Film Review: MDMA Is A Cautionary Tale of Ecstasy
Visually, MDMA is gorgeous. Making every scene feel like a piñata of color being bashed by the bats of human self-destructiveness. Every portrait is so clear, in contrast, to the moral murkiness that befalls this tale’s characters. Based on the true story of writer and director Angie Wang, the film shows how hard work and honesty can only get you so far: materially.
Does power corrupt or do people corrupt power? In MDMA, this question seems prevalent as Angie falls from the grace of being a straight-laced, straight A student, and rises to become one of the West Coast’s largest distributors of Ecstasy. Naturally, her fall and rise is a process, but begins when she enters a luxurious, San Franciso university. Frankly, there is nothing like being a “scholarship baby”, at a prestigious college, to see how much you do not have and how little merit matters in getting it. This realization hits Angie like a dumbbell after growing up in struggling, working class household. Yet, it becomes magnified when her financial aid is cut.
It is crazy how a dream can be ended, and how your road to prosperous success can be cut because it was only shown to you by someone’s charity and not their actual kindness. After all, kindness has no limit but charity can have donation cap. Hence, the film does well to show that Angie is smart and ambitious, which is why this cut hits her so harshly. She grew up in an abusive home, and worked so hard to get “somewhere,” but the “powers that be” still crushed her. Yet, in the drug world, Angie becomes “the power,” and actress Annie Q shows her transition from meek, bright-eyed girl into a “Queenpin” with handfuls of heart and barrels of ego.
Ambition is a good thing, but when unbalanced or swirled with fear it can become the food of narcissism. Between her relationships with Alex (her malleable, frat boyfriend played by Pierson Fode) and Francesca Eastwood’s well-meaning, party girl, Jeanine, she becomes addicted to her “X goddess” status. For however much she may use of sex, drugs, and money, it is her access to all of them that is driving her wild. It is as if her life has turned on a switch, and now she can go from the emptiness of poverty into luxurious mansions and items. Unfortunately, she does not have too many people to hand her clarity, especially because everyone else is feeding their own demons.
For Angie Wang, power blurs the goodness in her, which can be seen with Tommy (Scott Keiji Takeda) and Bree (Aalyrah Caldwell). Both actors play their characters like the candles in Angie Wang’s growing darkness; turning her life into a cautionary tale. While the film ends with hope for better days, it is Angie’ dive into such dark ones that will make audiences feel and wonder over how hard it is for the poor stay morally righteous when lowliness can be more lucrative. MDMA Comes Out In Theaters On September 14.
