Watching people self-destruct is not my idea of a good time. "Dope Sick Love" followed two drug addict couples around New York as they filled their days and nights A.) trying to get drugs B.) trying to get money for drugs or C.) using the drugs they just scored. It was a sad existence and it was depressing to watch.
Dope Sick Love
2005
Action / Documentary
Dope Sick Love
2005
Action / Documentary
Keywords: drug addiction
Plot summary
When you're a junkie, the money comes and goes--and so does the high. Do relationships stand a chance among addicts? Meet Matt & Tracy and Sebastian & Michelle--two New York City couples looking for love, and fixes, in all the wrong places. This startlingly candid documentary follows these two drug-addicted couples as they eke out a bare-bones existence on the streets of New York, desperately trying to score cash to pay for their next fix. The result is an unflinching, captivating examination of the human need for love and escape--and the virtual impossibility of finding anything more than temporary solace.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
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Sad and Depressing
First rate doc
Tracy and Matt, Michelle and Sebastian: these are the two couples whose lives of addiction, crime, and squalor are brilliantly captured in this raw and honest HBO documentary. They're in turns petulant, charming, repulsive, astonishingly stupid, and dedicated: to the drugs and to each other. They're also each very different: Matt is a working class boy who clearly revels in his naughtiness, whilst prep school dropout Tracy supports the couple with Western Union money from her moneybags father, who makes a surprisingly sympathetic cameo towards the end of the film. Meanwhile widow Michelle (whose hubby died of an OD) earns her daily bread by posing as an NYPD vice cop willing to cut her would-be Johns a deal to avoid prison time, and sad sack companion Sebastian lives off the proceeds. You'll be pulled into their stories and will wish the film went on for twice as long. Unlike most documentaries of this kind, there's no coda providing us with an update about their progress (can Matt and Tracy really keep that Brooklyn apartment? Will Michelle go back to Bellevue for more detox? And can Sebastian become any more pathetic?). As a result, the film seems incomplete, but that may have been the point. Essential viewing, as long as you aren't completely averse to scenes of people shooting up.
Heroin users on the streets of NYC
"Dope Sick Love" is a really remarkable documentary made for HBO about two pairs of heroin addicted lovers roaming the streets of NYC. I managed to catch it one night by accident and found it absolutely mesmerizing. There is no narration and we never see any interviews with the subjects, the camera just follows them around, like a third eye, completely detached. The people being followed don't even seem aware that they're being filmed! (or, at least, they don't seem to care). The footage is amazingly candid. Some of the most candid I've ever seen. This is as real as it gets. The nuts and bolts of what its like to be on the street and addicted to heroin. We watch them score dope, shoot it, make up, hustle, and even impersonate cops to rob people, and about a million other tiny details that less observant documentary filmmakers would leave out.
Some of the footage is truly horrifying. Like watching one guy frantically searching for fix he lost. I found myself praying that he would find it, just so that his misery would temporarily end. And when he does find it, the guy literally dances in the street.
The cyclical nature of drug addiction becomes very apparent while watching this. EVERYTHING is about getting the next score to these folks, yet the next score seems to be well worth the immense trouble they go through.
I would love to get a copy of this, if anyone knows where it is available. Highly recommended, if you can catch it on HBO.