The trouble with alcoholics is that, while they think they are having tremendous fun, they tend to bore the pants off everyone else.
In James Ponsoldt’s film, Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Charles (Aaron Paul) are a young couple married to booze as well as each other. After swigging something strong in the car first, Kate, a junior school teacher, has to pretend the reason she vomits in the classroom is because she is pregnant.
Eventually she decides enough is enough and goes to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Her mother (Mary Kay Place) spitefully calls them “assholes anonymous”, but she perseveres.
Her struggle continues, through a fall from grace between meetings despite the help she gets from the school vice principal (Nick Offerman) who rather fancies her. Finally, she decides to leave the still-drinking Charles.
Winstead never has to resort to melodrama, giving the impression of a jolly young woman afflicted by demons she can’t control on her own.
But Paul’s character doesn’t have enough to do and the relationship between the two is the least effective in a film that’s good on general atmosphere, totally sincere and not too sentimental.
