Down to the Bone

Irene lives in a small town in upstate New York. She is a checkout cashier, has two children, and her marriage is effectively over. There is something nobody knows: she has been using cocaine for years and believes she has it under control. Over the winter she stops having it under control. She goes into treatment. There she meets Bob, a nurse who is also trying to stay clean. The two hold onto each other, and what they hold onto pulls them both down. Debra Granik directs; a hundred and four minutes, with Vera Farmiga as Irene. It is Granik's first feature; it took the directing award at Sundance in 2004, and Farmiga won a special jury prize for acting. Six years later Granik would make Winter's Bone.