2002THE WET HOUSE

COMMENT

Making a 'conventional' observational documentary seems like a surprisingly safe option for the British filmmaker Penny Woolcock, who has specialised in innovative community fiction projects like "Tina Goes Shopping" and her new project, The Margate Exodus. But there is nothing conventional about this documentary, in which Woolcock places herself in the Providence Row refuge for the alcoholic homeless in which they ARE allowed to drink, and watches the chaos ensue. The result is a powerful and upsetting hour, but also one with many moments of intelligence and affirmation of life. Woolcock has an anthropological eye for the systems that subgroups of society call on to function - their rituals, their language and their constructions of identity. Woolcock is especially good on people living on the margins, and these broken people are certainly that.

The film focuses around a number of key characters with strangely cute nicknames, including Willy The Wig, Geordie Tom and Car Park George. The residents of Providence Row are given medical treatment and offered regular meals, but spend the majority of their time paralytically drunk. As a result, we spend portions of the film seeing these alien figures covered in bodily fluids and ranting, arguing, fighting or sleeping. The footage of their communal time shows the potential for confrontation, and the exhausting lengths the staff must go to to keep the peace and ensure the safety of all residents. And yet, Woolcock also manages to conduct one-on-one interviews where the characters interviewed are lucid and charming. It is in these that we hear their stories of abuse and depression, after which we see their drunken fits in an even more sympathetic light, and come to see them as individual victims with personalities, rather than drunken bodies.

The opening up of individual stories also allows us to see the closeness of the residents, and the genuine fellowship that the refuge offers to those who might otherwise be lonely and isolated figures. One resident was saved by another when he was brutally set on fire, and his saviour takes great pride in this fact. Two men were paramilitaries on opposite sides of the sectarianism in Northern Island, but now display a compassion and forgiveness that would shame many of their 'dry' compatriots. Many of the men are deeply protective of the two women in the refuge

Woolock relies upon intimate access and the trust of the residents that could have only come from lengthy preparation - she and her assistant spent three months without a camera visiting the resident daily and just talking to them. Woolcock has, without a hint of romanticism, shown these hidden people as fully-functioning humans in their own social order.

If you're viewing FourDocs on a Mac, you might need to download Flip4Mac to view this film.