Four Good Days

Big-screen tales of relapse and recovery are typically told through the addict. However, Four Good Days is most compelling when it examines that cycle from the perspective of the exasperated family.

The resulting character dynamics are intriguing in this intimate drama from director Rodrigo Garcia (Albert Nobbs), although some heavy-handed contrivances diminish the emotional impact.

Molly (Mila Kunis) is 31 and desperate when she shows up on the doorstep of her estranged mother, Deb (Glenn Close), begging for another chance. A junkie who’s been to rehab more than a dozen times, Molly is high again, but insists she really wants help this time.

With all trust eroded from such promises in the past, Deb’s skepticism quickly turns to hostility. “I don’t want to love her anymore,” she tells her husband (Stephen Root) in a particularly vulnerable moment.

Eventually, Deb’s maternal instincts prompt her to open the door and start the process all over again. After four days in a clinic, they learn of an experimental treatment for which Molly will be eligible if she can stay clean for a week.

That means she needs to avoid temptation for four days at home, under Deb’s cautiously optimistic supervision, which proves a challenge — mostly for the potential enabler. Aside from debating Molly’s sincerity, the women must sort through deep-rooted blame and trust issues as they try to repair their relationship.

Close and Kunis bring depth and complexity to the tenuous mother-daughter bond, generating some powerful character-driven moments while exploring the boundaries of parental love and responsibility. Still, Deb’s transition from angry and dismissive to nurturing and supportive feels too abrupt, and sequences where she spouts aspirational platitudes and swaps stories about happier times seem forced.

The screenplay by Garcia and journalist Eli Saslow, who wrote the 2016 Washington Post article upon which the film in inspired, doesn’t provide much fresh insight on the heels of other recent films — such as Beautiful Boy and Ben is Back — tackling similar subject matter.

The severity of Molly’s condition only occasionally rings true in Four Good Days, which instead starts to feel like a calculated series of emotional crescendos. In the process, its true-life subject matter is reduced to cliches.

Rated R, 99 minutes.