Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Clean
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 28 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 13 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by:
Olivier Assayas
Malachy Martin
Sarah Perry
Directed by: Olivier Assayas
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 12, 2005
DVD: July 18, 2006
Running Time: 110 minutes, Color
Origin: Canada / France / UK
Summary
RATING: R
Starring Maggie Cheung, Mary Moulds, Nick Nolte, Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar, Martha Henry, and James Johnston
A desperate woman with a drug problem seeks to put her life in order to regain contact with her little boy.
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Can a misguided adult start afresh with a new set of values and priorities? This ambitious drama, directed by one of France's most resourceful filmmakers, explores that crucial question in depth and detail.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
A superb effort by a first-rank director, and manna from heaven for Cheung fans.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Cheung is one of the finest actresses working today, an expressive, lustrous beauty capable of plumbing a boundless range of emotional hues. This is the greatest performance she's given to date.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Beautifully shot and cut, written with a visceral aversion to cliche, deftly skirting sentimentality, sensationalism and simplicity, it continually surprises, engages and satisfies. For a small, unheralded film, it's a knockout.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
One of the most emotionally honest movies about drug addiction ever made.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Emily is played by Maggie Cheung with such intense desperation that she won the best actress award at Cannes 2004.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Clean, director Olivier Assayas' spellbinding study of a junkie trying to get her life in order so she can reclaim custody of her child, avoids the pitfalls, brilliantly.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Nolte brings this movie a piece of his heart, and grants us peace.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The emotional truthfulness of Clean enters into our bloodstreams with its muted vigor, and we find ourselves getting hooked by this tale of getting unhooked.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
Clean is one of those movies that's slightly off the mark in ways that are hard to put a finger on, but it is shot so soulfully and features such beautiful performances that it's easy to forgive the occasional false note.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Albrecht brings out a side of Mr. Nolte rarely seen on the screen, and he gives a deep and touching portrayal of a haggard, beleaguered older man.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Not your average divorce gift: Clean's writer-director Olivier Assayas created the role of recovering rock-world druggie Emily Wang for his ex-wife, art-house/action-pic royalty Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love).
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Cheung and Nick Nolte seem unlikely co-stars, but co-star they do in Clean, giving gritty performances under the direction of Frenchman Olivier Assayas.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
When these two powerhouse performers come together, a rather predictable tale ignites with surprising force.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
The film gets its distinction from the performances by Cheung and Nolte, whose scenes together are suffused with loss and unexpected mutual compassion.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Clean has the same mixture of human tenderness and borderline-silly Eurochic that marks Wenders films like "Until the End of the World."
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves
Clean is above all a movie about making peace with uncertainty and doubt and living with the aftershocks of the choices we make. Not the easiest task, but it may be what redeems us in the end.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
The rough, exposed emotional candor of Cheung's singing voice carries into her performance.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
It's the moral journey of Nolte's character that is the real story in Clean, but Assayas instead focuses on the manipulative habits of an addict, resulting in a mannered study of narcissism and self-pity.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Hitting the ground in his ultra-naturalistic mode, Assayas only uncages his star's formidable smile once or twice and never demands our empathy, making Clean a uniquely pungent portrait of dependent personalities and the strain they put on the social weave.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
It's not so much a movie in three acts as three movies stuffed into a single casing, and often showing the strain.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Maggie Cheung, who was in Assayas's Irma Vep, plays Emily with a semi-detached feeling--observing the role as much as portraying it. The chief pleasure in the picture is Nick Nolte's performance as the boy's paternal grandfather.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle John McMurtrie
An unflinching look at the ravages of substance abuse, and it's also a sobering redemptive tale.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Cheung can't make the woman very interesting in her own right--the most compelling performance here is Nolte's.
Read Full Review >Variety David Rooney
Dramatically pallid and unconvincing. Despite being written for her, the director's "Irma Vep" muse Maggie Cheung seems oddly miscast here and is ill-served by an emotionally underpowered screenplay that rarely gets beneath the surface of the character's problems.
Read Full Review >Empire Alan Morrison
Bit of a mediocre drama from writer-director Assayas despite some good turns, not least from Nick Nolte and Beatrice Dalle.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it a9:
"Clean" might be a film in code about the most infamous of all rock-and-roll widows, but I hope not, since Allison Anders' "Sugar Town" had already done a fine job of eviscerating(again, in code) this woman, who nevertheless, love her or hate her, arguably served the important and underrated function of muse for the troubled drug-addled musician. Emily Wang(Maggie Cheung) is also universally hated by the music industry for fueling her husband's appetite for poison, but like her real-life counterpart, she played a part in her husband's artistic triumphs by incident; by just simply being there(without Love in Kurt Cobain's life, maybe he might've simply been a Black Francis-wanna-be). The fact that Emily is Chinese makes her unpopularity complicated since the hatred she's encumbered with might be a two-fold attack(the public's distaste for Emily's heroin addiction could be a cover-up for the real issue at hand; she's Asian), which the filmmaker smartly leaves to our imagination; the only mention about Emily's ethnicity comes from her uncle. "Clean" elects to keep Emily's withdrawal from heroin largely off-screen(leave the writhing in agony to Darin Aronofsky); the film is more concerned with her redemption. A filmmaker with a heavy hand would demonstrate a recovering addict's unfitness to be a parent by staging a relapse. What this director does is brilliant; he casts doubt about Emily's ability to exercise sound parental judgment by the mode of transportation she supplies for her son. "Clean", led by Cheung's glamorous, yet somehow gritty performance, has us rooting for her every step of the way to a recovering junkie's nirvana.
Marc K. gave it a9:
Too bad this wasn't released in America until 2006, and too bad when it was released, it came and went. This is one of the best 2006 releases in America. Maggie Cheung clearly deserved the Best Actress award at Cannes for this performance. While she's the reason to see this movie, the plot is also well-done, and is a more positive piece than most of the films in this genre.
Maura C. gave it a6:
Interesting and meditative movie. Visually very beautiful, but could have used a little more depth when it came to the characters. The story was overall fairly touching, but sometimes seemed a bit meandering and pointless. Okay movie that could have used some more work to make it great.
Bert H. gave it a9:
Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte were both brilliant. An uplifting story of redemption and of just not giving up.
Jeremy G. gave it a1:
A real snoozer. Most of director Assayas' films suffer from languorous pacing and this is no exception. Poorly written and directed, the film features a bland performance by all the leads, except for Nick Nolte and Beatrice Dalle, who are the only two who make an impression. Full of cliches about drug-addicted musicians and the people who love and loathe them. The only redeeming aspects of this are the performances of Nolte and Dalle, and a decent soundtrack, which kept us from falling asleep.
Maurice F. gave it a6:
Can a misguided adult start afresh with a new set of values and priorities? This ambitious drama, directed by one of France's most resourceful filmmakers, explores that crucial question in depth and detail. And not your average divorce gift: Clean's writer-director Olivier Assayas created the role of recovering rock-world druggie Emily Wang for his ex-wife, art-house/action-pic royalty Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love). But it's not so much a movie in three acts as three movies stuffed into a single casing, and often showing the strain. It a complex but cold tale.
