Reel Recovery: On the Corner

I spent part of this past weekend checking out the Reel Recovery Film Festival, presented in Vancouver by the Orchard Recovery Center and Writers in Treatment. According to the website,

          We showcase local filmmakers and experienced pros who make honest
          films about addiction and recovery. It’s inspiring to gather with other
          individuals to share these new and classic films. The realistic portrayal
          of these issues in cinema is invaluable for the honest conversation that
          can occur.

I caught three films out of several offerings. One I won’t discuss because I couldn’t see how it contributed to conversations about drug use. The other two I chose to see because of their local flavour: On the Corner and The Honour of All. In part 1 of a two-part blog entry, I talk a bit about On the Corner.  

On the Corner (2003) interested me because it was shot in the Downtown Eastside. (Here’s a trailer, but with a song that’s not in the movie.) It was written and directed by Nathaniel Geary, who worked at the Portland Hotel. The movie focuses on Angel Henry (Alex Rice), who lives in a single room occupancy hotel, is dependent on heroin, and engages in survival sex work. When her younger brother Randy (Simon Baker) leaves the reserve near Prince Rupert and shows up at her door, she’s initially resistant to his presence. But as she begins to hope for something better under his influence, and as she develops a growing sense of responsibility for him—and then watches him descend into the same struggles she’s faced, much to her despair—she’s faced with hard choices.

The film provides a glimpse into life in the Downtown Eastside, an area generally shunned and misunderstood. People who use drugs are depicted as humans, not as moral failures. And the performances and dialogue reflect real life, not dramatic scripting: as one reviewer said, “The performances given by the mostly native cast are so strong that you really feel for them as people and respect that their decisions may not always be right, but they are doing the best they can given their circumstances.” Because Insite didn’t open in Vancouver until September 2003, so in the world of On the Corner, there is no access to a safe-injection facility; this increases the health risks of injection drug use, including HIV infection in cases where needles are reused.

One storyline that hit me hard concerned violence against marginalized women in the Downtown Eastside. Angel is quite protective of her best friend Stacey (Katherine Isabelle) and takes down the licence plate numbers of men who pick Stacey up from the street, making a point of telling men she’s suspicious of that she’s got their plate numbers.  But one night, when Angel isn’t around, Stacey gets into a car and doesn’t come back. Given the current inquiry into missing women in BC, which has heard vivid testimony from those affected about police disrespect and inaction concerning marginalized women, and the problems of the inquiry itself, this part of the film was acutely painful.

- Erin

In a couple of weeks, I’ll post on The Honour of All.

This was posted on Thursday, October 27th, 2011 at 6:45 am and is filed under News . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.

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