Minha Cama de Zinco

Packed in a tight 75 + minutes, 'My Zinc Bed' follows a pretty simple structure. The film is mostly a chambre piece that is told through a series of conversations between three people: a recovering alcoholic poet, a businessman and his trophy wife. The director tackles the themes of alcoholism and desire through complicated relationships between the three characters. The tension is mostly built through dialogue. Paddy Considine, Jonathan Pryce and Uma Thurman deliver excellent performances as they get under the skin of the characters. Had lesser actors been cast, this would have been a borefest. Even though I find 75 minutes to be too short a time for a film's duration, I liked that the writer stays focused on the main story and its principle characters. Due to the complex themes, 'My Zinc Bed' may not be everybody's cup of tea and it has been an interesting and involving watch.

I missed this when it was on BBC2 last year because I forgot to set the video, or rather I messed up setting the video and recorded something else instead. It took till recently to get the chance to see it again and so I did. The film is based on a play about addiction and sees recovering alcoholic and poet Paul Peplow interviewing millionaire businessman Victor Quinn. The interview is a flop but it leads Victor to employ Paul in a job that Paul quickly learns is unimportant and not something he is suited for. As with the interview, Victor continues to needle Paul about his addiction and his supposed cure. Later Paul meets Victor's wife Elsa, herself a former addict, and the two fall for one another behind the back of this powerful man.

Although I have not done a particularly good job of capturing it, this film did sound interesting to me and the cast especially seemed to offer much. At times the film appeared to be hitting this potential, with the tightly scripted and fast-paced dialogue that reminded me of David Mamet. Certainly the subject appeared to be of interest but yet somehow I found myself more interested in the occasionally pattern of speech rather than the characters or what was going on. In essence the subject of addiction and desire appears to be being discussed while also running it through the narrative but in reality it doesn't ever make it work as a discussion or a theme because it never feels real and never convinced me as a viewer to the point where I would have cared. We never really understand the motivations of the characters or the relationships between them – everything happens to fast or without any real reason, whether it is the probing/tempting of Paul by Vince or the sudden love between Paul and Elsa. This sort of atmosphere continues until the film reaches an end, which itself is quit unsatisfactory.

This is not to take anything away from the performances though because they are roundly good and it is only the material that lets them down. Considine, Pryce and even Thurman all play their parts well and they deal well with the pace of the dialogue. In each of them there is enough to suggest to me that they knew their characters and understood what was happening behind and beyond the words – however this is not something that they are able to bring to the screen and, as such, the film still struggles even though it has an impressive trio in what is essentially a three-hander.

It is a shame because the quality appears to be there and the potential is certainly there but the film cannot make it work. Maybe I would feel the same about the play, I'm not sure and may never know but certainly here nothing really ever rang true for me and the "discussion" in and around the nature of addiction wasn't strong or interesting enough to engage me, mainly because of the lack of any sort of clarity or focal point. Interesting for the flow of dialogue but flawed as a film.

Not quite sure what the film is trying to convey, but if it is implying that you have two choices - a life without passion in AA and life of passion and desire without AA and with active alcoholism, then that is incorrect and misleading. I don't understand why it is implying that joining AA to treat alcoholism is just a grim life of saying no to everything and denying yourself things out of fear of being triggered. That is not what AA is about. The goal is to be happy and functional. To flourish in all aspects of life. Some achieve it, some don't. The suggestion is to follow the tools of the program as fully as you can to achieve the maximum results. There's a reason they say "stick around for the miracle". People's lives improve in ways they never thought possible. Their lives get bigger.

The grim life is either being an active alcoholic or gritting your teeth in abstinence but still being dysfunctional and miserable - a dry drunk. AA helps with much more than just stopping drinking. The real work begins after you stop the craving and stay sober. Then you use tools to maintain sobriety and deal with life "on life's terms".

How can someone write about AA just by having friends in it, going to a few meetings or reading about it? If you don't get it, you don't get it. But it feels like someone saying probably all psychiatric medicine makes you a zombie and it's no life. That is not true either. Medicine can change and save lives. But you have to take it.

Is this film positing that AA removes all possibilities in your life except a grim sobriety? It just isn't true. There is much joy, laughter, support and growth in AA. There is a whole syndrome behind alcoholism beyond drinking that is helped in AA: isolating, not asking for help, destructive behavior ("character defects"). Something feels very creepy in this film. As someone said elsewhere, if this film gives a suffering alcoholic a distrust of AA and causes them not to seek help, that would be an awful result.

"If you were cured, you would be cured of the desire, and who wants to be cured of desire?"

That one line from the movie, uttered by Jonathan Pryce, succinctly and brilliantly sums up why people with addictions keep falling of the wagon, and may make you wonder if it's possible that the addicted among us are in fact the ones who truly live and feel, to the point that it almost destroys them and those close to them.

It's a tight, compact little movie, with solid, believable performances, especially from Paddy Considine and Jonathan Pryce. Uma Thurman puts in a good performance but seems to struggle with her European accent in parts, and holding her own against Considine's effortlessly convincing portrayal, thereby subtracting slightly from the overall impact of her efforts.

Drugs and alcohol are the usual, but not the only addictions - Uma Thurman's character appears to be dependent on both alcohol and love. In spite of the slight inconsistencies of her performance, the weaknesses and struggles of her character spoke to me and left me in tears.

Watch this if you've ever wondered about people who just can't say "No".

I just want to state that I could not take my eyes off the screen until the very end of this fine drama. I had a vague recollection of having seen it before but fortunately no clear memory of how it ended. The ending actually is somewhat anti-climactic given the intensity of the previous scenes.

Dialogue is quick: more often seen in a theatrical production than in a feature film. But this is not surprising given the source material.

A true gem that took me out of time for just over an hour.

Gee, I am short of the minimum ten lines ... So what else can be said?

Well, Uma Thurman's accent was a bit odd but not enough to spoil the drama.