you
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After 27 years of vague flashbacks, not remembering the title and constantly getting it confused with 'Safe' (which is similar territory but pretty conventional in terms of style), I watched 'Sweet Nothing' on YT (it's never been released on DVD) the other night. Found it even more brutal and trippy than I remembered it originally.
It seems to have polarised a few people online - some view the more 'fantastic' plot developments as diluting what otherwise would have been a masterpiece of gritty social realism. But if you let it suck you in - treat it as a horror flick, with the characters pitted against a deranged Sadean world, hell-bent on stripping them of dignity, sanity and visibility - it does work. Some of the more surreal moments could be deliberate attempts at capturing drug-/hunger-/exposure-induced hallucinations. Either way, it feels like a flu dream.
Not that I'd recommend this as 'fun', as some of it's as dark as 'Threads'...however, anyone nostalgic for footage of old late '80s London will probably find something to like - there's a sequence shot in a graffitti'd up tunnel, early on, with a bloke thrashing on an electric guitar (which I actually remember being not uncommon outside and around tube stations around '90/'91...) dunno where, Waterloo? Tottenham Court Road?
This - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Nothing_(film)
I agree. I saw it years ago on TV. Probably over ten years ago now. Always remembered it. I even signed a petition for its DVD release a while ago. Great film. Certainly fits in with the bad-trip cannon of Requiem for a Dream, Jacob's Ladder, Basketball Diaries...