Clean (2004)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Rubia Carolina .

  
  Impossible not to think about Kurt and Courtney, even if inspite of choosing to bring up a "glamourous" drug and rock n´roll world (or the typical approach of junkies trying to clean up), the movie focus on a woman trying to change her life and to get her son back.… More
  Impossible not to think about Kurt and Courtney, even if inspite of choosing to bring up a "glamourous" drug and rock n´roll world (or the typical approach of junkies trying to clean up), the movie focus on a woman trying to change her life and to get her son back. Another interesting point is that it´s not really a sweet movie about mother and son knowing each other and getting close. Emily is not likeable and she´s not even sure if she wants to settle down. However, it´s more to a "typical" drama movie than any other Olivier Assayas´s movies (I´ve seen) where "nothing really happens". </br> </br>

• Drew S

  
  Clean is all about the slow burn. It keeps itself thankfully distanced from the histrionics and melodrama of a typical drug movie, instead immersing itself in the ephemeral dream pace that most indie movies have. For what it's worth, not much actually seems to happen, and the… More
  Clean is all about the slow burn. It keeps itself thankfully distanced from the histrionics and melodrama of a typical drug movie, instead immersing itself in the ephemeral dream pace that most indie movies have. For what it's worth, not much actually seems to happen, and the development is far too subtle for most of the idiots on Flixster to comprehend. You can't blame people for finding the movie slow, but the path to recovering from addiction is a slow one. Maggie Cheung completely owned this role. She gives one of the most powerful, troubled, convictive performances I've seen in a very long time. Nick Nolte is great, as well, but this is Cheung's movie. Don't bother picking this one up if you consider yourself even slightly short of attention.

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic]In "Clean", Emily(Maggie Cheung) and Lee(James Johnston) are a rock and roll couple on the skids in Hamilton, Ontario.(Their son, Jay(James Dennis), is being watched by his grandparents in Vancouver.) Following a drug buy and an argument, Emily drives… More
  [font=Century Gothic]In "Clean", Emily(Maggie Cheung) and Lee(James Johnston) are a rock and roll couple on the skids in Hamilton, Ontario.(Their son, Jay(James Dennis), is being watched by his grandparents in Vancouver.) Following a drug buy and an argument, Emily drives off and spends the night in her car near the lake. By the time she returns to the motel, the police have discovered Lee dead from an overdose. To make matters even worse, the police find heroin on her which leads to a six month jail sentence for possession. When she gets out of jail and is now on methadone to wean her off the heroin, she meets up with Lee's father, Albrecht(Nick Nolte), who tells her that it is a good idea that she not see her son for a while. Emily says she is going to Paris where she has family...[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]"Clean" is ostensibly about a person trying to put her life back together after hitting rock bottom, but it meanders and lingers on useless trivia too much to have any success. And we learn nothing of the time Lee and Emily spent together. But it does get better by the end and is very well photographed. Nick Nolte gives one of his best performances but Maggie Cheung can do very little with a badly underwritten character. [/font]

• Jeff B

  
  Like a painting on the wall of the Met, films should continue to invite inspection long after the voyeur has left the theater--like true art should. Slow and bleak but still poignant, Clean kinda sort does this, leaving room for interpretation from filmgoers...if the audience is… More
  Like a painting on the wall of the Met, films should continue to invite inspection long after the voyeur has left the theater--like true art should. Slow and bleak but still poignant, Clean kinda sort does this, leaving room for interpretation from filmgoers...if the audience is patient enough to take the whole journey with the characters. Wrestling with a failing singing career, drug addiction, and being an absentee mother to her young son, Emily Wang (Cheung) suddenly finds her life turned upside down and inside out by her husband's death in the R-rated Clean. Despite weaving a slow-going tale, director Olivier Assayes still renders an exceptional and complicated tale of redemption simply by posing the following question: "Can people change?" Backed with luminous performances, especially that of an extra grizzly Nick Nolte as her long-suffering father-in-law, Assayes wholly succeeds not by fully answering the question, but by allowing filmgoers to identify with this reality. Bottom line: Good habit.

• Krystle C

  
  Maggie Cheung is dazzling as always. This would get 2 stars if not for her stellar performance.