Cocaine Angel

A raw and authentic film that manages to avoid just about every pitfall of the narco-cinema genre. This starts soon after the opening: 8mm images of happier times. The junkie wakes up with a bleeding leg and starts the ritual preparation of his daily dose. Many film makers start off by turning this into a kind of laboratory set up, but Michael Tully understands - and this is what he wants to show us too - that this is the most important moment of the day. The most important moment in life. A life in which every day has to have an important moment. In addition, Tully's junkie is far from typical. He is just as lost as all other junkies, but he still has a house and a car and a daughter and an ex-wife. At the start of the film, he is already outside ordinary life, but apparently hasn't been there very long. By the end of the film, he is still outside ordinary life, but maybe not so far. And that's what the film is about: about the difference between not so long and not so far. And how wide the gap can be. Cocaine Angel is obviously a production made on a small budget. But in this case, that has only seemed to help. Real decay is priceless. (GjZ)