Addiction and self-destruction are often tragically romanticized in pop culture. Even in cautionary tales, the phenomenon is given a slick sheen; think the scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta shoots up, or any random scene in Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas or Scarface. Harrison Houde’s Tight Lettuce is an unflinching and oftentimes obnoxious look at what it’s like to watch a loved one crash and burn in slow motion.
Joel is a man at a crossroads. He and his longtime girlfriend are preparing for a long-awaited road trip, and it feels like everything is coming together for him. Alas, just under the surface is a bubbling disaster waiting to boil over and ruin all of that: his father Bodo, and insufferable heroin addict that Joel seems equally addicted to trying to pull out of a downwards spiral even if it costs him everything else in life.
This film is a rough watch. Based on the true stories of star Dakota Daulby (who also cowrote the script) Tight Lettuce weaves between Harmony Korine style slice of life storytelling and a more earnest and traditional style of filmmaking. The film bills itself as a black comedy but pulls this off in an unorthodox manner. Rarely is any sort of humor present in the film: instead, the absurdity is based in how fucking awful Bodo is and the ludicrous lengths Joel goes in order to try and help him. There are no jokes in the film, no punchlines deadpanned in the face of the existential despair Joel is quietly facing: just a man punching the ticket to a front row seat to his father’s incessant self-destruction and the cringe inducing theatrics that result.
Dakota Daulby as Joel is fantastic, giving his character (who I presume to be the films avatar for himself?) a wide-eyed optimism that would be endearing if it wasn’t slowly strangling him to death. There’s a simmering rage under his strained smile, a fury justifiably born from his father’s inability to get his shit together. More than once I found myself rooting for Joel to bounce Bodo’s face off a coffee table. Emmanuel Bilodeau as Bodo is an absolute terror, a bumbling, braying, remorseless tornado of a man that destroys everything he touches and is seemingly incapable of taking an iota of responsibility. He oscillates between manic joy at the sight of his son and mother and bouts of equally manic despair when he (usually) doesn’t get his way. He offers only the slightest attempt at pretending to be an actual human instead of an insatiable maw looking only for the next fix. He is a nightmare of a person and more than once the film almost derails as Bilodeau pushes the audience to its limits with his grating bullshit.
Tight Lettuce a devastating depiction of familial dissolution in the face of addiction. It is unwavering and raw, with little no hope for a happy ending. There’s no nobility in this film, no value in the suffering Bodo inflicts upon the people who love him. There is nothing to be gained and it really is all meaningless. This is one of the more sincere films I’ve seen in some time, and while at times it approaches being earnest to a fault it feels blameless as it only seeks to show what others won’t show: that sometimes there is no pay off for doing the right thing and sometimes it is indeed all for nothing.
