So fresh, so Clean

What makes Maggie Cheung's performance in Clean so marvelous is her understanding of how her ex-junkie's impatience and hauteur are proxies for heroin. They're defenses against seemingly hostile forces: relatives who get you a menial job so that they can, in part, remind you of their generosity; former friends who won't tell you if they ever really liked you or merely tolerated you; and even the genuine compassion of a father-in-law (Nick Nolte, finding new cracks in that gravelly voice). The Parisian babel in which writer-director Olivier Assayas, who divorced Cheung shortly before filming, places Cheung looks wonderful in the grey light. Cheung, lighting endless cigarettes, looks great despite hair that looks like it was mauled by hedge clippers. His talent for marrying music with images remains intact, though: here it's Brian Eno's swirling, murky Apollo soundtrack, the title track to Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and "Spider & I."

Most of the reviews didn't do justice to this film's quiet power. The dialogue is unremarkable and honest (as when an acquaintance, visiting Cheung in prison, responds to her question about whether methadone truly makes you feel better: "Depends on the person. Not for me"). If no images sear themselves in the brain as indelibly as Cheung's imitation of a cat burglar, scored to Sonic Youth's "Tunic (Song for Karen Carpenter)" in Irma Vep, maybe there's more at stake for Assayas' characters. There's only one (early) scene showing Cheung shooting up. Clean deals with the aftermath. Just "getting by" is painful: crossing a street corner, driving a scooter, concentrating on a game of pool while a friend listens to demos which represent the last attempt at forging a career.

It's out on DVD.