Christiane F.

A European box-office phenomenon on the strength of aghast multi-media exposure for the true confessions tale of a 13-year-old girl turned hooker to support her heroin habit. As Awful Warnings go, it's way above the Reefer Madness class, though its lurid drama-doc sheen - and insistent use of David Bowie's Heroes - create some ambivalent tensions between medium and message. Finally, the film's very relentlessness (whether calculated or naive) ensures a 'correct' gut reaction to the spectacle of a near-zomboid alternation of fix and hustle: there's only so much cautionary misery you want rubbed into your face, and this fruitfully goes beyond. Cursory on causes, but devastating on effects.