User Reviews

I could easily imagine Hollywood remaking Olivier Assayas' Clean – in fact, I would be happy to see it. The story is a sure-fire Oscar winner. Whichever big Hollywood actress wants her Oscar, step right up. But it would certainly be melodramatic, and could never match the raw power contained in this film. Maggie Cheung plays a woman, Emily, trying to stay away from heroin after her husband has overdosed. Their son lives with her father-in-law (Nick Nolte), who insists (though kindly) that she not see him for a few years, until she has proved that she can be responsible. The movie is mostly spent with Emily and her day-to-day life. She moves back to Paris, where she met her husband, and works in a Chinese restaurant, then in a department store. She desperately tries to get in contact with old friends who might help her get a decent job, but they all know her too well and don't trust her. The film is very observant of Emily as a human being. It's such an intimate portrait of a desperate person trying to get her life back together – perhaps together for the first time in her life. Assayas, who also wrote the script, understands her deeply. And Maggie Cheung even moreso. Cheung gives one of the finest performances I've ever seen. Just the expressions on her face devastated me from scene to scene. I mean, she is so subtle. It's just outstanding. Assayas' direction is likewise subtle. A Hollywood remake, I could imagine, could also be subtle, but nowhere near as quiet and observant as the original (in fact, scanning through user comments, I can see that many were simply bored by the film). While it would be easy to spend pages gushing over Cheung's performance, it must also be noted that Nick Nolte is at least at the same level. This may very well be his best performance. It helps immensely that the character is so perfectly written. It would have been easy to make him a jerk – and, again, thinking ahead to the remake, it's quite possible that that is what this character will become – but Assayas gives him a deep understanding of Emily's situation, and an ability to empathize that I don't think can exist in American cinema. Nolte hits every note exactly right. His line reading is just beautiful. My single complaint about the film is the child actor who plays the son. I suppose it must have been difficult to find a half-Chinese, half-Caucasian kid on a limited budget who could act. They certainly did not find a kid who could act, though. James Dennis is easily one of the worst child actors I've seen in years. It's a flaw I can forgive, though. The movie ends very ambiguously, and it's arguable whether Assayas made the right choice here. I could argue that it feels too hopeful. There's a quick, matter-of-fact shot in which we see a smile cross Emily's face. I think I would have cut that and perhaps directed Cheung to avoid any readable facial expression. However, I know it didn't escape the director – or the actress either – that Emily, who is clean at this point, is approaching the world in which she fell into the trap of drug addiction. It might be better for her to stay working at a department store, perhaps somewhere cheaper to live than Paris.

The film opens with a beautiful image of the perpetually burning furnace fire issuing from a steel plant in Hamilton, Ontario and ends in the idyllic scene of suburban San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distant background. In between, we see Vancouver, Paris and London.

Despite its global scope, Clean is a simple story of drug addicted rock-singer Emily's (Maggie Cheung) struggle to put her life back together after losing her husband to an overdose. While there are a lot of sub-plots and elements, the ultimate focus is Emily's attempt to reconcile with her child Jay who hardly knows her, having been left in the care of the grandparents while the parents pursue their career in rock music. Among the different threads weaving this story, the one that touches me most is Emily's relationship with her father-in-law Albrecht, played so beautifully by Nick Nolte.

Father-and-daughter-in-law (or father and son's girlfriend) is a relationship that is not explored too often. However, two cases immediately come to mind. At one end, there is the classic confrontation in Verdi's La Traviata, when Giorgio Germont convinces Violetta that the best thing for his son is for her to leave him (in, incidentally, one of the most beautiful arias written for a bass). At the other end, there is Cate Blanchett's unforgettable film Heaven (2002), in which one cannot help but be moved by the father's kindness towards this woman who is taking away his son to a fugitive life.

The father Albrecht in Clean goes much deeper, as best seen in his first and last scenes with Emily, strangely echoing La Traviata and Heaven respectively.

Six months after his son's death and Emily serving her term for drug possession, Albrecht flies to Hamilton to meet her and settle affairs. Despite grieve over his loss, he is sensibly civil to this woman whom the world has blamed for his son's downfall and eventual death. As the wonderfully downplayed dialogue progresses, we see gradually hints of his genuine sympathy and care, as he explains that the courts have awarded the custody of the little boy Jay to the grandparents. Then, at the parting, with some struggling but absolute resolution, he asks that Emily do not try to see Jay for a few years although she is legally allowed to do so. Nolte delivers this first scene with every nuance and every gesture impeccably placed.

By the time we come to the last scene, we understand a lot more about this man, his sorrow of losing his son, his love for his grandson, his stoic acceptance that his wife will not be by his side much longer and his recognition that he himself in turn will not be around long enough to care for Jay before the little boy grows up. Despite the fact that his wife still does not allow this woman's name to be mentioned in her presence, Albrecht has reconciled with himself in his forgiveness of Emily. After delivering Jay to Emily for a weekend (kept carefully from his dying wife), Albrecht catches her bringing Jay back to the hotel for his passport so that she can take him to San Francisco for a once-in-a-life-time recording opportunity. His reaction is inscrutable for a moment, and then the cinema is bathed in a warm glow as he breaks out in a smile and congratulates Emily for finding what she really wants to do with her life. In his reconciliation with Emily, he also completes his life's final crusade, of ensuring that little Jay will be properly cared for after his wife's imminent (and his eventual) death. Nolte again delivers this scene to perfection.

Maggie Cheung, departing from mystic, inscrutable characters as in "In The Mood for Love" to the earthy rock singer talking with a mouthful of hamburger, tackles the character Emily by underplaying, which is not a bad thing. Other than in the first couple of scenes of clashes with the husband, Cheung goes for the feeling underneath rather than the emotion on the surface. Once only does she break down and cry, when the pressure become unbearable and she misses the support of her husband. This line of portrayal not only suits Cheung, but is also consistent with character of Emily, quietly enduring and struggling to become "clean", and obviously pays off, winning for Cheung her Cannes award.

There are a lot of sub-plots and elements in this film, maybe a tad too many. Drug addiction is the underlying theme of the entire story, and yet, the treatment of this subject is disproportionately casual. We are certainly spared the anguish an addict like Emily must have gone through. Rock music is a backdrop the presence of which might have been stronger, even though this is not another "Almost Famous". Still, a hard-core rock fan may see this as a rock movie, at the appearance of real life personalities like Tricky and cult rock bands such as Mazzy Star, both well known within the circle. Minor sub-texts include Emily's earlier lesbian affair and current cultural dilemma. Although Clean is not meant to be the emperor's new coat, it is quite inevitable that different people will see different things that they want to see.

Martha Henry plays the grandmother, a role that does not have a great deal of scope. She plays it to perfection, naturally, but those of us who have seen her during all these years on stages in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Stratford Ontario and the St. Lawrence Center and the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto know that she is capable of a good deal more.

Audiences who recall her extremely restrained performance in 2000s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (the film of which she is most known) will be surprised by how unsympathetic Maggie Cheung's portrayal of Emily Wang is in Olivier Assayas' film CLEAN. Playing a has-been who once hosted an MTV-like show and was the thermometer of teeny bopper excess, Emily now is a strung out, frantic drug addict who is "married" to an equally fading, equally drug addicted rock star, Lee Hauser. Both are trying to make it back to what they once were, but the instability of their lives has made them strangers to one another and it's rumored that she's the one responsible for getting him hooked on the stuff to begin with.

When Lee dies of an overdose, Maggie pays a hefty price. She goes to jail for six months for possession of a controlled substance. When she goes free has, she gets no sympathy from the outside world who sees her as a tainted woman. She purchases prescriptions for methadone to wean herself from heroin. Her father-in-law Albrecht (Nick Nolte, restrained and very fatherly) forbids her to come in contact with her estranged little boy Jay until she gets her act together. A one-time female lover offers nothing else but a recrimination. Even a job as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant (in which a relative tries to help her) garners no chance at a turnaround. Emily seems to have no place left to go. Her fall from grace has been shattering and even when she makes flimsy attempts to get up, it seems that may not happen.

A poignant, and sometimes meandering study of one woman's uphill battle to sobriety, CLEAN is one of those movies that sneaks up on you with a plot that continually puts the heroine in the flimsy position of not knowing if her own demons will give in to her will to survive or consume her. Maggie Cheung is on-screen almost all the time except when scenes switch to London to focus on Albrecht, his mother, and Jay (and their anger towards Emily), and her performance is an absolutely moving tour-de-force. The camera clearly loves focusing on her alabaster face, deep eyes, and that beautiful, low-pitched voice as she moves effortlessly from British English to her own native Chinese to French and even sings, with an smoky similarity to Billie Holliday.

CLEAN movie doesn't offer an easy solution; American cinema needs (and is used to the requisite) closure and it's no wonder several people were overheard by me complaining that "it seemed flat at times", "it didn't solve anything" or that "she's not fit to be a mother". Americans can't understand that maybe, her emotional outburst at the closing scene is all we need to know -- that and her father-in-law's sheer faith in her -- that she will perhaps succeed and come full circle. A simple story, a little overlong in places but this is okay in the fact that it does not lose pace or interest in Emily's plight. Maggie Cheung won the Best Actress award in Cannes, 2004.

Maggie Cheung plays a junkie rock ex-semi-star. Her common law husband, also a never- quite-made-it rocker in decline dies of a heroin overdose. She spends 6 months in prison for possession. Meanwhile her young son is being raised by her dead husband's parents.

Nick Nolte, as the grandfather does some terrific, nuanced work as a flinty man, with a soft heart.

He won't let Cheung see her son until she gets her life together, which she circuitously does, weaning herself off drugs, getting basic work, and eventually starting the process of reconnecting to her son, especially as Nolte realizes, with his wife dying, and his own aging, the boy will eventually need his mother.

The film avoids the usual clichés and sensationalism of drug movies – no throwing up or screaming withdrawals. It's low key and real, filled with small moments of life rather than than dramatic highlights. It's willing to have lead characters who are unlikable and selfish at times, and yet still makes us care for, and be moved by them.

But there's also a flatness to it. And a sense of familiarity and predictability to the plot, if not the execution. It's great that it doesn't fall into melodrama, but it feels distanced. As one critic put it 'it avoids moralizing, but fails to replace it with anything'. A bit harsh, but not without some truth.

Also, Cheung, while very good in spots, never seems believable as a junkie; she's gorgeous healthy looking and luminous on drugs or off.

On the other hand the photography is beautiful, and the score is filled with wonderful and effective music by Brian Eno.

Worth a look for the acting, and the small grace moments throughout.

How many cigarettes do characters need to smoke on screen before one is tempted to suggest this film cripples itself in a endless, looping tribute to French cinema circa 1965 a la Jean-Luc Goddard? That M. Cheung won best actress for this at Cannes is absolutely baffling, suggesting again that there is much more than meets the eye to jury selection and awards at festivals. Cheung's character travels a flat-line arch; there is no development. No explanation is provided for her character's 'getting clean' other than forced detox in prison, buffered by methadone and then, brace yourself, so she can be trusted to see her son (whom she basically abandoned years ago). Drug use, abuse and addiction can offer some opportunities for storytelling. How one gets there, how one stays there and how one gets out (if at all, see 'Leaving Las Vegas'). Not much of an attempt is made to find out why Cheung's character is/was such a loser, the mother-son bond appearing only as a bald attempt to create character motivation. Clearly in love with itself, this film stood me up. I'm sorry it wasn't better.