I'm An Addict

'My name is Allison and I'm an addict. There, I've said it. If I'm honest, the symptoms have been evident for some time. Tell-tale irritability, even anger, if I couldn't get my hands on my drug. It was the first thing I reached for when I woke up and the last before I fell asleep. Then, over the Easter weekend, things came to a head.

Himself and I had gone to see A Quiet Passion, a film about the poet Emily Dickinson. I love Dickinson's poetry so why wasn't I enjoying the movie more? OK, Terence Davies isn't a director to throw in a car chase when the camera can dwell lovingly on a begonia or a recently expired corpse. Scenes set in the Dickinson family's parlour in Massachusetts were as solemn and airless as they would have been in 1880, although Cynthia Nixon gives a performance of furious incandescence as the thwarted poet. She wasn't the only one who was frustrated. Around us in the cinema little windows of light started to open. People were checking their phones. I just about contained the urge to join them.'

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