Better Things (2008)

Recommended

UK/Germany

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Duane Hopkins

Cinematographer: Lol Crawley

Composer: Dan Berridge

Cast: Liam McIlfatrick, Che Corr, Tara Ballard, Freddie Cunliffe, Rachel McIntyre, Patricia Loveland, Betty Bench, Frank Bench, Megan Palmer, Kurt Taylor, Mike Randle, Michael Socha, Katie Samuels, Kerry Rowe

Although some of the performances are a tad wooden, and the dialogue occasionally feels a little awkward, Duane Hopkins’s feature debut – following on from a pair of excellent shorts – is an often ethereally beautiful concoction (one sequence in particular, in which a grieving heroin addict fantasises about embracing his dead girlfriend whilst his drug of choice makes its way through his veins, is amongst the most achingly beautiful sequences I’ve ever seen), but at other times, this portrait of disaffected, lovelorn, drug-addled youth is merely wrist-slittingly depressing. Iain.Stott