Disturbing authenticity underscores drug drama 'Heaven'

The closely observed drama "Heaven Knows What" follows a homeless heroin user as she indulges in her twin obsessions: getting the next fix and winning the loyalty and affection of her on-again, mostly off-again boyfriend, a street punk named Ilya.

As part of a long line of drug-addiction parables, from "The Panic in Needle Park" to "Trainspotting" and "Requiem for a Dream," this portrait obeys many conventions of the genre, trying its best to plunge viewers into a world that, while seemingly liberated of bourgeois proprieties, is actually a narrowly constricted prison of desperation and need.

The repetitive, deadening routine of a drug addict's life makes "Heaven Knows What" kind of a bore - appropriately so - and filmmakers Ben and Joshua Safdie make it even less compelling by filming it in the same improvisational, naturalist style they employed for their 2009 feature, "Go Get Some Rosemary." The new film has a scuzzy authenticity that's enhanced by the Safdies' decision to cast both professional and nonprofessional actors in cardinal roles.

Caleb Landry Jones plays Ilya, a pasty, mean-spirited user of substances and people, who when the film opens challenges his erstwhile girlfriend, Harley, to prove her fealty by slitting her wrists and killing herself.

In other words, there's absolutely no rooting interest in Harley ending up with Ilya or, for that matter, with a rival for her affections, a dealer named Mike (played in a slightly more endearing turn by Buddy Duress). What elevates "Heaven Knows What" above other run-of-the-mill wallows in aimlessness and self-destructive compulsion is Arielle Holmes, the real-life, now recovering, junkie whom the Safdie brothers met in midtown Manhattan and fashioned this fact-based story around.

A fey, exotic-looking young woman, Harley/Arielle has natural screen charisma, even when she's doing nothing more interesting than shooting up in a flophouse or "spanging" (begging) on the New York streets. She has a creaturely, unpredictable quality that keeps "Heaven Knows What" moving forward, even when her character seems to be stuck, circling an invisible drain.

Equally commendable is Sean Price Williams' sensitive, expressive cinematography, which injects notes of soaring poetry into otherwise harrowing prose. An early scene, when Harley is admitted to Bellevue, is a small masterpiece of balletic silent filmmaking (the film's synthesizer-heavy musical score isn't nearly as effective). Later, when Harley and her crew are plying the avenues of the Upper West Side, Williams pulls the camera back to reveal two worlds literally passing by and through each other, mutually unseen and unacknowledged.

Such are the moments that save "Heaven Knows What" from being an ordinary junkies-in-love story and make it something extraordinary indeed.