Empress Hotel

Allie Light and Irving Saraf directed this harrowing examination of tenants living in the Empress Hotel, a 90-room facility operated by the San Francisco Department of Public Health that provides housing to the homeless. Many of the hotel's residents have long and tortured histories that they're all too willing to share here in agonizing depth, including textbook cases of self-abuse taken to extremes—such as a former crack addict who cannot rise above 84 pounds despite her binge eating. Others have more complicated back stories, as in the case of a middle-aged woman with two master's degrees who wound up sleeping on sidewalks when her academic career fell apart and no one was willing to provide her with temporary shelter. Viewers will witness many accounts of poor souls falling through the cracks in the system, particularly people with mental illness (often repeatedly misdiagnosed by doctors). Empress Hotel may suffer a bit from conflict of interest as the facility's building manager is listed as a co-producer (little negative is said about how San Francisco's municipal government addresses homelessness, although the city's track record in this area is far from exemplary). But the film deserves credit for highlighting a demographic that the political establishment, mainstream media, and general public would just as soon ignore. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)