Synopsis: A junky and his girlfriend go to a lot of trouble to find drugs in a period of shortage. Meanwhile, the junky's mother goes under treatment to lose weight and becomes a medicine addict as a consequence.
Appraisal: The direction is overly reliant on sophomoric tricks such as speed motion, low angle shots of heads against a background that show a person walking like he/she was gliding through space (I wish I could explain it better -- I guess you will have to watch the film to see what I am talking about), etc. The script, based on a 1978 novel by Hubert Selby, Jr., is somewhat dated, I think -- I don't see how a present-day woman could have the naive notions that the Sara character has; the police behavior, too, resembles that of bygone eras; doctors like the one shown in the movie most likely do not exist nowadays; ditto, the hospital procedures. Of course, the film is strongly caricatural, but it's alway nice to know what is being caricatured. Despite all this, it's still an engaging film, and it owes that greatly to the leading female performance; in fact, all the other performances are worthy of note too.
Rating: 62
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