SHELTERED LIFE (Carl Laudan) Rating: NN
Doubtless Carl Laudan and company were intending to make a gritty pic about violence against women, its consequences and how abusers’ children try to survive.
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But Sheltered Life turns out to be an ignorant attack on the women’s shelter movement.
Candice (Valerie Buhagiar) and her daughter Jo (Natasha Greenblatt) enter a shelter after her husband (Ryan Robbins) breaks Candice’s arm. There, Jo meets two teenaged children of battered women: Kendra (a charismatic Eve Harlow) and aspiring rapper Cal (Jaren Brandt Bartlett).
The performances are decent, and when the kids go to their hangout in an abandoned car in a field behind their temporary home, Sheltered Life shows real potential. The dialogue is strong, and the actors make us care about the characters.
But whenever it’s inside the shelter, the movie feels fake and is dangerously misleading. The shelter staff have not one small bit of compassion and at times appear completely incompetent. A noisy fight scene between two residents goes on for a full minute before a staff member intervenes.
Apparently, nobody did any research. I know a key plot point depends on it, but counsellors of abused women do not tell batterers the location of a shelter for assaulted women, let alone let abusers into the reception area.
Ridiculous.
