Smoot, Mark

A recovering addict and a grieving mother follow a self-destructive path in this bleak, understated drama.Grief, as many filmmakers learn the hard way, is incredibly difficult to portray onscreen. That exhaustive, full-body sorrow, what Saul Bellow called “the rock depth of heavy trouble,” simply doesn’t come across in shots of mournful faces or sad-looking actors staring vacantly into the middle distance. “No Future” encounters this problem early and often. This grim, ponderous drama, about how the family and friends of an addict cope with his death by overdose, adopts a relentlessly solemn tone befitting its subject. But in flattening everything into a single shade of funereal gray, “No Future” has none of the ineffable, multifaceted complexity of life.Will (Charlie Heaton) is a recovering addict clinging to a precarious bit of newfound stability. When Chris (Jefferson White), a friend from the old days also in recovery, shows up on his doorstep one evening, hoping for some kind of communion, Will reluctantly spurns him, preferring to leave the past behind. Chris later overdoses, and Will, overcome with guilt and grief, visits Chris’s mother, Claire (Catherine Keener), whose need for consolation and comfort drives them into a romantic relationship.Keener, a wonderful actress, finds the most depth in her depiction of bereavement: she plays the anguished mother with a dead-eyed emptiness, hollowed out and broken, that is more nuanced than anything the directors Andrew Irvine and Mark Smoot are otherwise able to achieve. The strange, seering intensity of Claire’s hopelessness rings true; the film’s uniform, superficial misery does not.No FutureNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More