Clean

Saw Clean today at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, starring Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte. Cheung and director/screenwriter Olivier Assayas were present to introduce the movie and showed up afterwards for a Q&A session. Clean stars Cheung as the drug-addicted wife of a once-good rock musician who, after a tragedy, must clean herself up and set her life back on track to regain custody of her son from his grandparents (played by Nick Nolte and Martha Henry). Don McKellar also makes an appearance early in the film as a business associate of Cheung's husband. The movie moves between Hamilton (!), Vancouver, Paris, and London as Cheung struggles to redefine her life. Clean was a great movie, and it's easy to see how Maggie Cheung picked up the best actress award at Cannes this year. And Assayas even made a dingy, industrial shoreline in Hamilton appear as a beautiful backdrop to one scene of Cheung taking drugs to escape the conflict in her life.

Some tidbits from the Q&A:

• The script was written for Maggie Cheung by the director, Olivier Assayas. The two had worked together previously on Irma Vep, and Assayas wanted to find a story that would fit Cheung, but it took several years.

• Cheung's character in the movie is much like her real-life self, in that it is a character between cultures, with roots in many countries.

• Maggie Cheung likes singing, which influenced the storyline.

• Nick Nolte was not the first choice to play the grandfather; another actor had been selected, but shortly before shooting, his doctor called to say that he was ill and could not participate in the movie, and in fact died not long afterwards. When recasting, Assayas told his casting director that he wanted someone like Nick Nolte for the role, and it was suggested that he just contact Nolte, who quickly accepted.

• Assayas couldn't believe that Nolte was actually in the movie until he saw him in front of the camera.

• When casting in Canada, the first set of tapes sent to Assayas for each of the characters were all wrong, with the exception of the one for the grandmother, which was Martha Henry. Assayas said she was the ideal choice for the role.

• Many people who make appearances in the movie are real-life musicians, which lends an air of verisimilitude to the movie. Included are Tricky and David Roback. Cheung's husband in the movie is also a musician, and is currently working with Nick Cave.

• When casting Cheung's son in the movie, Assayas said that he must have seen every Eurasian child in North America. :-) He eventually picked a boy with no previous acting experience, because he felt child actors are generally spoiled and lack spontaneity.

• When asked about her realistic portrayal of a recovering drug addict, Cheung mentioned that it is not based on her own experiences, but both she and Assayas have had friends in various stages of recovery, some entering it, some in it, and some coming out of it.

• Assayas said he didn't want to sentimentalize the problem, and that he wanted to be more balanced and not have anyone purely good or purely bad.

• He was a bit nervous showing the movie in Toronto since much of it was shot here or in the area, and that the audience could easily compare it to the real-life version (in fact, one shot that is supposedly in Hamilton is actually on Bathurst Street in Toronto).

• For the festival, he is staying in the same hotel in which he stayed while filming the movie, which he found weird. :-)

Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung) is in Toronto with her rocker boyfriend Lee. They're both drug addicts and have a son together. Everybody blames her for his drug addiction. Lee dies of heroin overdose. She gets caught for possession. After getting out of jail, Lee's father Albrecht Hauser (Nick Nolte) visits her. She agrees not to visit her son Jay who is living with Albrecht in Vancouver. In Paris, she tries to stay clean while waitressing but she has become addicted to methadone.

It's interesting to see Maggie speak English and French. She seems capable. Her acting is fine but there is a grittier level that she doesn't quite get to. The indie style and her acting don't quite drop down into the gutter. Her desperation isn't visceral enough. Nick Nolte is doing his gruff acting. The movie starts in Toronto. Although I love Metric, it would be more cinematic to start in someplace more glamorous like New York. This is definitely the best non-Chinese dramatic acting that I've seen from Maggie. I kept expecting this to go to a much darker place.

No doubt that this is a professionally made movie but the story is truly lacking at times. The getting clean and finding conciliation with her son seem like two totally different things in the movie, even though they are obviously connected to each other. It's one of the reasons why I regard this as a disjointed picture.

Other reasons are that not all story lines seems that relevant in the movie movie and not all get wrapped up properly. Some characters in the long run are pretty redundant ones. It makes the movie move slower than really necessary at times. The movie is already quite short now but in my opinion it could and perhaps also should had been even 10-20 minutes shorter.

You can say a lot of things about this movie but you can't accuse it of not being original. Despite not having a so original story, the movie at all times keeps a realistic and original approach of things. I think this really says something about the directing qualities of Olivier Assayas.

The movie gets entirely carried by Maggie Cheung. She acts in 3 totally different languages for a large part in this movie. You have got to respect that! Which other actor can say he or she is capable of doing that? But no, it wasn't always a character I could sympathize with, since she is still a kind of offbeat person. It still was the movie that introduced the western world to Maggie Cheung. Nick Nolte also of course plays one fine role, though his role is perhaps a bit more limited than you would expect. And man, how heavy was he on the bottle during the filming off this movie? At times his hands were shaking and he was touching his head. Something tells me this wasn't acting or part of his character. Nolte is of course notorious for his drinking problems. The Nick Nolte character and the Maggie Cheung character also don't really feel connected in this movie. as if they were making two completely different pictures at the time on their own. It just doesn't feel right, not even when they're together in the same scene. It feels like two captain on one ship, with each of them taking their own course.

See it's for its fine directing but don't expect to be blown away by a terribly sad or powerful dramatic story.

6/10

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So what does it take to win at the Cannes Film Festival? Well, Maggie Cheung pulled out all the stops for her win in 2004 in a moving film directed by her ex-husband Olivier Assayas.

Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung), a junkie ex-VJ, struggles in life after her husband, a famed yet ageing rocker whose career is in decline, dies after a heroin overdose on the drugs she had bought him. After serving six months in jail for possession, she finds her son, Jay (James Dennis) is put into the care of her parents in law, Albrecht (Nick Nolte) and Rosemary (Martha Henry). Knowing that the only way to see her son again is to clean herself up, Emily moves to Paris to rebuild her life, seeking help from long forgotten contacts. Meanwhile Albrecht begins to have a change in heart when he realises that Rosemary is dying.

Maggie Cheung's performance isn't easy to match with superlatives. Mastering dialogue in Cantonese, English and French, as well as singing the title track - she, unlike many HK actors, hasn't launched a singing career - it feels as much an honest, raw portrayal of Emily's character and her struggles to deal with the twists presented to her. Whilst Cheung and Assayas may have split amicably years before, I can't help but feel that their own history must have played a part in the making of this film, and if so, they used it well for the benefit of the film. Which is just as well, as I felt the overall script wasn't as impactful as it could be, particularly given Cheung's performance.

Nick Nolte's role is fairly limited. It's strange seeing him now as a grandfather, but he does it well - will we see a change in direction from him? This is a good film, and we will look back on it one day in an awards ceremony and say this is the one movie that exemplifies all of Maggie Cheung's achievements in one film.

To get the full, globe-trotting flavor of "Clean," one need simply note that Emily Wang is a Chinese immigrant living in Paris with her British rock star boyfriend, and that their child is being raised by the young man's parents in Vancouver, Canada. All I can say is that "Babel" clearly has nothing on this film when it comes to international story lines spanning widely varying cultures and time zones.

Though a French film, "Clean" actually begins in the English-speaking section of Canada where Emily and her husband, Lee Hauser, both heroin addicts, are desperately attempting to jumpstart Hauser's fading music career. The couple seems to be patterned somewhat after John Lennon and Yoko Ono, since everyone around them seems to think that Emily's undue influence on him is bringing him down both personally and professionally. When Hauser dies of a drug overdose, Emily - who earned some renown of her own as a music show hostess on an MTV-style interview show on French TV a decade or so back - is arrested for heroin possession and sentenced to six months in prison. Upon her release, she returns to Paris, agreeing not to have any contact with her son until she can kick her drug habit and make a decent life for herself.

As a cautionary tale about drug addiction in the music business, "Clean" doesn't show us anything we haven't already seen in countless films (and VH-1 specials) on this very same subject before. Yet, although the movie is a bit too scattered in its focus at times, when it is zeroing in on the things that really matter - Emily's attempts at overcoming her addiction and her efforts at forging a meaningful relationship with her young son - it is poignant, profound and deeply touching. The movie is blessed with a pair of outstanding performances by Maggie Cheung as Emily and Nick Nolte as Hauser's father, a kindhearted soul who believes in forgiveness and who offers a helping hand to a woman whose life, despite all her best efforts, is constantly teetering on the edge of disaster. Their scenes together, as the two characters reveal their fears, insecurities and even tentative hopes to one another, are both spellbinding and breathtaking, and show us what fine movie acting is really all about.