This mostly unamusing British comedy sets off with a framing device that sees heroin addict Charlie (George Webster) explaining recent events in his life to a rapt therapist (Alice Lowe). Clever-clogs viewers might assume that this is the setup for some unreliable-narrator shenanigans and a twist or two at the end, and you’d be right. But the twist – more of an ugly snarl – is unearned by the setup, and feels like the product of lazy screenwriting, devoid of psychological insight. That sort of fits the cheerful, jejune amorality of this film, which treats addiction as if it’s all a bit of a lark and that the therapeutic community – like the woman who runs Charlie’s self-help group – is way too judgmental, man.
Charlie, you see, is one of the movie heroin addicts: lovely dewy skin and nice hair, just a bit of a rebel and a clown. He only attends group therapy so he can meet his dealer (Joe Wilkinson), who is disloyally moving to Winchester – a change of situation that Charlie sees only in terms of how inconvenient that will be for him. (At least that’s credible junkie behaviour.) Then, one week, in walks a beautiful woman with a fancy insect tattoo on her chest (Skye Lourie) who never gets a name in the film. It turns out this is an all-purpose addiction meeting because “tattoo girl” (as she’s called in the end credits) is a sex addict, and soon enough she and Charlie are knocking boots.
Although a monologue establishes that she only became a sex addict because she was abused by a psychiatrist as a child, the film (again) seems to think this sort addiction is mostly just hedonistic fun, and which makes Tattoo Girl and Charlie perfect for each other. The only problem is that Tattoo Girl has an abusive if phenomenally well-endowed porn-star boyfriend (Benedict Garrett), so our young lovers hatch a plan to rip him off, which involves buying a gun from a shady dealer known as the American (Patrick Bergin).
As the story goes on, the protagonists become even more feckless, selfish and dislikable, although writer-director Jamie Patterson seems intent on showing them as two wisecracking, crazy mixed-up kids the audience is meant to root for. It’s a bit repugnant, but even so one has to give props to some of the supporting players here. Wilkinson delivers a droll, filthy monologue and Joss Porter is genuinely funny as Charlie’s coked-up call-centre colleague with marital problems.
• God’s Petting You is previewing the Duke of York’s, Brighton on 15 April, and Genesis, London on 17 April, and is released on 21 April in UK cinemas.
