Better Things | Review

More than a decade back, Danny Boyle celebrated the side effects of drug use with the colorful eye candy infamously known as Trainspotting. Fast forward to Cannes’ 2008 Critic’s Week section, and Brit filmmaker Duane Hopkins keeps in the tradition of Loach and Leigh delivering a deliberately morose examination of England’s rural life where drug use is depicted without the romance. As a feature length directorial debut, Hopkins is clearly apt in providing his material with a visual resonance, but he has difficulty wrangling the number of characters and ends up shafting some of the storylines. Offering life as a series of snapshots from the point of view of those who have become isolated, disenfranchised and disconnected, this ultimately makes Better Things into a tiring, austere and far from welcoming dramatic portrait. You might need to find yourself in a similar state to warm up to it.

With the exception of a senior couple at wits end and a couple of early twentysomethings in sedentary like states, for the most part, lesions seemed to be attributed towards the elder teenage demo who don’t come armed with the communicative tools to use among their peers. In a society where being stoned out and/or drunk during one’s adolescence is naturalistic, the narrative plunges itself deep into the various forms of dependency, with emphasis on the manners in which young adults may numb that soreness. While Gail, a plump red head confined to her room dreads the day where she will need to become a part of outside world, Rob and his overwhelming sense of guilt pushes him that much closer to meeting the same fate as his overdosed girlfriend while for others, it is evident that the Playstation culture is not yet developed – making the act of shooting up, the first best choice.

Kudos go to the casting choices, the select group of non-actors fill the bill for having that knack in conveying the sort of grievance, blame, loss and dependency that is normally not emotionally and physically expressed such groups. Clearly, the pain is visual and palpable, but it is bottled up. Hopkins provides his text with this collective anguish, matching downbeat with unpolished looks and further evoking a sense that some actors, good forbid, might have lived what is depicted on the screen – mimicking a sort of Larry Clark’s Kids experience. Geography and outdoor nooks and crannies also becomes a key ingredient for the mix, cinematographer Lol Crawley offers a sharp image with blue-ish glows that vividly capture the harsh climates of the countryside. While there are slight confusions as to who and what belongs to what story, the overall sentiment that is expressed of when love turns to pain, when rejection turns to isolation, and when grief becomes to much to bare, is very much on cue.

Reviewed at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival (Section: Critic’s Week)

May 17th 2008.

93 Minutes

Rating 3 stars