Director Amos Kollek's jittery, hand-held camera acts as a window into a world of despair and hopelessness and for nearly 90 minutes we get to peer in. Oh joy!
The film opens with a prostitute discarding her crying baby in an alleyway. It is the life of that orphaned girl, Fiona (Levine), that is chronicled in this Amos Kollek film.
The film jumps ahead a number of years and we see Fiona as she is now. A deep thinking, psychotic, drug addicted, prostitute who spends the majority of her time shooting heroin and hanging around with her lesbian lover. Then, in a completely contrived sequence, obviously inserted to advance the plot, Fiona shoots and kills three police officers in a diner. She takes refuge in a crackhouse and continues her downward spiral into hell.
I'm not sure what Kollek was trying to say with this film. It was as if he was trying to shock the audience with the spectacle of street life and those who dwell there. Visually, the film is jarring, it has a very authentic look and feel to it and Anna Levine offers an inspiring performance. But the film as a whole the film has very little redeeming qualities, including the character of Fiona who at first is likeable and sympathetic until she kills three police officers and brushes it off with a shrug of her shoulders. After that, I couldn't have cared less about her, her problems and the problems of those around her. Along with all the disconcerting images that the film throws at the viewer, the sequence where the mother and daughter reunite has to be the most awkward and disturbing of the film.
Watch it for the spectacle. You may come away from the film better educated about the lives of street people or maybe you'll just come away feeling empty. I did!
