2019: The Year of the Enabler
In recent years, addiction has become a prominent part of Western cinema’s collective consciousness. Faced with prescription opioid addiction, record-high heroin and fentanyl deaths, and growing concerns with how legal systems treat those afflicted, filmmakers have turned their lenses toward stories of addiction in greater numbers than ever before. Last year was no exception, as several films from the United States and Europe delved deeply into personal experiences, producing some of the most vivid, visceral, and stirring stories in recent memory.
A recurring character, or collection of characters, that tend to surface in such stories, is the enabler– the group or individual that is, in some way, permitting the continual abuse of the addict, whether intentionally or inadvertently. This role often shares the perspective of the viewer: they are witness to the destruction of their friend, partner, or family member’s addiction, and they help propel the story toward recovery or further spiraling. They are by no means exempt from the moral dilemmas of the film but are effective as proxies to explore these dilemmas. The enabler may be the protagonist, the lover, the antagonist, or any number of people in relation to the individual reckoning with toxic dependencies, and these varying placements lead to complex dynamics and dichotomies.
The four films below received wide releases in 2019 and presented stories of addiction in which the enabler occupied a unique perspective or story function.
Diane
Renowned critic and programmer Kent Jones directs fiction for the first time in Diane, a ruminative film that follows an aging Mary Kay Place as she confronts distressing memories and struggles to keep her loved ones close. The film unfolds patiently from Diane’s perspective, and her complex relationship with her heroin-addicted son is only one of many chapters woven in the narrative.
As a mother, Diane is, in every sense of the word, solicitous. Her son Brian has grown sick of her worrying and passive-aggressive coddling. Nearly every day she makes her way into his home with clean laundry, food, and a mouthful of grievances. She is driven by an overwhelming sense of obligation to her son, often to a fault. Brian recoils at her approach, growing defensive and sparking a shouting match at every visit. His living space is littered with dirty laundry, trash, and drugs; an atmosphere that Diane repeatedly condemns, demanding that Brian turn his life around. However, it is Diane’s own preoccupations that keep her from productively addressing her son’s needs. She’s a volunteer at a soup kitchen, and drives for hours to visit an ailing friend of hers regularly. Her commitments only compound her worrying, and ultimately drive Brian farther away. At the film’s halfway point, Brian vanishes, setting off to get clean without his mother.
Diane is simultaneously distraught and enraged by Brian’s addiction, but her attempts to kickstart his recovery are rooted in selfishness. For the first half of the film she largely treats Brian as a nuisance and disappointment– someone she is connected to only by familial duty. Her persistence to remove heroin from his life does not come from a place of hope for her son, but from a place of annoyance– to lighten the burden he has placed on her life. At no point before his disappearance does Diane attempt to dissect the origins of Brian’s exposure to drugs to any meaningful degree. It is only when Brian returns, having forced Diane to confront these origins, that the two are able to reconcile.
Her Smell
Alex Ross Perry’s nightmarish feature follows the larger-than-life Becky Something, an uproarious punk-rocker, and lead of the trio Something Her. Becky exists alongside her bandmates in a world of drugs and alcohol, and she does not shy away from her indulgences. Broken into five scenes playing out over the course of several years, Her Smell details Becky’s rapid deterioration and fall from stardom, eventually providing her with a shot at redemption by the story’s end.
She is such an inherently destructive character, propelled by a sense of entitlement to artistic glory that the first two-thirds of the film are nearly unwatchable. The oppressive score and incomparably bleak, grimy atmosphere are only captivating at a distance– up close they are repulsive. While characters like Becky’s personal shaman Ya-ema or the amateur camera crew from Bronx Community College would be easy to point to as enablers of her behavior and flagrant cocaine use, it ultimately proves to be those closest to her that make the greatest negative impact.
Becky’s bandmates, supporting act, and manager– the reluctant posse that surrounds her– only rarely dissuade her from drinking and cocaine use, and do so lightly, as Becky’s fearsome wrath is sure to follow. They are as dependent on her outlandish persona as they are repelled by it. Something Her’s success pays the bills, and they denounce Becky’s behavior only when it threatens that success. Even then, their criticism and frustrations are voiced in an equally toxic manner. Howard, the band’s manager, opts to sue Becky rather than reason with her. Ali and Marielle, the other members of the trio, oscillate between impatient outbursts and downright threats. Granted, Becky is practically impossible to reach, as her fortified rock-God exterior only cracks at her convenience, but by the film’s end Becky is ready for healing, and her support system grows more receptive and reciprocative of her vulnerability.
Pain and Glory
Pain and Glory is another semi-autobiographical film from the beloved Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. In the context of addiction, the film is a particularly curious case, because the presence of drugs never fully manifests as a detrimental addiction, and is not a response to a monumental emotional pain, but rather at first, a physical one. To that end, the introduction of heroin, and its limited use throughout, become a means to revitalize a lost friendship.
Salvador Mallo, played by a top-notch Antonio Banderas, is a film director entering a difficult age. He suffers from acute back pain, among other ailments, and has not received adequate medication to ease it. The pain has forced him to step away from the director’s chair prematurely and put him in a creative rut. Similar to much of Almodóvar’s work, the film explores themes of sexuality, memory, and death, but it is this creative rut that dominates much of the narrative’s focus. Salvador is pressured by those that surround him to push past his pain and continue to work, including the actor Alberto Crespo, with whom Salvador reunites after decades to attend a screening of their old film.
It is Alberto, by his own accounts a functioning user, that brings drugs into Salvador’s life. The initial heroin dose that Salvador takes operates within the scene to get closer to Alberto, who up until that point had been somewhat reticent. But Almodóvar is quick to show how heroin becomes a consuming vice, as Salvador finds himself using on his own before the first third of the film is through. Alberto eventually produces Salvador’s work and continues to frame his heroin use as an unalterable reality, despite it being the reason the two had such a seismic split in the first place. Though Salvador’s drug abuse ultimately fades following a new diagnosis, surgery, and several deep conversations with his mother, Almodóvar clearly recognizes the gravity of his brief addiction and weaves it tenderly into a complex, multifaceted narrative.
The Souvenir
Like Diane, Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical filmic memoir The Souvenir depicts a protagonist as an unknowing enabler. However, in this case, Julie, portrayed with grace by newcomer Honor Swinton-Byrne, is a budding filmmaker, with her whole life stretched out in front of her. A sense of naïveté haunts the film, and Hogg’s retrospective filmmaking ensures that the viewer realizes nearly everything about her heroin-addicted boyfriend, Anthony, before Julie does. Indeed, by the film’s end, Julie does not fully come to terms with the harsh lesson she is taught. She is utterly convinced by Anthony’s guise of control even as he spirals into chaos– stealing Julie’s things to sell, asking Julie to drive him to dealers, the list goes on.
The crux of Anthony and Julie’s relationship, as it pertains to Anthony’s addiction, comes at a quiet lunch the two share in an upscale restaurant. Julie inquires about a trip Anthony had taken with a number of women, and Anthony withholds a few details, coyly stating that he can’t talk about them, given their proper setting. Julie is appalled at the implication, and Anthony says, “Stop torturing yourself.” “I’m not,” Julie insists, but before she can finish her thought he injects, “Stop inviting me to torture you.” For all the strife Anthony puts Julie through, and for all the intrinsic sadism attached to that quip, Julie’s enabling of her partner’s drug use is rooted in her gullibility.
The film is damning of drug abuse, to be sure, but more importantly, The Souvenir is a heartbreaking condemnation of Hogg’s former self. Julie is lovable, loyal, creative, and complex, but she is decidedly not strong. Each chapter of her relationship with Anthony builds to what should be a breaking point but turns into yet another instance of Julie buckling beneath his charms. Tragically, Julie’s ties to Anthony are forcibly severed, and she is left shattered by her loss and wholly unsure of her future.
