Indie Drama Low Down Proves It’s Hard to Be/Watch a Heroin-Addicted Jazz Dad

Adapted from Amy-Jo Albany’s memoir about growing up with her father, Joe, the jazz pianist best known for playing with Charlie Parker, Low Down stars John Hawkes and Elle Fanning as a father-daughter duo with a lot of love and even more problems.

A charming, gifted musician with a heroin problem, Joe does his utmost to shield AJ from the darker shades of their life — random visits from his parole officer, junkie friends whose addictions are even worse than his — but he’s too much of a mess to maintain the illusion, and she’s too smart to believe it anyway. Jeff Preiss evokes early-1970s Los Angeles with an initial nostalgia that slowly turns grim.

The back-and-forth tonal shifts could certainly be described as jazzy, and every individual player has chops, but the ensemble cast (which includes Glenn Close, Peter Dinklage, and co-producer Flea) is done no favors by a script that gets them more and more out of sync.

There are too many notes that, while not false, are neither satisfactorily resolved nor left interestingly unresolved. Joe and AJ drift back and forth from one another, she a wellspring of emotion every time he breaks a promise or squanders another opportunity. You can see him wonder what he did to deserve such a loving, forgiving daughter. After a while, so do we.