CANNES -- A fading Canadian steel town with its industrial smokestacks and furnaces marks the end of the line for an over-the-hill '80s rock star at the start of Olivier Assayas' In Competition entry, "Clean". As a heroin overdose claims Lee Hauser (James Johnston) alone in his cheap hotel room, Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung), Lee's companion and the mother of his child, sits in a car stoned on the same drug staring at the fiery apocalyptic images of a dying era.
Assayas views the record industry as being not far removed from the steel-making business. Hot smelters and passionate effort fuel them both, yet they are both shiny and mechanical and driven by profit. And they are both dangerous.
The music world seen here is one of self-interest, ego and quick satisfactions. Assayas' film is complex and absorbing, but he keeps everything at arm's length. And with Cheung giving an interesting but chilly performance, only committed audiences will warm to it.
There's a lot of Brian Eno on the soundtrack, and Assayas keeps his camera constantly moving so that the film has a jittery feel in synch with Emily's drug-fueled scatter-shot existence. She moves around a lot, too, from Canada to Paris and London, with people everywhere who know and mostly distrust her.
The story the film wants to get on with is Emily's late-blooming responsibility as a mother, but Assayas takes his time getting to it. While Emily and Hauser led their peripatetic rock 'n' roll life, their son, Jay James Dennis), was parked with his grandparents, Albrecht and Rosemary, in Vancouver. Nick Nolte and Martha Henry bring an entirely different tone to the proceedings, playing the aging and worried grandparents with gravitas leavened by shrewd wit.
They obtain a court order so that they can continue to raise the boy, though Albrecht is sympathetic to Emily's plight. Emily deals with her grief and the end of her synthetic good life in her usual way: by scoring more drugs. Only slowly does she realize that salvation lies in getting clean and becoming a real mother, and what suspense the film has lies in whether the stars still in her eyes will get in the way.
The film looks good, with rich colors and images from cinematographer Eric Gautier, but Emily's shallow world is heavily populated, and some sequences seem too busy and unnecessary. For instance, Emily goes to seek work from a female television executive, an ex-lover, and we go off on an unhelpful sidetrack about the executive's affair with her female assistant, who makes a play for Emily, but it doesn't tell us anything.
Cheung's scenes with Emily's son are perhaps deliberately stilted, but they're not persuasive in respect to the character's rediscovered maternal instincts. Cheung does fine work in the frantic sequences of drugs and music, but while the distance she creates in the quieter episodes may be intentional, it puts up a barrier that's difficult to overcome with much sympathy.
CLEAN
International distribution by the Works
Produced by Rectangle Prods., Haystack Prods. (U.K.), Rhombus Media (Canada), Arte France Cinema
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Olivier Assayas
Producers: Edouard Weil, Xavier Giannoli, Xavier Marchand, Niv Fichman
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Editor: Luc Barnier
Sound designer: Guillaume Sciama, Herwig Gayer, Bill Flynn, Daniel Sobrino
Set designers: Francois-Renaud Labarthe, Bill Flemming
Costume designer: Anais Romand
Cast:
Emily Wang: Maggie Cheung
Albrecht Hauser: Nick Nolte
Elena: Beatrice Dalle
Irene Paolini: Jeanne Balibar
Vernon: Don McKellar
Rosemary Hauser: Martha Henry
Lee Hauser: James Johnston
Jay: James Dennis
Jean-Pierre: Remi Martin
Sandrine: Laetitia Spigarelli
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 113 minutes...
Assayas views the record industry as being not far removed from the steel-making business. Hot smelters and passionate effort fuel them both, yet they are both shiny and mechanical and driven by profit. And they are both dangerous.
The music world seen here is one of self-interest, ego and quick satisfactions. Assayas' film is complex and absorbing, but he keeps everything at arm's length. And with Cheung giving an interesting but chilly performance, only committed audiences will warm to it.
There's a lot of Brian Eno on the soundtrack, and Assayas keeps his camera constantly moving so that the film has a jittery feel in synch with Emily's drug-fueled scatter-shot existence. She moves around a lot, too, from Canada to Paris and London, with people everywhere who know and mostly distrust her.
The story the film wants to get on with is Emily's late-blooming responsibility as a mother, but Assayas takes his time getting to it. While Emily and Hauser led their peripatetic rock 'n' roll life, their son, Jay James Dennis), was parked with his grandparents, Albrecht and Rosemary, in Vancouver. Nick Nolte and Martha Henry bring an entirely different tone to the proceedings, playing the aging and worried grandparents with gravitas leavened by shrewd wit.
They obtain a court order so that they can continue to raise the boy, though Albrecht is sympathetic to Emily's plight. Emily deals with her grief and the end of her synthetic good life in her usual way: by scoring more drugs. Only slowly does she realize that salvation lies in getting clean and becoming a real mother, and what suspense the film has lies in whether the stars still in her eyes will get in the way.
The film looks good, with rich colors and images from cinematographer Eric Gautier, but Emily's shallow world is heavily populated, and some sequences seem too busy and unnecessary. For instance, Emily goes to seek work from a female television executive, an ex-lover, and we go off on an unhelpful sidetrack about the executive's affair with her female assistant, who makes a play for Emily, but it doesn't tell us anything.
Cheung's scenes with Emily's son are perhaps deliberately stilted, but they're not persuasive in respect to the character's rediscovered maternal instincts. Cheung does fine work in the frantic sequences of drugs and music, but while the distance she creates in the quieter episodes may be intentional, it puts up a barrier that's difficult to overcome with much sympathy.
CLEAN
International distribution by the Works
Produced by Rectangle Prods., Haystack Prods. (U.K.), Rhombus Media (Canada), Arte France Cinema
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Olivier Assayas
Producers: Edouard Weil, Xavier Giannoli, Xavier Marchand, Niv Fichman
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Editor: Luc Barnier
Sound designer: Guillaume Sciama, Herwig Gayer, Bill Flynn, Daniel Sobrino
Set designers: Francois-Renaud Labarthe, Bill Flemming
Costume designer: Anais Romand
Cast:
Emily Wang: Maggie Cheung
Albrecht Hauser: Nick Nolte
Elena: Beatrice Dalle
Irene Paolini: Jeanne Balibar
Vernon: Don McKellar
Rosemary Hauser: Martha Henry
Lee Hauser: James Johnston
Jay: James Dennis
Jean-Pierre: Remi Martin
Sandrine: Laetitia Spigarelli
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 113 minutes...
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.