Downloading Nancy is a 2008 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Johan Renck

Johan Renck

Bo Johan Renck is a Swedish director of music videos, TV and film. He is an occasional recording artist using the moniker Stakka Bo.-Music videos:...

, starring Maria Bello

Maria Bello

Maria Elena Bello is an American actress and singer known for her appearances in the movies Coyote Ugly, The Jane Austen Book Club, Permanent Midnight, Thank You for Smoking, A History of Violence, Payback, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. For television she is known for her role as Dr...

 and Jason Patric

Jason Patric

Jason Patric is an American film, television and stage actor. He may be best-known for his roles in the films The Lost Boys, Sleepers, Your Friends & Neighbors, Narc, The Losers and Speed 2: Cruise Control. His father was actor/playwright Jason Miller...

. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival

2008 Sundance Film Festival

The 2008 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 17, 2008 to January 27 in Park City, Utah. It was the 24th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was In Bruges and the closing night film was CSNY Déjà Vu.-Films:...

, where it was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize.

Plot

From the press release:

Dead to everything except painful pleasure, an unhappily married woman, Nancy, leaves her silent husband behind to meet a fellow broken soul in search of a final release. Louis is a quiet dispenser of pleasure, Nancy is the mechanism set to self-destruct. Beyond therapy, beyond medication, beyond feeling, Nancy is left with the only coping mechanism she ever knew, violence. Together, they journey through the darkest recesses of the human mind before finding solace in each other's arms. For Nancy, solace can only come from death, for Louis, it can only come from Nancy.



Nancy's husband Albert is left with an empty house, filled with only the memory of his wife's unbearable loneliness and a final, endless understanding of how bleak life could be. The relationship between Louis and Nancy straddles the thin line between pleasure and pain, crossing over into a film that is as emotional as it is unnerving.

Cast

• Maria Bello
  Maria Bello
  Maria Elena Bello is an American actress and singer known for her appearances in the movies Coyote Ugly, The Jane Austen Book Club, Permanent Midnight, Thank You for Smoking, A History of Violence, Payback, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. For television she is known for her role as Dr...
  
   – Nancy Stockwell
• Jason Patric
  Jason Patric
  Jason Patric is an American film, television and stage actor. He may be best-known for his roles in the films The Lost Boys, Sleepers, Your Friends & Neighbors, Narc, The Losers and Speed 2: Cruise Control. His father was actor/playwright Jason Miller...
  
   – Louis Farley
• Rufus Sewell
  Rufus Sewell
  Rufus Frederik Sewell is an English actor. In film, he has appeared in The Woodlanders, Dangerous Beauty, Dark City, A Knight's Tale, The Illusionist, Tristan and Isolde, and Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. On television, he starred in the 2010 mini-series The Pillars of the Earth...
  
   – Albert Stockwell, Nancy's husband
• Amy Brenneman
  Amy Brenneman
  Amy Frederica Brenneman is an American actress, perhaps best known for her roles in the television series NYPD Blue, Judging Amy and Private Practice...
  
   – Carol, Nancy's psychotherapist

Reception

Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

called the film a "forbidding and morbid piece of psycho-sadomasochism" with a "swimming-in-the-deep-end performance by Maria Bello that is the definition of fearless". It also notes:

Performances are cranked up to red-line neurotic levels, while production values intently contribute to creating an artificially bleak world where it's understandable scarcely anyone would want to spend time, even for the duration of this movie.

Salon.com

Salon.com

Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

, in a report about the films at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival

2008 Sundance Film Festival

The 2008 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 17, 2008 to January 27 in Park City, Utah. It was the 24th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was In Bruges and the closing night film was CSNY Déjà Vu.-Films:...

, wrote:

One film that will not be acquired by anybody at Sundance – I'll just crawl out on a limb with this one – is Downloading Nancy ... Bello's skin-peeling, ultra-depresso performance is wrenching and brave, calling for both emotional and physical nakedness. Can a film with those attributes also be insulting garbage? It's a difficult aesthetic-philosophical conundrum, but having sat through this damn thing I now have an answer.

"I just had the experience of being there at the screening at Sundance and watching the door flap open and closed," says Rufus Sewell, who plays Nancy's husband Albert in the film. "I didn't expect so many people to walk out at Sundance." Despite the controversy, Sewell, continues to staunchly support the film. "I was delighted. ...[I]t's a film I'm very proud of, whether you consider that it fails or succeeds, whether you like it or don't like it. I'm proud to be in it."