Downloading Nancy (2008)
AKA: –
Directed by: Johan Renck
Starring: Maria Bello (Nancy), Jason Patric (Louis), Rufus Sewell (Albert), Amy Brenneman (Therapist), Michael Nyqvist (Stan)
Country: United States
Language: English (Optional Eng Subs)
Runtime: 01:36:46
Genres: Based on a True Story, Sado-Masochism, Abuse, Relationship outside marriage, Internet-related, Misery-Depression, Sexual-Violence against Women, Self-Harm, Torture
Plot – Spoilers:
A childless couple Nancy and Albert are beyond scraping even the dregs of their marriage. Nancy suffers crippling depression from years of torturous sexual abuse by her uncle, while Albert is ill-equipped to deal with her misery and feels helplessly irritated when he sees her snap into it. He’d rather zone into motivational audios, and the only thing he seems to enjoy is the buddy-time he spends with the boys from office.
But now Nancy’s gone. Off to Baltimore to meet Louis whom she met on the internet and who’s promised to fulfill the only true desire left in her – a final flourish as she ends it all.
Downloading Nancy is based on the case of Sharon Lopatka from the ’90s, which was also claimed to be the first arrest that was made, based off recovered emails.
Favorite Bits:
Maria Bello is pretty great as Nancy and brings realistic nuances to her performance – like often when she’s excited in the company of Louis, her demeanour and behaviour changes to that of a little girl – a possible throwback to the periods of abuse endured as a child when she was mindfucked beyond repair about the difference between being loved and being hurt.
based on a true story..wow!—– a disturbing, sad and very good movie! arthouse de luxe!
thanks admin.
A really interesting watch, thanks Admin. I wonder why Nancy didn’t just take care of matters herself though, especially because she called Louis a “coward” for caring about her towards the end when she couldn’t even fulfil her own final wish.
That was great!
good got me kinda horny
Dead eyed psychotic shit woman. If she’d had children they’d have met an untimely end in the garden pond. But of course it’s someone else’s fault. Toxic cunt.
Excellent film which delves into the psychosexual sadomasochistic relationship between these three characters; a disinterested husband, his wife and her lover.
This movie has nothing to do with sex lol I can’t believe it they lied in the whole film
Loves the soundtracks, such a sad & depressing movie. 5/5 stars
It’s an amazing movie about relationships. Not everyone is normal, everyone needs someone to understand. Everyone needs someone to fill.
Really is a good example of mental health and trauma, a lot better than other movies I’ve watched
very good film. very very good film. it’s less insidious than most films i’ve seen around on effedupmovies, and also less gory. they just show it as it is without romanticizing it or going overboard with buckets of fake blood. i did appreciate the rawness of how nancy dealt with mental health. the washed out colour pallete was a very good aesthetic choice and i noticed the colours got a bit brighter towards the ending scene with her death, which was so fucked up. light at the end of the tunnel “there’s still hope” type beat turned on its head.
i also appreciated how they never showed the self harm in extreme detail. there’d always be one element omitted, whether the lack of cuts shown or the subtle angling of her body so you can’t see the actual self harm being executed.
the scene with the little girl staring back at nancy in the hardware store really hit because it kind looked like a parallel between her childhood self and older self.. kinda conjugated together in time and space. i’m sure she traumatized the kid, but like that’s part of the whole scene. her childhood self was abused by her uncle and she grew up to be an adult with severe mental health problems and by hurting herself in a hardware store she passed on that trauma to a new set of eyes. which is so horrible and the isolated incident in the film does represent real life’s incidents. i mean… what kid hasn’t seen something traumatizing, to a degree. this is just a magnified incident that’s supposed to mirror real life.
i hated the husband. i hated him so much. like at the beginning you’d think he’s just a fumbling middle aged man who’s really into golf but over the course of the film you truly come to realize how abusive and inadequate he was towards nancy and her mental health. from just ignoring her to lashing out at her when she sought his attention through negative and/or childish behaviour to “giving her what she wanted” like.. nancy’s sexual abuse turned her into an age regressor and it’s very obvious to see that she’s not capable of making decisions as a fully consenting adult when she’s in that headspace (which is VERY often) so for her husband to take advantage of that in a fit of anger really was brutal to witness. personal opinion, age regression and sex are two things that sound never be intertwined. i have no opinion on ddlg and i don’t want to know how it works; but like when someone’s age regressed they’re literally in the headspace of a kid. and nancy was sexually abused as a kid so for her, being young and sexual are going to be connected. so while her husband…. for lack of a better word, assaulting her,, was probably a form of taking control of her trauma, it was executed in the WORST way possible. and unfortunately, trauma through non-negotiated abuse that the victim “”””wants”””” is what ends up happening a lot due to people being uneducated about trauma and the way it can manifest itself.
at least with her killer, when she was regressed he talked things over with her and i guess? asked for consent beforehand. it was obvious that there had been a lot of discussion going on about what was going to happen. while his version of helping her cope with her trauma was obviously going to end with her death, he took the time to research and plan it out which is so??? pitiful. like the fact that a literal killer can negotiate boundaries better than a common husband is fucking pathetic and sad and gross.
some things i didn’t personally enjoy about the film was the frequent cuts to the camera angle. like it’d be filmed from multiple angles and switch between them. i understand that it might have been done to make the scene seem more “jarring” or show the instability of a character’s mental health, but it’s just annoying to sit through honestly. thankfully it didn’t happen too often. another thing i don’t enjoy is how they made nancy seem like a fake-deep character at some points. like sometimes she’d say something that’s obviously angsty bullshit and everyone else would pause and be like “wow” like no. shut up nancy your writers did u so wrong.
all in all i’d give it like a 7/10,, the death scene was really powerful and sad and just…. good film. fucking horrible good film.
What’s your favorite scene from this movie ?
Wow, this movie was particularly powerful for me because I had a close friend like Nancy. Not as extreme as Nancy but close enough to make me feel depressed. I feel bad for Louis, he fell in love with Nancy not understand how mentally ill she was, in the end he tried to fix her but with her that just wasn’t possible. I overall feel most bad for Nancy, when you close yourself off to love the way she did at the end man… I can only imagine the kind of stuff she had to have been going through in her head. I don’t feel bad for Albert at all, fuck him.
This was actually really good. Nancy’s pain felt really familiar to me. If this was handled by any other director it likely would have been far more exploitative and unfocused, but a lot was handled quite sensitively. I’m honestly surprised, but I’m not surprised by how it was received so negatively by Sundance. That crowd is always championing disturbing movies only when it doesn’t challenge them. Seeing Nancy’s self-harm and determination to die in the way she wants to was really felt and not something people really want but should see. Maybe it would make them more attentive to people with mental illnesses.
Reminds me a lot of the movie BUG… also a fantastic movie.
After looking up the people who this movie was based off… I will say that the casting was VERY generous lmao
garbage drama movie, for teenage girls
i watch this movie when im at my lowest for a pick me up ty to this site for featuring it❤️