Cotton Fever

Daniel Blake Schwartz reckons with the opioid epidemic in Massachusetts in his debut directorial feature Cotton Fever, a lean, no-nonsense drama that screens at the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg in Germany. He drew on his own experiences in recovery for this psychologically realistic and clear-eyed depiction of intertwined lives in the city of Chelsea, just across the Mystic River from Boston, which was expanded from a 2022 short of the same name, and won Best US Narrative Feature upon its world premiere at Tribeca.

There is a vein of refreshing introspection underneath the chaotic action of Cotton Fever, which is devoid of the lurid sensationalism that often goes hand-in-hand with drugs and crime on screen, as it shows the stark tunnel vision of the daily grind of addiction. The demon of need is a relentless, painful destroyer of all it touches for the protagonists, who are drawn with no glamourisation or judgment. A quiet sensitivity keeps returning us to an ever-so-fragile humanity at their core through small gestures of tenderness that never flatten into sentimentality, even as their efforts to go clean and dreams of stability come unstuck time and again, and they’re thrown back into the same destructive routines. These boil their existences down to an empty, deadpan absurdity as they must find money to score, rinse and repeat, to sustain habits that can run into hundreds of dollars a day, while avoiding the police, not to mention the ever-present risk of overdose.

This is a US indie snapshot of life on the streets and in and out of rehab that is at a more dialled-down volume than films of lives gripped by addiction that offer a wilder ride like the Safdies’ frenetic and grimier Heaven Knows What from just over a decade ago, but it’s this unfussy, measured clarity that drives its socially engaged credibility. While childhood photos appear at several junctures to hint how youthful innocence can easily slip off track, there is no melodrama or grandiose framing here. Reductive answers are avoided, with hope located instead within simple moments of levity and connection, and the warm release of a compassionate touch or a fleeting, shared laugh. In this, it is more in line with the empathetic sensibility and sense of mission of the similarly themed Union County by Adam Meeks, also shown at Mannheim-Heidelberg.

Kyle Gallner and Sosie Bacon effectively anchor a busy, inter-crossing and realistically diverse cast of characters as James, a low-level drug dealer desperately trying to get clean from heroin so he can support a family, and Dina, his eight-months pregnant partner, who is also in recovery and has been doing shifts as a cleaner. The opening sequences set out the predicament in clear strokes: anxious and on-edge, Kyle is mid-way through an intake interview at a treatment center, but before it’s over, amid a distraction in the hall, he’s out and back running clandestine transactions on the street, storing his stash in his cheeks. When Dina finds needles in the house, and is soon sectioned and in rehab herself, whether they will make it to a secure life, either apart or together, becomes the drama’s biggest open question, and its emotional pull.

Also powered by strong casting is the narrative thread with Sam (Chabely Ponce) and Manny (Ari Mora), a lesbian couple deeply in love who have been sleeping rough. When the cheques they were depending on stop coming, the all-consuming, physical hunger for a high means callous crimes are rendered possible. Their arc is messier, more tragic and uncompromising in its glimpse of how addiction is frequently rooted in earlier family trauma, and carries incalculable collateral damage. Attention is also given to those giving their time to fight the opioid epidemic, through the character of Akil (Ronald Emile), a street outreach worker with a vulnerable brother.

In keeping with the film’s to-the-point honesty, D.O.P. Tom Acton Fitzgerald avoids flashiness, employing muted, washed-out palate of greys, olives and browns, and close-in camerawork that hones in on faces in the compressed realities of stress and a riptide of reduced options.

Director, writer: Daniel Blake Schwartz
Editor: Adam Dicterow
Cinematographer: Tom Acton Fitzgerald
Producers: Phil Keefe, Eveline Levin, Daniel Brandt, Cole Eckerle, Dane Eckerle, Daniel Blake Schwartz
Cast: Kyle Gallner, Sosie Bacon, Chabely Ponce, Ronald Emile, Ari Mora, Colton Osorio, Sam Quartin, Melvin Douglas
Composer: Michael Sempert
Production companies: AC3 Media (US), Bad Grey (US)
Sales: Range Media
Venue: Mannheim-Heidelberg
In English
89 minutes