I was prepared to hate this movie based on all of the descriptions of it as nothing more than a tedious chronicle of a toxic relationship. But while those descriptions aren't inaccurate, I found there to be more to it than that, and though I can admit that this movie had many flaws, it kind of got into my head and stuck with me.
I usually have no patience with people, though in movies it's most frequently women, who allow themselves to be treated like dirt by those around them. But in this movie, I understood the dynamic and could see why this particular woman falls into the relationship trap she does. She's had a posh, cushy upbringing and doesn't have much life experience. She wants to be a filmmaker, and the advice she keeps getting is to make movies about what she knows. But she doesn't know anything, and therefore doesn't have anything to make movies about. Enter a troubled heroin addict, which for many in the relationship world is shorthand for "emotionally complicated," and suddenly she's got stories to tell in the locker room. She's a little bit drawn to the drama, even if most of her knows that it's making her miserable and that she should run for the hills.
Now why she's drawn to this particular guy we don't know and aren't told. She doesn't know he's a heroin addict when she first starts dating him, so she's not drawn in by the danger of that. He's got a cosmopolitan air about him and a disdainful attitude that could pass as intellectual to someone who doesn't know better. But he's a drip. Though she's a drip too, so if the shoe fits. The whole film is a bit drippy, actually. There's a gloomy pall over the whole thing that never lifts. It apparently is largely autobiographical, but writer/director Joanna Hogg makes the mistake so many filmmakers do when telling very personal stories. She lived this, or something like it, so she doesn't need context in order to understand it. But we didn't live it, so we don't inherently understand it, and we do need context, else why should we care about these people who are total strangers to us when we first meet them?
However, like I said toward the beginning of this review, despite all of its flaws, there is something about this movie that lingered in my head. I'm not sure I ever really cared about the characters or what happened to them, but I did admire the formal aspects of the film, and I appreciated that Hogg doesn't really ask us to care about her characters. She just presents them as they are, and it's up to us to decide how we feel about them. According to the end credits, there is a sequel coming. I don't know that I'll be rushing out to see that, but I would recommend this one.
Grade: A-
I usually have no patience with people, though in movies it's most frequently women, who allow themselves to be treated like dirt by those around them. But in this movie, I understood the dynamic and could see why this particular woman falls into the relationship trap she does. She's had a posh, cushy upbringing and doesn't have much life experience. She wants to be a filmmaker, and the advice she keeps getting is to make movies about what she knows. But she doesn't know anything, and therefore doesn't have anything to make movies about. Enter a troubled heroin addict, which for many in the relationship world is shorthand for "emotionally complicated," and suddenly she's got stories to tell in the locker room. She's a little bit drawn to the drama, even if most of her knows that it's making her miserable and that she should run for the hills.
Now why she's drawn to this particular guy we don't know and aren't told. She doesn't know he's a heroin addict when she first starts dating him, so she's not drawn in by the danger of that. He's got a cosmopolitan air about him and a disdainful attitude that could pass as intellectual to someone who doesn't know better. But he's a drip. Though she's a drip too, so if the shoe fits. The whole film is a bit drippy, actually. There's a gloomy pall over the whole thing that never lifts. It apparently is largely autobiographical, but writer/director Joanna Hogg makes the mistake so many filmmakers do when telling very personal stories. She lived this, or something like it, so she doesn't need context in order to understand it. But we didn't live it, so we don't inherently understand it, and we do need context, else why should we care about these people who are total strangers to us when we first meet them?
However, like I said toward the beginning of this review, despite all of its flaws, there is something about this movie that lingered in my head. I'm not sure I ever really cared about the characters or what happened to them, but I did admire the formal aspects of the film, and I appreciated that Hogg doesn't really ask us to care about her characters. She just presents them as they are, and it's up to us to decide how we feel about them. According to the end credits, there is a sequel coming. I don't know that I'll be rushing out to see that, but I would recommend this one.
Grade: A-