drug use

I Am From Titov Veles (Jas Sum Od Titov Veles)

alicia — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

The film begins with a visual icon of the industrial world: the factory’s spires rising like a cathedral, emitting billows of smoke into the sky. Then, a woman’s legs, wrapped like a present in ribboned slippers and a skirt of delicate fabric. She is walking quickly along a wall; she is hurrying. Behind her, out of focus, a man rides on a machine in the factory yard. It becomes obvious that she is surrounded by a workers’ strike, and she sits down and suddenly notices a tiny bug on her hand. She is delighted, in awe. Her absorption with this tiny creature drowns out the noise around her, and she tilts her head back, breathing deeply.

I Am From Titov Veles is a film written and directed by Teona Mitevska, a Macedonian artist who graduated from NYU Tisch and now co-runs a family film company called Sisters and Brother Mitevski with her sister Latina, actress and star of Titov Veles, and her brother Vuk, art director and painter/sculptor who studied at Bennington college in Vermont. The film has won over fifteen international festival awards, and they are well earned. This is a precious film, a rare work of visual intensity and beauty as well as infinitely rich content.

It appears obvious that Teona Mitevska loves this film, these characters, and most of all this place. The film is “patriotic” in the truest sense: it expresses joy at the joyful parts of the place, and horror at that which is horrible. It is truly a film which replaces patriotic guns with a camera, and goes forth with purpose.

The story follows the youngest of three sisters, Afrodita (played by the sister Latina Matevska) who has chosen not to speak since they lost their parents when she was young. She lives with the two older sisters, one of whom works at the factory and suffers from drug addiction, and the other who is obsessed with gaining a visa to leave Veles as soon as possible.

Their relationship is intense and tenderly erotic, full of love but first and foremost at the service of survival. Their bodies are fiercely controlled by boundaries: boundaries of their citizenship, boundaries of marriage and connections to men, boundaries of drugs and substance addiction. They push against these boundaries, struggling to transcend, but ultimately they have little to help them. They are middle-aged, single women, without a father or patriarchal lineage to sustain them. There is little hope to escape this city, whose factory is slowly suffocating the city’s inhabitants with menacing fumes.

This film is beautifully wrought from all directions. The direction is very fine, walking along the razor’s edge to elicit both deep visual pleasure and emotional turbulence. The soundtrack is stunning; at certain points, the music is allowed to soar and take charge of the film in a powerful way (original compositions by Olivier Samouillan). The acting is both controlled and absolutely joyful, the actors breathing fully in the space they inhabit, embracing the contradictions of their characters: especially Latina’s performance of Afrodita, which is simply unforgettable.

The painterly quality of the film undoubtedly comes from Vuk’s art direction, as well as Teona’s training as a painter. There are, throughout the film, fantasy sequences with color so stunning and forms so ghastly, that they will not be easily forgotten. Careful framing and composition is a constant: the collective eye of the creators is tremendously successful at creating not only a political, challenging film, but also a remarkably beautiful visual feast.

The film is not easy to watch. The assertion of bodies is sometimes gruesome: the painful sexual encounters, the splitting episodes of drug withdrawal, the suggestion of rotting odor and burning flesh, the omnipresent suggestion of the oppressive fumes from the factory. However, the tenderness of the sisters in certain moments undoubtedly triumphs. The beauty and love that somehow prevail despite their chaotic context allows the film to float out beyond its difficulty. This film absolutely hovers in the mind at the same time that it is physically daunting to experience. There is a balance between pain and love that is completely real and completely felt. Beautiful.

Written by: Beth Fagan, December 11th 2010

Le Refuge (The Refuge)

priyanka — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Francois Ozon

France 2 Cinéma, FOZ, Eurowide

A film like Francois Ozon’s Le Refuge could only be French. It is beautifully shot, populated with complicated and not and entirely likable characters, and deals with taboo subject matters in a nuanced fashion. The film centers on Mousse (Isabelle Carré), a sharp-tongued young woman who struggles with heroin addiction. When her lover Louis (Melville Poupaud) dies from and overdose and she finds out she’s pregnant, she decides to keep the baby against the wishes of Louis’ aristocratic mother and escapes Paris for a beach-getaway in rural France. Later, Louis’ brother Paul (Louis Ronan-Choisy) joins her there and the movie evolves from that point.

While this subject matter sounds overly dramatic, Francois Ozon treats the story and his characters in a matter-of-fact manner and lets the movie center around the characters, their dialogue, and their internal struggles. This is what makes this film so French—there’s no drama and moralizing around subjects like sexuality, pregnancy, abortion and drugs. Mousse is allowed to develop into a multidimensional character, something that often feels like a luxury for American actresses.

Carré is glamorous and sullen. There are plenty of lingering shots on her heavily mascaraed eyelashes to recall French starlets of French New Wave films. Especially striking is the scenes of Mousse on the beach with a graffiti cover seawall behind her and dancing under pulsing strobes in a dance club. Ozon is an equal opportunity director and he also lets his camera linger on Paul and his lover Serge, whom he meets in the town. Music also serves to advance the plot of the film and key scenes are underscored with songs by Texas, Superpitcher, and Louis Ronan-Choisy.

This film is not one that would appeal to mainstream American audiences, which is why they should make an effort to seek it out. It is as unsettling as it is beautiful. It does not make a political or moral statement, but is daring, complex and unconventional and visually striking.

Written by: Eleanor Whitney, October 10th 2010

The Things We Carry

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Ian McCrudden

Lono Entertainment

The Things We Carry tells the story of two sisters coping with the death of their drug-addicted mother Sunny (Alexis Rhee). After leaving her mother and sister Eve (Catherine Kresge) to travel the globe, Emmie (Alyssa Lobit) returns home upon news of her mother’s death. The sisters are forced to confront both Sunny’s drug-addicted friends and each other while searching for a mysterious package.

The film is loosely based on the real-life experiences of sisters Athena and Alyssa Lobit; Athena produced the film, while Alyssa wrote the script and stars as Emmie. As Eve and Emmie, Kresge and Lobit execute their roles with a muted intensity that speaks to the internal struggles of their characters. Lobit’s nuanced turn as the rebellious Emmie presents a woman whose antagonistic exterior hides a sensitive interior. The rest of the cast's performances are largely forgettable, as the other characters are merely meant to serve as catalysts to Emmie and Eve’s introspection and confrontation.

The Things We Carry alternates between scenes from Emmie’s memory and the sisters' present-day reunion, illustrating how they reached the point of estrangement. These vignettes are artfully articulated, as visual cues from the present (such as an image of a jacket or a yellow cab) serve as links to Emmie’s past. Flashback sequences on film tend to come off as confusing or campy, so it’s a testament to Ian McCrudden’s direction and Alyssa Lobit’s writing that the flashbacks are so effective at enhancing the storytelling and building narrative tension.

The film is saturated in yellows and browns, and features unnaturally bright lighting that emphasizes Emmie's discomfort in returning to her hometown. These blown-out images are placed in counterpoint to the beautiful violin and bass compositions of Timo Chen, whose score ebbs and flows, entering moments of reflection and heightened emotion and serving as an aural bridge between remembered past and lived present.

What is perhaps most impressive about the film is its complete lack of didacticism. Emmie may feel morally superior to her mother, but the film does not necessarily agree. The Things We Carry does not make moral judgments about any of the characters' actions; though the film centers on the detrimental effects of Sunny’s drug use, she is not presented as merely a drug addict—she is also a mother, a wife, and a friend. Ultimately the film is not without its flaws, but The Things We Carry survives on its earnestness and engrossing narrative structure.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, August 19th 2010

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:27:00 +0000

Directed by Rebecca Miller

Elevation Filmworks

It's always a relief when the author of a novel decides to take its film adaptation into her own hands, especially if the author also happens to be a fairly seasoned writer-director for the screen. In The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller recreates her original character study in her own image, bringing the story of a misguided youth-turned-Stepford Wife to brilliant, riveting life.

The film starts off quietly, with the kind of domestic dinner party scene we've come to expect from tales of unfulfilled suburban housewives such as these, but the event actually turns out to be in honor of Pippa's fiftieth birthday. I must admit it took me more than a few minutes to accept Robin Wright Penn (Forrest Gump, Nine Lives) as a fifty-year-old woman; even with the aging makeup, the forty-three-year-old actress' youthful glow still manages to emanate. However, there is a method to this casting choice; it quickly becomes apparent that Pippa's physical appeal is an integral part of her character, a beguiling mask that has always brought her just as much trouble as it has helped her to avoid.

Pippa is a doting wife to her much older husband (Alan Arkin) and a loving mother to her son and daughter, even in the face of their disapproval, but there is little life or substance to her. Penn's interpretation of the character is a remarkable transformation, as she uses a much higher vocal register and carries herself with almost no conviction or purpose. Her Pippa—at least for the first part of the film—is a bit of a ghost, a stark contrast to the independent, inaccessible roles the actress has often portrayed in the past. When Pippa makes the terrifying discovery that she is having a nervous breakdown, the character is inspired to reexamine all the traumas that have led her to her quiet suburban life, and she—and Penn—take an acute turn right before our eyes. Pippa gives up her mask, revealing a resilient woman who is both piteous and funny as she drives herself mad.

If you haven't read the book (which I haven't), the film is delightfully unpredictable. I was pleasantly surprised to be transported to Pippa's unorthodox childhood, to spend so much time on her carousel of questionable caretakers, from her speed addict mother (the wonderful Maria Bello) to her über-cool, über-liberal Aunt Kat (Julianne Moore). As a Gossip Girl skeptic, I gave a huge sigh when Blake Lively first appeared as teenage Pippa, but she turned out to be surprisingly effective, standing her ground in the formidable shadow of Penn. A scene between Lively and Bello in which Pippa takes her mother's drugs as an experiment in empathy is absolutely heart wrenching.

Winona Ryder is also a surprising highlight as Pippa's extremely neurotic, needy, and often hysterical friend. She provides a hilarious counterpoint to Penn, sweating the small stuff very publicly while Pippa suffers a lifetime of disaster in complete silence.

To reveal more about Pippa's past (and future) would detract from the joy of watching it unfold on screen—and it is an utter joy, even as upsetting as the protagonist's circumstances sometimes are. Though I have yet to read Miller's book, I would imagine that Pippa's tale of rediscovery could not have found a better interpretation.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, January 13th 2010

Ballads of Suburbia

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:03:00 +0000

By Stephanie Kuehnert

MTV Books

It’s strange to find yourself feeling nostalgic about a time that you absolutely hated. I’m obviously not alone when I say that middle and high school weren’t the best times of my life; while I had friends and family that I cared about a lot and vice versa, everything else often seemed like a total mess. Looking back on it with a few years distance, I can say that I blew things out of proportion, overreacted, was irrational in my words and decisions. In short, I was your stereotypical teenage girl.

Stephanie Kuehnert’s second novel, Ballads of Suburbia, brought me right back to those heady, mid-90s days of endless troubles and tears. Kara has left her Illinois home for college in California, and comes back in Christmas 1999, wary about facing her demons, but knowing she has to. We get Kara’s story—one of teenage love, drugs, and intense pain—through flashbacks, as she remembers her past while visiting for the first time. There are some absolutely heartbreaking scenes, as Kara and her friends deal with hard drug use, depressive and suicidal thoughts, and domestic abuse: things we know teenagers deal with, but is rarely written as bluntly as in Kuehnert’s book.

The device that ties the book together is the titular collection of ballads (in the traditional sense, Kara is sure to assert, of a story-song) that Kara and her friends put together to exorcise their demons. Every main character in the novel writes their ballad, the story of something in their lives that made them who they are, for better or for worse, in a notebook. That Kara eventually is able to take the stories and make something wonderful out of them is a testament to the strength of the character, and the redemptive power of writing itself.

Kuehnert’s characters reside in Oak Park, a northern Chicago suburb, and an area that is familiar to Kuehnert, as she lives in a Chicago suburb and received her MFA from Columbia College. The familiarity and seemingly love/hate relationship with the area are obvious in the novel, as the setting is wonderfully described, from the park where Kara and her friends go to smoke and skate, to grungy basement parties, to the unbearable places Kara and her friends call home. The mid-90s setting and allusions to grunge and punk music endeared themselves to me, and produced that intense sense of nostalgia, especially when Kuehnert describes driving around with the music as loud as possible, screaming along to your favorite songs.

Although I never had quite the amount of trouble that Kara and her friends did, there is still a thread that binds us together, and made me appreciate the novel as both a reminder and a cautionary tale. Please note: the novel features somewhat graphic descriptions of drug use and self-mutilation that some might find triggering.

Written by: Dana Reinoos, December 13th 2009

Creating Myself: How I Learned That Beauty Comes in All Shapes, Sizes, and Packages, Including Me

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:04:00 +0000

By Mia Tyler

Atria Books

Imagine growing up with these parents: Steven Tyler from Aerosmith and Cyrinda Foxe, a popular actress and model from the 1970s. At first glance, it might seem luxurious, glamorous, exciting, and fun to be part of this family, but Mia Tyler tells the real story of her experiences with her rock 'n roll mom and dad in Creating Myself.

From the first lines of the book, which reveal Tyler's intention to commit suicide in 2001, readers will find riveting details, shocking stories, and jaw-dropping secrets. For example, as an eight-year-old, Tyler had to pour her mother's vial of cocaine into the toilet, and later in life she struggled with her own drug addictions and self-mutilation.

But this book is much more than an exposé of a celebrity family; it is Mia's story of coping, growing, forgiving, moving on, and finding herself amidst the chaos and confusion of a rollercoaster home life. Stories and memories are shared, along with descriptions of birthdays, romances, family tension, crazy social sprees, and her work as a plus-size model. Tyler recounts her trials with using men, drugs, and food, and working to overcome these addictions. She even provides a detailed examination of her own sanity at different points in her life, and how her psychological well-being impacted her choices and the way she encountered the world.

Tyler's candid stories and honest self-evaluations reflect a woman who has been through a lot, has taken a good hard look at herself and the world around her, and has chosen to take the best approach possible by forgiving herself and her family, moving on, and deciding to take care of herself. She comes out stronger in the end, with seemingly endless love and wisdom to share.

Creating Myself will hit home with all readers, even those who don't share Tyler's celebrity status or her extreme past. Those who choose this book will find out that it is possible to take on—and overcome—all that the world has in store for us.

Written by: Amanda Moss, August 30th 2009