THE TORONTO STAR  March 7, 2000

 Sumptuous images of life and death with heroin

 Smack

 A 16 mm experimental film by Steve Sanguedolce having its world premiere tonight at Artword, 75 Portland St. (one block east of Bathurst St. south of King St.) presented by The Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.  Admission is $5. * * * *

By Peter Goddard

ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

For weeks now, brothers Zed and Sybil find they’ve been going to an awful lot of funerals for friends who have died of a drug overdose.  But only Zed sees the irony of going to the wakes that follow, where the friend of the deceased celebrate with more  crack and heroin.

At one party, Zed, the unseen narrator, explains how Sybil overdosed.  Sybil turned blue and dropped to the floor, not breathing.  After pounding his chest, massaging his heart and applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Zed dragged his brother into a cold shower, bringing him around just in time.

Then, groggy, Sybil smiled.  That was “the big one,” he figures.

Yes, Zed reflects later, “It was those times that brought us closer together.’

Hey, that’s so cool you know these guys will soon be as cold as ice.

Since Steve Sanguedolce’s remarkable home movie, Smack  describes itself as “part-documentary, part-fiction,” it’s impossible to know to what degree Zed’s narration is factual--or for that matter, whether there is a “Zed”  (Sanguedolce’s press bumpf insists the subjects talk about “their own lives.”)

But truth is not the issue for the 41 year-old Toronto-based director.  It’s memory, particularly familial memory. (Sweetblood,  the English translation of the family name, is also the title of a 1993 film Sanguedolce constructed from family photos.)

The narrative threading itself through Smack’s  sumptuous images - hand-painted on film by Sanguedolce - are about the hair-raising, disgusting, even scatological adventures the brothers get into.  But to Zed, nothing is farther out than third brother Antonio’s discovery of religion.  Antonio is as hooked on religion as Sybil is on heroin, Zed thinks.

The bright, cheery, nursery-room colours Sanguedolce has used only make the awful adventures seem all the more horrific.

The images take you along, even if the brothers’ story says not to go there.

Smack  is a beautiful film.  It’s an audacious one, too.  Sanguedolce risked a lot letting it reach 55 minutes in length.  But it works.