MUST-SEE FOR ANYONE WHO LIVES HERE

As raw and blunt as the Downtown Eastside Vancouver drug life it depicts,
the tell-it-like-it-is documentary Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens
isn't much for contrived dramatic flourish.

But a moment of horrifying intimacy in the movie's chronicle of six
addicts' lives could stand as a visual metaphor for this neighbourhood
and what it represents for this city.

We're in the squalid home of Carlee, a longtime addict in her mid-20s,
who's left single after her boyfriend had fatally shot himself. In the
throes of her own intravenous drug habit, Carlee displays a gaping
wound on her forearm, where she can't stop tearing at the flesh to
free the imagined insects under her skin.

The Downtown Eastside streets, and the bleeding social wounds depicted
there, are similarly resistant to healing. The plagues include heroin,
cocaine and the various synthetic cocktails -- the specific drug
varies, as desperation and availability means anything that can be
injected will be.

A group of Vancouver policemen have been taking video cameras to their
streets for the past 10 years, and formed the non-profit Odd Squad to
take their anti-drug message to schoolchildren. This feature stands as
an expansion and sequel to their earlier documentary Through a Blue
Lens.

Co-directed by now-retired Vancouver Const. Al Arsenault and veteran
TV director Ken Jubenvill, and written by The Province's Steve Berry,
the new movie was crafted from 200 hours of footage covering a decade
of street life and death.

The night-time beat-cop scenes of people howling and writhing on the
streets are interspersed with the sunny skyline views of downtown
Vancouver that are usually seen in tourist brochures. The cop
filmmakers force us to ask what is going wrong in this one tortured
part of an otherwise pampered city.

It's clear that Arsenault and his colleagues formed genuine
friendships with the people they were trying to help. The four women
and two men emerge with humour, dreams, delusions and flaws. There's
Carlee, who wanted to work with marine animals, but evenutally died of
her addictions.

There's April, whom Arsenault first met as a teen in the mid-1990s and
tried to warn away from the street life. She fought to overcome her
addictions so that she could reconnect with the son she couldn't
raise, but was murdered by a boyfriend.

Smart, articulate Nicola goes through five years of being clean, even
joining the Odd Squad's school lecture circuit, before succumbing
again to the chemical pull.

The Squad's one success story so far is Randy Miller. At last report
he was still drug-free and working on the docks, fit and
unrecognizable from his haggard street days.

We have 10 years of these lives, recorded by people who cared about
and liked them, which makes it impossible to turn away.

It's must-see viewing for anyone who lives in this
city.

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MOVIE REVIEW

Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens

Warning - 14A: Coarse language drug use. 92 minutes.

Grade: B

Theatres, showtimes, page B14-15