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Beautiful Boy
****
Dir: Felix Van Groenigen
Starring: Steve Carell, Timotheé Chalamet, Amy Ryan
(USA, 15, 2hrs)
Based on a pair of best selling memoirs written by a father David Sheff and his son Nic, Beautiful Boy is an often heartbreaking tale of a family relationship fractured due to crystal meth addiction, with a pair of brilliant central performances.
Steve Carrell is tender and frustrated as the father struggling to understand his son’s ( Timotheé Chalamet) descent into drug addiction. We follow both as they start to fall apart; Carrell desperate to understand why his son is doing this, blaming himself, whilst Chalamet remains slippery, his soul missing something, needing something else that his father cannot offer him. There are some emotionally bruising scenes as Chalamet, in the grips of a high, lashes out at his father who cannot begin to comprehend what his son is going through.
Amy Ryan is fantastic as Carrell’s ex-wife Vicki, vituperative with her former husband about his actions towards their son. The ever-excellent Maura Tierney plays Karen, Carell’s second wife with whom he has young children. Beautiful Boy is often repetitive and biased towards a parental perspective, but it rings with authenticity. No easy sentiments are offered and the solutions to the addiction and the father/son relationship are stark.
Rehab is tried, as is college, as Nic desperately tries to get clean but nothing really sticks – Chalamet turns from a stable laid-back teen who, after the life-altering experience of drug use, finds the joy of life going from black and white to a Techicolour smorgasbord, but at what cost?
Chalamet is gripping to watch as he spars with his haunted father, with Carrell wondering whether his son might die of his addiction before they can meet again. Unflinching and moving, Beautiful Boy is a penetrating drama that will strike a chord with any parent or lost teenager.
words Keiron Self
Out now in cinemas