Sid & Nancy (1986)
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With the lacerating love story Sid & Nancy, Alex Cox reimagines the crash-and-burn affair between punk’s most notorious self-destructive poster children: Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen—brought to visceral life by brilliant performances from Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. Cox turns his anarchic filmmaking style on the explosive energy of the London punk scene and the degenerate streets of seventies New York, making for an eviscerating depiction of excess and addiction. Through the lens of cinematographer Roger Deakins, the imagery goes from swooning to grimy, and the film’s bleakness is balanced with surreal humor and genuine tenderness, making for an affecting, music-fueled vision of doomed love.

Alex Cox`s riveting biopic tells the bleak, heroin-drenched story of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his disturbed American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Gary Oldman delivers a bravura performance as Sid, matched by Chloe Webb`s grating, clearly unhinged Nancy. The two lovers` childlike tenderness with each other contrasts sharply with their bleak, violent nihilism, and while the script implies that Nancy`s death was accidental, the line between intention and accident is deliberately blurred. By turns romantic and horrific, SID & NANCY is often gruelling to watch, but always compelling. This follow-up to Cox`s cult hit REPO MAN was another critical success, showing that the director was as comfortable with reality-based material as with the satirical fantasy of his first feature. His romantic vision draws us in while throwing us back in time to London and New York at the inception of the drug-laden British punk era. The film`s dreamlike style and a hypnotic score dramatize the schism between Sid and Nancy`s world and the world around them - and the inevitable horror when those worlds collide.