Jus­tine

Lying eyes closed and neck-deep in the bath­tub, Jus­tine (Tal­lu­lah Had­don) is utter­ly numb to the world. The echo of her land­lord ham­mer­ing against her door for rent is just one of the many things she is try­ing to block out. Jamie Patterson’s touch­ing dra­ma looks inwards, inti­mate­ly fol­low­ing Justine’s bat­tles with alco­holism, dwin­dling hope and self-destruc­tive tendencies.

The film opens with a quote from ​‘Hero­ides’, a col­lec­tion of poems on the aggriev­ed suf­fer­ing of mytho­log­i­cal hero­ines, fore­shad­ow­ing the con­flict to come. It is the afore­men­tioned book that Jus­tine slips under her coat dur­ing her book­shop meet-cute with the ambi­tious Rachel (Sophie Reid). An accom­plice in the theft, Rachel is lured in by the dar­ing glint in Justine’s eyes and the pair quick­ly become attached at the hip. Though trou­ble aris­es when this serene les­bian set-up is com­pro­mised and Jus­tine is con­sumed by the threat of lone­li­ness, regress­ing to a search for hope at the bot­tom of an unmarked bot­tle of vodka.

Pat­ter­son has estab­lished him­self as a dis­tinc­tive voice in British queer cin­e­ma over the past few years, con­sis­tent­ly treat­ing queer­ness as a mul­ti­fac­eted expe­ri­ence. Fol­low­ing on from 2018’s Tucked, in which a vet­er­an drag queen shows a new­com­er the ways of the world, Jus­tine finds Pat­ter­son rumi­nat­ing on the heal­ing pow­er of queer love.

Hope is a theme that often res­onates through queer film, be it the hope for accep­tance, free­dom or love. But ini­tial­ly it is non-exis­tent in Justine’s case. Patterson’s cam­era lingers on her from a dis­tance, empha­sis­ing how her crav­ing for inti­ma­cy has become reliant on Rachel’s prox­im­i­ty. Dis­con­nect­ed in the absence of her lover, it is only with the arrival of Rachel that Jus­tine finds a rea­son to be hopeful.

The film is struc­tured around the fluc­tu­at­ing pat­terns of Justine’s volatile addic­tion, the ebb and flow of emo­tion­al inten­si­ty ground­ed by Haddon’s fierce per­for­mance. Both Rachel, with her kind­heart­ed sup­port, and Peach (Xavien Rus­sell), Justine’s only real friend, stand on the periph­ery as Pat­ter­son focus­es on Justine’s strug­gle with with­draw­al and relapse.

Jus­tine is at its best when Had­don and Reid’s rela­tion­ship comes to the fore, though these glim­mers of poet romance are occa­sion­al­ly trapped by abrupt tonal shifts. One such moment occurs in Justine’s ther­a­pists’ (Sian Reese-Williams) office, where the dia­logue bor­ders on cliché. How­ev­er, the film’s dili­gence in reject­ing queer aban­don­ment allows for a sin­cere por­tray­al of les­bian love where obsta­cles are pre­sent­ed in iso­la­tion from sex­u­al­i­ty, an exemp­tion that feels par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant.

Jus­tine is avail­able from March 5^th on Cur­zon Home Cinema.