Wales,
1995, 98 min
Shown in 1996
CREDITS
- dir
-
Karl Francis
- prod
-
Ruth Caleb
- scr
-
Karl Francis
- cam
-
Nigel Walters
- editor
-
Roy Sharman
- cast
-
Helen McCrory, Rhys Ifans, Donna Edwards, Christine Tuckett, Ruth Lloyd
- prod co
-
BBC Cymru Wales
- source
-
Jane Balfour Films
- premiere
-
North American Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Karl Francis, Helen McCrory in person.
OTHER
Jo is a single mother with a young daughter, working in an all-woman ironing sweatshop in southern Wales. She supplements her income with part-time modeling and phone sex assignments in order to help out her heroin-addicted sister, Andrea. Jo studies to improve herself and is well tended by her married lover. Life is complicated but happy. Then Jo discovers she is 15 weeks pregnant, too far along for a legal abortion. With sinister synchronicity, other disasters set in. Andrea is almost nabbed by the police and her mother falls seriously ill. Her lover reneges on all his promises and Jo is left alone in her downward spiral. The choices she is forced to make are tough, and Streetlife doesn’t try to avoid the pain; the resolution is powerful, intense and disturbing. But there’s still an upbeat quality to the grit and an easy, upfront feel to the characters. National Theater actress Helen McCrory gives a superb central performance as a proud single mother who defiantly chooses optimism over self-pity. The strong cast (native Welsh except McCrory) is primarily female and you have to love them when they talk dirty over the cleanly ironed sheets. Their salt-of-the-earth performances and the tragic yet funny script results in a tough, endearing working-class drama that commits itself squarely to the truth.
FACTOID #361
John Huston, director of classics The Maltese Falcon and The Misfits, was honored with a Festival tribute in 1968. His daughter Anjelica received the Peter J. Owens Award in 1991; The Dead, one of the father-daughter duo’s collaborations, screened at her onstage interview.
