I recently saw this at the 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival. It's a dramatized film version of Marie Clements' stage play The Unnatural and Accidental Woman. The term comes from the official cause of death being unnatural and accidental referring to the deaths of 10 native Canadian women on Vancouver's east side in the 1980's from acute alcohol poisoning. The women were known heavy drinkers of skid row and it was assumed they had died from self-induced over indulgence until it was learned that a common acquaintance of them had been seen with them before their deaths. In the actual story, career criminal Gilbert Paul Jordan was a former barber who was an alcoholic and craved alcoholic sex with hookers. He would get them drunk until they passed out and have sex with them and continue to pour alcohol down their throats. Jordan is depicted here as a mechanic. In this dramatization of the core of that story the film has the daughter of one of the victims going into the skid row district to search for her long missing mother and with the help of the spirits of the victims she is driven to find her mother or the killer. This is a fictionalized account of the story and may seem far-fetched but truth can be stranger than fiction which led Clements to write the play. Carl Bessai directs with good performances from Carmen Moore, Callum Keith Rennie and Tantoo Cardinal. This is a good film and may be worth checking out. I would give this a 7.0 out of 10.
Review of Unnatural & Accidental
