SMIDGEN OF HOPE SOFTENS BLEAK LOOK AT JUNKIES

Director drew upon own experiences in drug-ridden east Vancouver

Movie Review

We All Fall Down * 1/2

Writer/director: Martin Cummins

Starring: Darcy Belsher, Martin Cummins, Francoise Robertson, Helen Shaver

Showing: Friday only at Metro Cinema at Zeidler Hall in The Citadel, 9 p.m.

Classification: subject to classification

The lives of heroin junkies don't generally make for very uplifting stories
and We All Fall Down has its element of tragedy. But director Martin
Cummins' story about three friends living on Vancouver's drug-ridden
downtown east side also involves redemption, stays surprisingly upbeat and
has a real heart.

It helped that Cummins drew from his own experiences living in that milieu
and wrote most of the parts with specific actors in mind. The performances
are impressive overall in well-defined roles that bring home personalities
most of us just read about as statistics in the sorry world of drug abuse.

Cummins co-stars as Kris, a struggling artist who lives with his girlfriend,
a bartender named Ryan (Francoise Robertson). A frequent visitor to their
apartment is a friend named Michael (Darcy Belsher), who just doesn't seem
to have a lot of luck. Both Kris and Michael are junkies, while Ryan sits by
hoping they will quit, nurturing their fragile emotional lives.

The picture starts after Michael has just experienced the death of his
mother, an event that pushes him to escape further with a hypodermic needle.
Caught up in the desperation of shopping for a hit and then getting scammed
with fake stuff, he loses control and nearly beats a dealer to death. But
Belsher is so convincing as someone not in his right mind, you can't help
but feel pity.

Eventually it's Kris whose habit really gets out of control and when he goes
missing for a few days, something romantic starts to develop between Michael
and Ryan. Dealing with that triangle of emotional attachments is hard enough
before events soon conspire to bring about tragic consequences for one
friend and a lesson learned for another.

It's a credit to Cummins' vision that we find sympathy for these characters,
and for the street people they interact with (Helen Shaver puts in a
memorable part as a hooker, a supporting role for which she won a Genie
Award earlier this week). There is the inevitable sense hanging over
everything that someone is doomed to perish from their habit, but in the end
there's also a smidgen of hope, a suggestion that addiction can be beaten.

(Note: the director will appear at a reception following the screening.)