Low Down

Low Down, based on Amy-Jo Albany’s powerful memoir of growing up in the care of her gifted, tormented, and frequently absent musician father, the bebop jazz pianist Joe Albany, focuses on the years 1974 to 1976, when Amy (Elle Fanning) had few resources other than the love of her aging grandmother (Glenn Close) and a ragtag bunch of Hollywood outcasts and eccentrics that were her friends. While Joe (John Hawkes) struggles to find gigs, maintain his heroin addiction, and stay out of jail, Amy grows up quickly in a single-room occupancy hotel on the fringes of Hollywood. There she bears witness to heartbreak and tragedy as well as soaring beauty and joy in the jazz music that shaped her, the city and its denizens that nourished her and the loving bond with her father and grandmother that kept her alive.