Documentarian Jennifer Rubin shines a light on the unhoused in Los Angeles as she spotlights the lives of a couple trying to survive on the streets with the odds stacked against them.
★★★ & 1/2 ★ OF ★★★★★ stars
One often thinks in times of hardship that it’s you against the world and with gumption, hard work and opportunity that you can make it out of difficiult circumstances. Worst case scenario, you can thrive under thw orst of circumstances and scratch out and eek an existence, no matter the odds. It’s one thing to imagine, it’s another to live it. In Them Public Romatics, available to stream on Plex, documentarian Jennifer Rubin spotlights the world outside her window, one where gentrification and the unhoused touch her doorstep and she casts her lens on an unhoused couple, Juan and June. Juan and June are living on the streets of Los Angeles, having constructed an elaborate makeshift home made of found items, buckets, shopping carts, tarps – even including a racing car bed. The effort put into trying to have some dignity and a home of sorts really draws you into their situation and feel for them. But this isn’t a narrative fiction; Rubin calls this piece an ‘alive documentary.’ This is a piece where as she follows the couple, a narrative pieces itself from the fragments of their daily life she witnesses and interacts with and the changing landscape of their home. As storefronts change and construction and change comes to the area, the couple find their home in shambles and having to relocate what they can to an unoccupied traffic island in the neighborhood. Rubin interacts with the couple as their circumstances change. June calls Rubin her mom, asking her for change and money in exchange for leveraging details about her life as Juan, whose English is sparse at best, tries to make something work with June and interacts with Jennifer as best he can. Juan and June don’t have an idealized relationship; there is violence between them at times, exacerbated no doubt by the dire straits they find themselves in. This is a living city, one where a street person performs in the nude on the street in the light of law enforcement, one where the shopowners don’t want unhoused, homeless individuals in the vicinity of their business. As a viewer, you find yourself in the role of voyeur – you want the couple to find some solace, but you also know this isn’t the ideal circumstance to build a life, a relationship, to step out of addiction. But you as a viewer are seeing a slice of someone’s life and all you can do is take it in, the way Rubin does as a documentarian and she presents this as a situation that happens everyday and while you hope for a resolution that is for the best, the dignity she presents them in regardless of their circumstance really makes you feel for them.
This documentary does draw you in, the score is well tailored to the film and engages you and makes you feel the reality of the circumstances here. I look forward to watching more in this vein from Rubin, best known as an actress in the past in films like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Crush, and Screamers, but who shines here in editing and directing. She demonstrates a keen eye for personalities here and you can see in the moments she interacts with them her hope for their future. Juan and June try, but struggle is beauty and the human experience. As the film closes, we hope for more for these public romatics and hopefully for those in similar circumstances beyond those we see through Rubin’s lens in this alive documentary.
Them Public Romantics is available to view on Plex.