‘Heaven Knows What’: A junkie obsessively in love
After several meetings, the filmmakers — Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie — decided to shelve the film they were planning and star Holmes in a drama based on her own life.
Instead it depicts her life on the streets, begging for money, shooting up, flopping in various apartments and houses, and getting into crazy stoned arguments with crazy stoned people.
The structure is loose, almost nonexistent, but crafted around Harley ( Holmes) and her mad obsession with Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones), a goth-looking, leather-clad junkie with a sadistic magnetism.
In the beginning of the film, he encourages Harley to commit suicide by slitting her wrist with a razor blade.
The very fact that Harley does slit her wrists makes her the kind of person that movies are built around.
If Harley’s love for Ilya were in any way worthwhile — or interesting for its not being worthwhile — “Heaven Knows What” would have a fighting chance of engaging the audience for the full 94 minutes.
[...] he seems like a joke, and her love for him a manifestation of her impaired state, thus impossible to take seriously as anything of real importance.
[...] it’s just a portrait of emptiness, but it feels a lot like the real thing.