Beau­ti­ful Boy – first look review

At the ten­der age of 22, Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met already has a lot to live up to. His con­fi­dent turn in Call Me by Your Name launched a thou­sand Twit­ter fan accounts and earned him an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion. Such suc­cess so young could be a poi­soned chal­ice – how do you fol­low up a per­for­mance as remark­able as that? The short answer: you head in the oppo­site direction.

Felix Van Groeningen’s Beau­ti­ful Boy, based on the mem­oirs of David Sheff and his son Nic, is a mil­lion miles from the sun-dap­pled piaz­zas of Cre­ma. Nic Sheff (Cha­la­met) is a meth addict, and he spi­rals away from his sup­port­ive fam­i­ly and fur­ther towards his reliance on drugs and alco­hol. His jour­nal­ist father David (Steve Car­rell) make sin­cere attempts to under­stand his son’s dis­ease, but risks push­ing him fur­ther away in the process as he tries to remain sup­port­ive while also push­ing Nic towards rehabilitation.

David’s desire to under­stand his son’s addic­tion through fac­tu­al research sees him turn to the famil­iar in search of the unknown. At the same time, the shame of being depen­dent on drugs haunts Nic in tan­dem with his desire for anoth­er fix. Cha­la­met flits between aching vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and frus­trat­ed mania, a whirl­wind of ener­gy and emo­tion that proves his star turn last year was no fluke. Cap­tur­ing the fragili­ty of an addict with­out stray­ing into manip­u­la­tive sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, it’s easy to root for him while also under­stand­ing the price of his destruc­tive tendencies.

Mean­while, Car­rel proves the per­fect foil, sto­ic as he fights his own feel­ings of fail­ure in being unable to help his son see that life is worth more than the tip of a nee­dle. The film is a del­i­cate­ly non-judge­men­tal insight into the spe­cif­ic hell that is meth addic­tion, but it also serves as a mov­ing fam­i­ly por­trait, exam­in­ing the intri­ca­cies of father-son rela­tion­ships and how famil­ial expec­ta­tions can shape a per­son. Van Groenin­gen appears less inter­est­ed in the caus­es of addic­tion than its effects. As Nic chas­es his next high, his fam­i­ly chase the ver­sion of him they knew before the drugs – and wres­tle to let go of the idea that lov­ing a per­son is enough to save their life.

Although the nar­ra­tive struc­ture itself – cycling through relapse and recov­ery repeat­ed­ly – is a lit­tle shaky, when viewed as a char­ac­ter study, Beau­ti­ful Boy is a tri­umph of per­for­mance and emo­tion­al nuance. Grainy flash­backs detail the Sheff family’s life before drugs, when infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties stretched out ahead of them. It’s the human cost of addic­tion which real­ly hits home, and in offer­ing no easy answers or trite sen­ti­ments, Beau­ti­ful Boy does jus­tice to both the peo­ple fight­ing this afflic­tion, and those doing every­thing in their pow­er to help.