Overdose

Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia, this 1983 Spanish film was the most successful entry in the country's cine quinqui movement and the director's biggest commercial hit. In Bilbao, two young men from opposite worlds, Paco, whose father commands a Civil Guard unit, and Urko, whose father is a Basque leftist nationalist politician, are best friends and secretly heroin addicts. To fund their habit they deal, steal and turn violent, attempts at treatment end in relapse, and it culminates in a robbery that leaves two people dead and then in Urko's fatal overdose. The film's sharpest idea is this: the deepest political divide in the Basque Country, between state authority and Basque nationalism, becomes meaningless once both families recognize their sons' addiction, and it puts them at the same table. Cine quinqui emerged from the gap between the end of the Franco dictatorship and the settling of democracy, depicting the unemployment of working class suburbs and a devastating heroin epidemic, and its films were typically cast with non professionals pulled off the street. It was among the most commercially successful Spanish films of its era while being jeered by critics. José Luis Manzano, who played Paco, never escaped heroin himself and died in 1992 at twenty nine. Who it's for: Anyone curious about Spain's transition years and hard edged exploitation cinema shot on the street. Who it's not for: Not for viewers disturbed by graphic depictions of drug use, since the film softens none of it.