock star. This leaves his girlfriend, Emily Wang (Cheung) to serve a six month sentence alone and without the drugs she is so desperately addicted to. She is also left with a deep desire to reconnect with the son, Jay (Dennis) she has yet to build a relationship with.

The child has been raised by her deceased boyfriend's parents, Albrecht and Rosemary (Nolte and Henry) and they are more than apprehensive about letting his addict of a mother slip in and out of his young fragile life. If she is to have any chance of a meaningful relationship with her son, she must change her life. She must get clean.

I found myself very reluctant to give this film a bad review. There really was nothing about that I felt was terrible. And there were certainly a few points of it that I found interesting and well done. The problem with this movie is that it in spite of its good points, it was put together in a way that makes it very hard to hold an interest. It was slow paced by and large and it seemed that every time a new aspect (character, job, location) was introduced, it would quickly turn into a dead end, leaving the viewer frustrated and less willing to invest any emotion into the next direction.

Although I didn't think the camera work was anything special enough to spark my interest, I did like some of the longer shots in which we would follow the character through a house and in and out of several rooms without cutting. But again, these were not the types of shots that I would have taken note of if I weren't trying to think of something good to write about in this review.

I think the film maker left the characters a bit under developed as well. I may have had an easier time identifying with Emily, if I had known more about who she was before that fateful day. This could have been done with a few well placed flashback montages. The experiences she shared with her boyfriend, her first drug encounter, carrying the child and the decision to leave him to be raised by others are all scenes that could have made the viewer more emotionally invested in her and her struggles.

The one saving grace of this film was, without a doubt the acting. Maggie Cheung was nothing short of superb. She did not take this character and make it her own; rather she took herself and made it her character. It was her performance that, in spite of every thing I didn't like about this movie, kept me cheering for her. Nick Nolte was more than convincing in his role. His face showed the pain of a good man that couldn't help but to pull at your heartstrings. Martha Henry played his wife, Rosemary very well and I ended up wishing I would have learned more about her throughout this film as well.

In summary, I can't say that I would recommend this film to everybody. It was slow and sometimes frustrating and if you don't have a particular interest in the subject of getting sober and the struggles that come with, you may very well consider this one a waste of time. However, if you were looking for a female role that exemplifies the term great performance, look no further.