MOVIE REVIEW
Better Things (2009)
The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival
A no-budget, edgy first feature is becoming de rigeur for British directors looking to get noticed, such as Paul Andrew Williams's "London to Brighton" and Vicky Jewson's "Lady Godiva." Duane Hopkins has been just as brave with his first feature "Better Things." Its world is rural England, its cars and back bedrooms, hospital waiting areas and train platforms. Spaces are cramped and stifling. Most of the characters are young heroin addicts, but a few others are their grandparents. The intercutting between everyone's problems is subtle, and silent. There is little dialogue in the film, and less music. The emphasis on nature shots – grass waving in the wind, a car parked by a field, clouds in a gray sky – show a debt to the work of Terrence Malick. It doesn't sound appetizing, but the film builds with quiet power to an ending mercifully free of cliché.
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