Maggie Cheung is electrifying in ex-hubby Olivier Assayas’s CLEAN
CLEAN (Olivier Assayas, 2004)
BAMcinématek
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, October 16, 2:00, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15
Series continues through October 28
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
With their divorce pending, writer-director Olivier Assayas and Hong Kong superstar Maggie Cheung wish each other a fond farewell in the moving drama CLEAN. Named Best Actress at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for her extraordinary performance, Cheung (HERO, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) stars as Emily Wang, a junkie trying to resuscitate the fading music career of her heroin-addicted lover, Lee (British musician James Johnston). Their life together is so screwed up that they rarely see their son, Jay (James Dennis), who lives in Vancouver with Lee’s parents (Nick Nolte and Martha Henry). On the road, Emily scores some drugs, fights with Lee, goes out for a ride, then returns to find him dead from an overdose and the cops waiting to arrest her. After six months in prison, she gets out to find that her life has changed more than she could ever have imagined. Cheung is effervescent every step of the way, lighting up the screen despite playing a very hard-to-like character; her tender scenes with the soft-spoken, grizzled Nolte are particularly gentle and touching. Unfortunately the subplot set in the music world is clichéd, annoying, and mostly unnecessary, everything that the rest of the film is not. The stunt casting is particularly irritating: Tricky, the band Metric, and Mazzy Star’s David Roback all play themselves. The otherwise fine cast also includes Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar, and Laetitia Spigarelli, with a soundtrack dominated by ethereal songs by Brian Eno. The film is being shown as part of “Post–Punk Auteur: Olivier Assayas” at BAM, consisting of seventeen films by the French writer-director, continuing through October 28.