FRANCE, CANADA, UK

2004 – 35mm – color – 110’

Direction: Olivier Assayas

Screenplay: Olivier Assayas

Cinematography: Eric Gautier

Editing: Luc Barnier

Set design: François-Renaud Labarthe, William Fleming

Costumes: Anaïs Romand

Cast: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar

Producers: Edouard Weil, Niv Fichman, Xavier Giannoli, Xavier Marchand

Production: Rectangle Prod., Rhombus Media, Haystack Prod., Arte, Forensic Films

SYNOPSIS

Canada. Lee Hauser, a famous rock singer in crisis, kills himself with a drug overdose. His partner, Emily, a former singer and TV presenter, was the one who had supplied him with the drug and therefore ends up in jail for six months. Once free, Emily has only one goal: to get clean and go to British Columbia to visit her son Jay, who lives with Lee’s parents. She dreams of regaining custody of her son, but it’s not easy to earn his trust and that of her in-laws. Emily understands then that she must rebuild her life, and to do so she decides to return to Europe and start over in Paris, the city where she lived before she met Lee.

CRITICAL NOTE

“The “narrative of the second chance” which Clean gives shape to is but the latest manifestation of Assayas’ interest in both allowing a degree of figurative and narrative uncertainty within his fictions and vesting a belief in the capacity of human beings to suspend existing ties (to family, community, nation, and more generally to a social and political order they can no longer sanction, from which they feel completely alienated) to gain a better sense of who they are, and perhaps form new associations on that basis.” (Franck Le Gac, Senses of Cinema, maggio 2006)

PREMI AWARDS

2004 Cannes Film Festival – Competition: Best Actress Award to Maggie Cheung