Life Is Hot In Cracktown

This 2009 film, written and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo, and adapted from his own book of short stories of the same name, Life is Hot in Cracktown, is a powerful, dirty, confronting and sometimes disturbing story about a group of inter-connected characters living in a Manhattan neighbourhood affected by crack-cocaine.

As we enter the lives of these characters, we are thrown head first into a world of poverty and addiction. Similar themes have been explored in films before, but what Life is Hot in Cracktown does not do, is glamourize these people’s lives, nor does it over dramatize. If anything, critics have accused Giovinazzo’s film for over-sanitizing the issues around poverty and addiction which his book very openly confronted.

Life is Hot in Cracktown throws us into the intermingling lives of a dozen or so characters; opening with 14 year old Romeo (Evan Ross), leading a girl off behind a disused warehouse so he and his friends can gang rape her –testing who amongst his mates is up to it.

None of the other characters are as callously violent as Romeo, and each time he came on screen, I felt a chilling sensation down my spine. It’s a confronting introduction, but somehow that energy wavers off and most of the stories in Life is Hot in Cracktown seem mediocre in comparison. The exception is Marybeth (Kerry Washington) and Benny (Desmond Harrington); a pre-op transsexual prostitute and her boyfriend; two drug addicted lovers trying to stay together in a tough environment.

Benny feels conflicted about being with Marybeth, the pressure evident in several scenes including one in which he gets high as she sells herself around the corner, talking out loud, he wonders if he’s gay for being with her.In a scene later in the film, Marybeth visits her friend, a transsexual who we’d seen earlier with resent breast implants. Opening the door, now evidently dressed as a he, he tells her that his mother called, he can’t do this anymore, before shutting the door in her face. It’s a reminder for Marybeth that this is a lonely road she’s walking; one in which many don’t have the courage to continue along.

We watch as everyone’s lives in ‘Cracktown’ descend into turmoil; the highs and lows and the discrimination, violence and dependency which rules them. I’ve never been as scared of a kid, as I was by Romeo, played to disturbing affect by Evan Ross. Granted he’s older than he looks, but the performance was none the less chilling.

The moments that we see Manny (Victor Rasuk) and Concetta (Shannyn Sossamon) together cradling their infant son, are both touching and hopeful; Lara Flynn Boyle, brilliantly sardonic in Happiness, makes an appearance as a hardened prostitute, while Desmond Harrington’s Benny is the devoted yet somewhat conflicted ‘husband’ of Marybeth –a dangerous relationship to be in when you live in Cracktown.

The standout for me however is the impressive and daring Kerry Washington, who continues to surprise with her dedication and depth. Her Marybeth is a woman who was betrayed, in that she was born a man. As she sells her body on the street, and itches for her next fix, it’s when Marybeth sees Benny, in hospital, unconscious, that she is at her most powerful and at her most vulnerable. Layered and nuanced, Washington’s Marybeth is the humanity at the centre of Life is Hot in Cracktown and her performance floored me. Honest, raw, beautiful, and gut wrenchingly sad.

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