By In the opening scenes of 6 Balloons we see the optimistic preparations for a suburban birthday party getting underway. Cool-boxes are filled with beer, green and purple pastel balloons are ferried from the supermarket and a woman hangs bunting on a stool that we can see is teetering precariously beneath her.
It's an obvious but potent metaphor for what is about to be pulled from beneath her feet and the instability lurking under this middle-class family.
Set over the course of one evening, Netflix original 6 Balloons starts when Katie's (Abbi Jacobson of Broad City) brother Seth (Dave Franco) fails to turn up to a family party. After going in search of him she finds piles of unopened mail and her brother, relapsed into heroin addiction. They spend the night driving across Los Angeles in search of a detox centre with his two-year-old daughter in the back of the car.
It's an impressive change of pace for two actors primarily known for significantly lighter material, but despite how quickly we leave the friendly family house for bleaker settings, their comedic talents still come through in the jibes between siblings.
Director Marja-Lewis Ryan wrote the story after her friend and the film's producer Samantha Housman experienced a similar evening with her brother. "The opioid crisis has hit families that never thought anything like this could ever happen to them and Dave has this boy-next-door likeability that endears you to him despite the character’s choices," Ryan said on the decision to cast Franco. "That was a really important quality because I wanted the audience to understand why Katie was helping him and enabling him, and Seth’s charm made that easier to buy."
Franco and Jacobsen's on-screen relationship is utterly convincing not only in the forgiveness and sympathy we afford siblings but in showing how quickly we revert to the squabbling and resentments of childhood. Sombre discussions and arguments quickly melt into childish laughter and Seth jeering at Katie: "I'm your brother and you love me so much".
This willingness to show the light and dark of addiction and offer a nuanced depiction of the disease is present throughout the film. We see continual contrasts between the world Franco has left and one he inhabits now. His sweaty garbling withdrawals in the car interspersed with partygoers shouting 'SURPRISE!', or a side-by-side aerial view of Katie changing his daughter's nappy and Seth shooting up in a toilet stall.
Instead of highlighting the distance between these worlds, it blends them showing that being an addict is not a singular identity, not confined to Skid Row but a customer in a cupcake shop too. Seth is a heroin user but also a funny brother and a loving father, and seeing him through the eyes of the people he loves humanises his addiction.
Not that 6 Balloons shies away from the brutal reality of drug addiction, showing how worry gnaws away at each family member and isolates Katie after she enables her brother. In one scene she confronts Seth and can't even bring herself to ask the impossible question of whether he's using. Instead she offers meekly, "you stopped opening your mail last time".
The moments that take the viewpoint of Seth's daughter are particularly harrowing, the wide eyes of Katie as she changes her nappy and the shifting feet of her father under a bathroom stall as he shoots up. There is a child-like intuition of knowing something is going on even without fully understanding what.
We're not told why Seth has fallen into addiction - there's no neat catalyst or conclusion to why he started using. The seeming randomness of his addiction when placed alongside his successful and healthy sister is a timely reminder that addiction isn't just something that happens to other people. With America currently in the grips of an opioid crisis, sometimes which sibling or friend fall through cracks can feel like a matter of chance.
As Katie asks Seth at one point on their drive, "Did something happen to you to make you like this?" When he says no, she replies in disbelief: "We came from the same place." Something, the 6 Balloons reminds us, we can all say to some extent when considering people in the throes of addiction.
'6 Balloons' is available to stream on Netflix now
