Christiane F.
Director: Ulrich Edel
Year Released: 1981
Rating: 2.0
A very young girl and her boyfriend become addicted to heroin and ruin their bodies and lives - the boy turns to hustling, the girl gives out hand/blow-jobs and they live in their own filth. It's basically a after-school special but with blood vomit and sadomasochism and close-ups of needles piercing flesh - it's trying really hard to shock you, and since you'll probably walk into this knowing it's an anti-drug statement (or at least I did by reading the synopsis), the result is two plus hours of degradation. The reasons for Christiane's turning to this life point towards peer pressure and also the lack of a stable family background - her father is M.I.A. and her sister left - but the film is focused solely on the destructive drug scene itself and doesn't care much about extraneous sociological or psychological exploration.
