You can tell right off that double-Sundance winner Down to the Bone is one of anti-Hollywood's obligatory indie-darlings. That's probably the best way to describe a movie in which rough cinematography appears more a sign of amateurism rather than raw ingenuity.
Vera Farmiga plays Irene, a suburban mother battling cocaine addiction. It's difficult to introduce radical perspective on a subject Hollywood's already successfully explored (Trainspotting, Requiem for a Dream), so director Debra Granik doesn't try. Instead, the tale doggedly focuses on the restless mother's self-involved struggle.
With only a dead-end job at the supermarket, Irene scrimps and pinches to buy drugs, then chooses to reform "for the kids" by checking herself into a rehab clinic. Yet by the end, she's lost her job and husband, only to discover that her ex-addict counterpart and lover, Bob, hadn't been as clean as she'd believed. On the plus side, Down to the Bone doesn't moralize or exaggerate. Then again, the film seems confused about what exactly it wants to do.
Despite Farmiga's precise and haunting performance, Irene is a tough character to connect with. She is hardly intended to be sympathetic, but the audience is somehow alienated to the point of disinterest. Her real problem is a penchant for escapism rather than simply cocaine, but the film doesn't give room for diversion into this potentially richer theme. It's merely implied through the grayness that shrouds each bleak scene -- a reflection of Irene's self-centered view of a stifled life.
Granik's sly, unique eye for symbolism does redeem plot potholes and add an ominous edge in the build-up towards Irene's failure. The unconscious harm she inflicts on her children hovers over the sufficiently creepy opening scenes. It is Halloween, and Irene urges her sons into their costumes, snapping toy manacles on her eldest. While she ducks inside the bedroom for a quick cocaine fix, he slumps defenseless against her closed door.
Down to the Bone was filmed documentary-style, relying on little additional lighting and music to inculcate mood. While succeeding in creating the intended minimalistic bleakness, the overall effect is a tad too dispassionate. The viewer is removed, left outside to oscillate between distaste and apathy. Many potent silences only remind of the jarring gaps we see in Granik's narrative, which serves to shock, not draw the audience in.
The stripped-down technique adds weight to scenes at the rehab center, where patients laboriously make their way through routine counseling and forced confessions with taciturn grimness. In this environment, Irene's struggle is given reality. Yet despite the fact that she is wracked to a breaking point, for the audience, it's a portrayal that simply scrapes the surface.
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