Other relics of a lost age include the landline mentioned above and a genuine pay phone later on. I wonder how long they had to look for a pay phone, as I thought those were extinct as of 2014. It is similar to how the style of some early 80s movies aged rapidly on the shelf before their mid-80s release. You also need to be patient with several weak comedy sequences that litter the plot line. The humor barely cracks amusing, and sometimes seems like a broken sitcom. Patrick comes off like a dick, and the guys he interacts with are dicks. While I appreciate that this may be the real situation in Los Angeles, it almost made me bail on the movie before it started really cooking. Once the simmer begins, you can see the point of dumping all those dicks in the soup.
What makes Through Rosie Colored Glasses so riveting is the dramatic sections featuring Rosie navigating within her sphere of self-destruction. It is in these places that Linsley’s script rings true instead of canned. Due to the heroin wave that engulfed the US that occurred between the pill plague and the fentanyl calamity, many people knew someone or have themselves been junkies.
“The slow peeling away of personality by the hard drugs occurs in small steps that are recreated here with precision.”
The slow peeling away of personality by the hard drugs occurs in small steps that are recreated here with precision. The secret weapon in the stash is the knockout performance by Fidelman. A lesser actress would have given us a character type of an addict with hackneyed gestures. Fidelman delivers a stunning portrayal of a real woman being devoured by shadows. We get to know Rosie as a person instead of an accumulation of her mistakes, an elusive quality that rarely makes it onscreen. Linsley also has a satisfying arc of going from complete dick to Hollywood loaf, a classic movie move that works fantastically here. That Linsley is able to make the final denouement so touching is flat-out remarkable, as it is so real-life but also stuff from movies.
Yes, there are some clunker minutes that need to be tolerated as the good stuff kicks in, but what is good here is totally hypnotizing. It may have taken some time to arrive, but Through Rosie Colored Glasses has a very intriguing perception to share.
"…delivers a stunning portrayal of a real woman being devoured by shadows"
