Review of Shelter

Shelter (I) (2014)
Humanist but totally disconnected from reality (web)
11 November 2016
Warning: Spoilers
For one time, there is an American movie dealing with hobos, Muslim faith so about the invisible, the forgotten ones, the unloved so i can't blame it for that. However having the courage and heart to speak about those issues and fellows should not excuse the big nonsense and the lack to talent! Sadly this movie is filled with that !

As a typical American production, the first scene is about reading for a big, lost minute the logos of all producers in black and white ! Then, when the movies really begins, it's a repeat but this time with the names repeated in the frames ! For sure, nobody will tell that it's useless, irritating, that we don't give a s..t about them and that's maybe inappropriate with the content of the movie !

Next, as a typical American production, the cinematography is just awful : again this dreadful orange / blue filtering that makes people highly tanned in daylight and smurfs by night ! Once again, nobody to tell that movies looked better years ago, that the real world is also green, red, white. Jenny has a long career and should realize that her early movies had a more vivid, colored look than this actual poor two colors !

Next, I expected the story to tell the painful, atrocious lives of hobos but instead the movie manages to tell us about the life of privileged ones ! Having Jenny and her boyfriend crash a luxurious penthouse and benefit with this cool place is just dumb ! When they are in the streets, the story is pitiful : drugs, asthma, snow storm, sexual advances, accidents… well, it's too much, not very real, adding useless drama to already dramatic lives… The directing is stupid : we can see syringes but not inter-courses ! So it's like some events are too hard to show while it's the point of making such movies ! In addition, instead of giving it without make-up, fresh, clear and true in documentary style, the choice is to embellish with useless and stupid pathos : long scenes without dialogues, characters thinking or sinking and little tearful music !

For sure, the ending credits with the dedication caption to the homeless couple in front of his building is stupid because you really wonder what he did with them to have such a poor inspiration ! And he took us for idiots as his (my) building is surely Jenny's (our) building as well!

So what's left is a courageous Jenny who is faithful to her challenging choices and who stunned me with her cute, perfect fluency in french, some good dialogues about faith but at the end, you would prefer Needle Park with Pacino for a better, documented, gripping tale of urban desolation !
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