He looks like a junkie, she doesn’t; but maybe that’s the point. Animals seeks to humanize the struggle of two lovers in the throes of addiction by depicting them as ordinary people who fell through the cracks. They drive an Oldsmobile, they go to the zoo, and every so often they run a scam or steal CDs and buy heroin with the proceeds. We don’t witness the preceding days of wine and roses, since when we meet them, Jude (David Dastmalchian) and Bobbie (Kim Shaw) are already living on the street—in the Olds, actually—and shooting up in diner bathrooms. But they speak of their respectable middle-class backgrounds and display enough humor to suggest they weren’t born into this grind.
Addiction dramas tend to unfold along formulaic lines, and Animals is no exception. It does have grit, and it feels rooted in crummy details that lend authenticity. (The film’s publicity discreetly suggests that screenwriter Dastmalchian drew upon his own experiences.) Director Collin Schiffli takes a fittingly intimate approach—the film isn’t artful, in the way of Gus Van Sant’s superb Drugstore Cowboy, but Schiffli does get something haunting going in the vacant Chicago streets and the rapport of the two lead performers. The only other notable actor is John Heard, whose kindly night watchman reminds us that his volcanic performance in Cutter’s Way (1981) really was a lifetime ago. Less convincing is the movie’s attempt at paralleling the images of zoo animals with the bestial state inhabited by Jude and Bobbie during their time on the streets.
This kind of movie can boost the fortunes of little-known actors, and it should do that for Dastmalchian and Shaw. Her girl-next-door appearance suits the film’s everyday horror, and she has a great dead-eyed moment when Bobbie suggests that Jude’s best chance of stealing a woman’s purse is to threaten the unfortunate lady’s baby. Dastmalchian, whose ghostly appearance worked well as a Joker henchman in The Dark Knight, is freakishly thin and ghoul-eyed; he could play a 19th-century grave-robber, or maybe the Babadook. Throughout the film he wears an expression of dazed disbelief, just a beat or two behind the action. Whether shooting up in the Oldsmobile or mounting a staircase to score from an unfamiliar drug peddler, he looks as though he can’t understand—or remember—exactly how he got here.
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ANIMALS Runs Fri., May 15–Thurs., May 21 at Grand Illusion. Not rated. 90 minutes.
