Who really needs a new miserable drug drama? Before this pound that should not roll there again? School students who should be scared to never smoke their first joint? There is an annoying nurturing tone in the Let me case.
We meet 15-year-old Magnea who blends hard to ... well why really? She lives a safe and normal middle-class life with different parents who are clear-thinking and involved in her life, but maybe Magnea is just a high-seeker?
Of course, there are addicts in all classes of society with no clear motives, but Magnea's "wild side" is anchored a little well and used as motivation for a whole bunch of unreasonable decisions. From the beginning when Magnea pretends to be a prostitute and robs a guy of drug money, until she sees one of her close friends die of an overdose, but continues to pound.
It is not unrealistic for the drug to have such strong power over her, but the Let me case makes it very difficult to understand the attraction to the substances. Even the party, the lustful part of being an addict, is depicted with a compact darkness where all men are rape-prone monsters, all friends are bad influences and no one seems to have much fun.
Suddenly the action moves forward in time and we meet a totally emaciated Magnea, who lives on the street where she walks around with shit in her face and a yogurt in her fist, an überpundig accessory. Life has only gotten worse and Magnea now lets herself be raped on a daily basis to get her drug.
Soon, the older Magnea also bumps into his old pundits who managed to get out of the drug swamp in different ways. This triggers their memories, and once again we sling back to Magnea's teens and new terrible abuses. What saves Let me case from being boring is that it is creepily well played and seems genuine, but the film lacks dramaturgical arc. Rather, it is a staircase, where Magnea is constantly reaching new bottoms on her way down to hell.
The title Let me fall suggested that Magnea just wants to be dropped. No matter how much her parents are involved in her life. But who is she really? Does she have any interests? Addicts have dreams just like everyone else.
The Icelandic director Baldvin Zophoníasson has previously made the hit drama Life in a Fishbowl, which weighed several Icelandic lives together with a fairly subtle social critique. But here he disappoints me. There is such an unsympathetic fetishization of misery in these types of films. The cast have not much to do except suffer for our sake.
In comparison to the brothers Safdies Heaven knows what (2014), about heroin addicts in Manhattan. There, the protagonists are just as vicious, lying and immoral, but also funny as heroin pounders in Manhattan can be. Watch it instead, if you have to see a carbon black drug drama.