Tainted (2009)

• 80%
• 2009
• Drama
• Fantasy
• Loredana Gasparotto
• Kerri Ford
• Nahuel Gorosito
• Chandler Gregoire

It is the story of a teenage girl and her one night journey into the underworld of drug use. Janis is a lonely and disoriented Latino sixteen year old girl, who lives with her divorced mother and her brother in Washington Heights, New York. She begins hanging out with Deborah, a classmate from her dance class, who, one night, introduces her to an "alternative "and "hippy" crowd of other teenagers. They all hang out together in the Lower East Side, where they use drugs and listen to rock and trip hop music to spend their weekends. Janis, intrigued, can't help getting involved. She also meets Rick and his friend Bill, two seventeen year old heroin addicts. She feels attracted to Rick right away and follows him around on a wild run in the East Village. During the course of the night Janis notices that Bill is withdrawing and needs a heroin shot. In trying to rescue him and overcome her sense of isolation with the group she tries it as well. The result is a strange and surreal ride that takes her closer to Rick, but leaves her, at the end, feeling guilty and in part ashamed for what happened. Afterwards, going home alone, she is left with a sense of deeper emotional confusion and while she is going back to her neighborhood she notices for the first time, with eyes wide open, all the misery that surrounds her as she has never seen it before.