Sitting in Limbo

This likeable low-budget offering from the National Film Board of Canada fields a fairly unfamiliar slice of life: West Indian immigrants in French-speaking Montreal. Using a non-professional teenage cast and a script evolved out of interviews and improvisation, with a lot of hand-held camera and natural lighting, the director nevertheless mines a little charm from the documentary approach. Flat-sharing with two unmarried mothers on relief, Pat (Dillon) is naturally jaded on the subject of men, but finds herself involved with feckless Fabian (Gibbs). A high school dropout, Fabian doesn't stand much chance on the market, and his warehouse job lasts just long enough to launch him and Pat on the road to disaster. Reggae and the unemphatic coolth of the principals prevents doom from gathering around the economics.