On the Corner

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is notorious as the heroin capital of North America. Drugs and prostitution are rampant in this corner of the city, but first-time feature director Nathaniel Geary trains his eye upon the glimmers of light that endure in some of the people who live there. Geary’s treatment of his characters is compassionate yet frank, the result of personal experience transformed into a fictionalized account: after attending film school, he spent five years working with drug users and the mentally ill at the Portland Hotel, a government-funded shelter. To a great extent, On the Corner is based on what Geary experienced there. The film begins as Randy (Simon Baker), an aboriginal teen, arrives in Vancouver. He has left the reserve in Prince Rupert to search for his father and his sister Angel (Alex Rice). Angel is unsettled by Randy’s appearance at the hotel where she lives – an addict and prostitute, she is barely managing to get by and is in no position to take in her brother. She tries to convince Randy to return home, but after spending a few days making money collecting bottles, he is attracted to the allure of the fast money dealing drugs promises. Life at the hotel is strangely intoxicating for Randy as he succumbs to hard drugs and falls for Angel’s best friend Stacey (Katharine Isabelle). Even as Angel dreams of fleeing her situation, Randy is being seduced by it. Against the day-to-day drama of life in the hotel and on the street, Randy and Angel try separately to cope with the hands they’ve been dealt. On the Corner’s strength lies in the integrity of its scenarios, dialogue and characters – the actors fully embrace their roles, with Baker and Rice particularly noteworthy as the leads. The film deftly delineates the cycles that keep people bound in desperate situations despite their profound desire to escape – while simultaneously finding humanity in these direst of conditions.