Junkhearts: review

Courier Film Editor Chris Binding discusses Junkhearts.

 

The dissolution of the UK Film Council earlier this year may still leave a bitter taste in the mouths of independent British filmmakers but there is a incredibly amount of promise left in British cinema. Recent genre efforts such as Attack the Block may not have lit up the box office but established a strong cult following, while dark drama Tyrannosaur saw actress Olivia Colman breaking out of her typed role in Peep Show and director Paddy Considine scooping an award at the British Independent film festival. Almost as a companion piece to Considine’s debut, director Tinge Krishnan’s Junkhearts is a incredibly powerful and intimate drama focusing on the short lived and spontaneous relationship between a soldier and homeless girl, quickly spiralling from happiness into a world of drugs, torture and violence.

The story follows an ex-soldier (Eddie Marsan) who lives alone, separated from his daughter and grandchild, drowning his nightmares with alcohol. After wandering the streets at night, a chance encounter with a homeless women Lynette (Candese Reid) gives him a new lease of life as a surrogate daughter, letting her live with him. After a series of generic bonding experiences, Lynette’s dealer boyfriend (Tom Sturridge) becomes a threatening presence, taking advantage of the close relationship and quickly changing the apartment into a halfway house for drug transactions and youth violence. Dragging together multiple storylines and handling a questionable concept that could raise a few eyebrows (ring the police?), director Krishnan produces a incredibly cinematic experience, held up by the powerful performances of the lead actors.

Candese Reid is incredible as Lynette, torn between her good nature and boyfriends corrupting influence, subtly showing her vulnerability towards human relationships from her unspecified time living on the streets. Tom Sturridge also affectively plays the heroin riddled boyfriend, showcasing a compelling mixture of violence and vulnerability as his self–destructive addiction claims everyone around him and leading to his comeuppance. However, the real accolades lie with the troubled male lead. Marsan is incredibly compelling, with his personal demons externalised onto his tired and beaten down face. Carrying a number of effective scenes his manipulation at the hands of Lynette and her boyfriend is difficult to watch, including a terrible reversal of a erotic scene, revealed to his face to be a pre–made sexual transaction for crack. As a victim in every sense, tortured by himself and others, its makes a welcome change from his unlikeable sadist character in Tyrannosaur.

Fittingly echoing the title, Junkhearts expresses an unflinching portrayal of the unglamorous life of drugs and alcoholism and the good human instincts that lie underneath. Clichéd as this message sounds the film never lapses into sentimentality, ending on an elliptic note of hope rather than closure and (at least temporarily) placing the characters on the right path. But having witnessed all the atrocities and emotional assaults of the feature runtime, the break from the often depressing accounts of drug affected youth and soldiers with post traumatic stress, was thankfully welcoming as the credits rolled. The cancelation of the post screening Q + A with lead actress Candese Reid may been dissapointing but I left the film with a new found adoration for Eddie Marsan, a hope for the future of Independent British cinema and a strikingly different perception on homeless people and addicts. Everyone has a story and although Junkhearts may not provide any answers, focusing on the human scar tissue of sexual abuse, war and drugs, it certainly provides a lot of interesting questions.