It’s Glenn Close’s curse to be the absolute best thing in a series of movies that are only pretty good — and that’s even with Close giving them everything she’s got.
The latest case in point is “Four Good Days,” where Close gives an intense performance as a mother coping with her daughter’s heroin addiction.
Mila Kunis plays the daughter, who has it bad. In the movie’s first moments, she shows up at mom’s door, strung out, with sores on her face and no teeth. She wants to get off drugs and has nowhere to go. She has hit bottom, but this is nothing new.
Mom doesn’t want to have anything to do with her daughter, and there’s some question whether we do, either. She doesn’t like seeing her like this, no more than we want to see Kunis like this, but this is the movie Mom is in. In Close’s cold, frustrated reaction to the daughter’s return, we get the whole history of hope and disappointment, investment and loss.
Movies about addiction are difficult, because in narrative terms, they’re usually boring. Because of the recidivist nature of addiction, the stories can’t progress but instead repeat in cycles of abstinence and indulgence. Director and co-writer Rodrigo Garcia, however, avoids this problem by compressing the action to a little more than a week. He also breaks the typical pattern by particularizing the character of the mother.
Instead of some generalized, self-sacrificing mom, Garcia gives us a prickly character, hardened by bitter experience. After the daughter shows up at her door, Mom starts reflexively lashing out at her long-suffering, perfectly nice husband (Stephen Root). It takes a while before the daughter is able to persuade her to give any help at all.
The title, “Four Good Days,” refers the amount of time that the daughter must remain drug-free so as to qualify for an injection that relieves the impulse to do drugs for a full month. At the start of the movie, she goes through detox at a public facility. The hard part comes next — the four days in which she must sit in her mother’s garage, smoking and climbing the walls, waiting to get the injection.
As you may have gathered, “Four Good Days” is not exactly a fun experience, not for the characters or for the audience, but Close is impressive. Over the course of the film, you watch as this emotionally calloused woman gradually allows herself to hope that this time it’s going to be different.
Close has a particularly good scene in a diner, in which she has breakfast with her other, not-addicted daughter. With the addict, she is always on her guard, but with this other daughter, she allows us to see the extent of her worry and distraction. Her hopefulness borders on pathetic, and we can see that she knows it.
Kunis is also good in the movie. She really looks like an addict. She actually seems like an addict. She stays mostly contained, stewing with self-disgust and wanting to escape. There’s no joy in seeing her like this, nor any surprise that she can play it well. Fortunately, the movie itself does contain surprises and just enough suspense that we want to know what’s going to happen.
Scene by scene, Close and Kunis drag us into their family problems, and we end up caring.
*** Review
"Four Good Days"
Rated: R for drug content, language throughout and brief sexuality
Running time: 100 min
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As usual, Glenn Close better than the movie in 'Four Good Days' - Albany Times Union
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