Theatre Girls

Down in Soho's Greek Street is the Theatre Girls Club, a dilapidated hostel for homeless single women. This stark documentary picture of some of its occupants by National Film School students allows the women (many were in the theatre, and are delightfully, painfully extroverted) to tell their own story; humour and self-deprecating irony are punctuated by moments of aggression, tenderness, and sheer, terrifying isolation. There's not enough analysis: of the reasons the women are there; of why their 'open door' refuge is so pitifully under-subsidised; or, ultimately, of the film's own motives. But it does present a shocking vision of largely middle-aged, frustrated losers, their minds often addled by drink or drugs, their fantasies injected with the harshest self-knowledge. Not a film recommended if you're already depressed, but one which ought to make you think.