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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/26/2009 : 10:32:10
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Hell's Pavement
At more than 1 hour 40 what feels like a t.v. movie is unlikely to find a UK telly home, and because it's so focused on the UK social services, it's equally unlikely to get a wide cinema distribution. It might, if it were a startling film, but it isn't.
The fault lies not with the main actors especially Demi and Keeki Bennetts who play young Aimee Collins at different ages. For the film follows this lovely abused child over five years as the social services blunder at several removes to support her.
Extrapolated from the director's own experiences in the foster care "industry" -- from victim to training as a child care professional -- Aimee's support centers on her years with the Connors, a couple who've established themselves as professional foster parents, albeit without professional qualifications. Both Pauline McLynn and Connor Byrne as the couple, expertly and without artifice, layer the film with moments of normality, even lightheartedness that balance the more tedious scenes.
There are two films here.
First is an attempt to dramatize the modus operandi of goverment departments, voluntary organizations, and ancillary services all stretched beyond their shrinking budgets. And yet we're told before the film has even begun, the UK taxpayer spends over �4 billion on the 60,000 children in care.
Sadly we rarely meet those who make such decisions outside of meeting rooms, and case assessment conferences. But apart from a few personal exchanges, these scenes feel as though the actors are reading from training and procedure manuals. It's important stuff, and yes, we should be aware of the fraught and frustrating reality behind child abuse headlines, but as presented it's material for a documentary.
The 2nd more successful film is contained within the family, as the O'Connors try every benign approach toward their foster daughter. And it seems to be working. At first she's almost zombie-like, her main emotional job repressing the uncliamed fury at her former life of brutal chaos. Gradually, she learns to overcome random acts of violence and self-harm, learns to abandon the degrees of manipulation of others she's relied on for survival.
I'm not sure, though, that we ever quite arrive at a more visceral understanding of the issues. So when the inevitable grim end is held up to us like a lecture slide, we don't experience either the pain or shock that might move us to action, or at least to a reassessment of phrases such as children in need.
The film Precious, dealing in related territory does it far better.
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Hell's Pavement
