Clean

In my review of In the Mood for Love, I marveled at the talent and beauty of Maggie Cheung, and that is even more on display in Olivier Assayas' 2004 film Clean, in which Cheung gives a bravura performance. I'm still scratching my head at how she's avoided making any Hollywood films. Maybe she knows better.

In Clean, Cheung plays the wife of a rock star attempting a comeback. Raised in England, she became something of a minor celebrity as an MTV host in France, and is also a junkie. The couple's son is being raised by the husband's parents (the father is played by Nick Nolte). During a stop in Canada, Cheung goes out to buy heroin, and while she shoots up while in a car by a river, her husband dies of an overdose.

Cheung is jailed and completely humbled. Nolte, who is much more sympathetic to her than most people would be, tells her that he will continue to raise the child, but wants her to be able to see him, but not right away. First she must clean up her act. She agrees, and goes back to Paris, groveling for a job.

Cheung's performance is better than the film, but I don't mean to suggest that it's in any way a bad film. It's a familiar subject--a character that hits bottom and must seek redemption, but to Assayas' credit it doesn't follow all the familiar plot points. Throughout the entirety of the film I had no idea where it was going next. Even when the dreaded "missing child" scene pops up, I was heartened that it didn't resolve as most of these things do (for an example of how they shouldn't work, see Crazy Heart).

Cheung is on almost every scene and covers the gamut of emotions (she also speaks three different languages during the film). At the outset she is a tornado of action, defying her husband's managers attempt to sign him to a record label. This is contrasted with her behavior after her arrest, when she is hardly able to speak more than monosyllabically, completely bested by life's blows. Her struggle for redemption hits highs and lows, but at no point did I feel Cheung was opting for the easy way out--she is true to the character and the script, and by the end, when she breaks down in tears in view of the Golden Gate Bridge, one can sense that the character has completed a journey, though the ending itself is ambiguous. A fine film, a great performance.