Four Good Days (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

In the tradition of parent-child trauma-dramas that has spiked in recent years, Four Good Days pits the unlikely duo of Glenn Close and Mila Kunis together in a battle of wits, heart, and drugs. It doesn't quite reach levels unseen in the sub-genre, and it hits pretty much all the predictable milestones until its climax. Even in that, it sacrifices plumbing the depths of dramatic insight in favor of a few didactic stingers and a frantic attempt at kinetic energy otherwise lacking from the film. But those are only really criticisms if you feel that these character dramas -- rather, vehicles for stars -- actually require a plot with momentum. The creators of Ben is Back certainly did.

And yet this movie is only typically like that picture, or the similar Beautiful Boy. The major difference is, obviously, that this movie centers on and almost exclusively considers two women in impossible circumstances. Molly (an almost unrecognizable Kunis) has been through rehab no fewer than fourteen times, and so when she shows up at her mother's doorstep, we can see the history of pain, mistrust, and evaporated love between the two. This is largely because Deb is played by Close, a master of single-look character studies, whose guarded stillness in contrast with the daughter's intoxicated mannerisms tell us chapters worth of backstory in moments. Deb gives Molly anything but a warm welcome, and the two clearly have an understood series of tough boundaries, no doubt due to prior problems with stealing and lying and endangerment.

Deb's heart, however, won't have it, and as Molly sleeps outside on the cold stones, her mother paces indoors and watches her. She wants to believe her daughter is serious about getting clean this time, just as Molly is desperate to get inside the house. In the morning, Deb gets her coffee and promptly takes her to a detox facility. They both know the routine a little too well, and it's all a bit cold. Deb certainly doesn't want to get her hopes up, but she senses something might be different this time. Is it only her weary, wishful thinking?

After three days in the facility, Deb picks up Molly and the doctor makes a shocking offer: an opioid antagonist. Essentially a monthly shot that will prevent Molly from getting high -- which begs the question from ignorant me, won't an addict still try and then overdose after not getting high? -- both Deb and Molly leap at the opportunity. Or at least, they dare to hope this might finally work. The doctor says that Molly must stay clean four more days; that will allow her body to prepare for the shot. Deb brings Molly home with her, and so begins the bulk of the film. It's a cat-and-mouse game of suspicious stares, tense conversations, and forced attempts at normalcy. Suitably hard to watch, the anxious energy the film taps into is firmly rooted in the maternal home, a strange domestic thriller without action but with a lot of heightened emotions and deadly consequences.

The screenplay by director Rodrigo Garcia and reporter Eli Saslow (who wrote the 2016 article that inspired this film), despite often engaging in brutal and honest discussions as well as situations, never quite manages to balance itself. Drifting from heavy-handed and sometimes groan-inducing symbols (an unfinished puzzle in the garage) to otherwise brilliant moments of unspoken tenderness (Deb is an esthetician and provides her services to her daughter in their most intimate scene), the movie only really works because of the dedication and remarkable skills of its cast. Close defies powerful urges to either hang her daughter out to dry or embrace her while knowing she'll pay for it. And Kunis really shows us her mettle as a serious actress, balancing desperation with manipulative ferocity and then shifting to psychological and bodily agony; her unexpected gentle moments hit with the same force as her feral scenes.

The powers of hope and love and perseverance are what make this movie so haunting, memorable, and important. And while that could be said of any of its ilk, at least this one gives us some Glenn Close to put in our eyes. For as long as your eyes aren't pooling with tears.