Pure

One of the more difficult cinematic conceits to pull off is the point-of-view film, wherein one character is in every scene, and the audience is only given as much information as that one character would have. In Pure, the story is told from the point of view of Paul, a 10-year-old boy whose mother is a heroin addict. While mum does fun stuff like vomit up her guts and help her best friend to O.D., Paul befriends a local waitress (Keira Knightley) who introduces him to a boy’s two best friends: getting to second base and smoking rock. Neatly shot by John de Borman (Shall We Dance, The Full Monty), the film has an intimate quality and a muddy palette redolent of the inner city slum where Paul lives. Short and effective, director Gillies MacKinnon’s film shows what can be done on limited funds and with a small cast. One caveat: The characters’ accents were sometimes incomprehensible to my American ears.