Director: Léa Pool
Screenplay: Léa Pool, Patricia Kearns, Nancy Guerin
Producer: Ravida Din
MPAA Rating: G
Running time: 97 min.
(4.5/5)As the closing credits rolled on Léa Pool’s excellent documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc., I was boiling with anger. I wasn’t angry with the corporations which use an ugly, deadly illness to grow their bottom line. I wasn’t even angry at the organizations that make it their directive to dispense millions of dollars for cancer research that has yet to yield any major breakthroughs. I was angry at myself that this “pinkwashing” (using cancer to sell goods and services) has been happening right in front of me, that I’ve seen it and even contributed to it and never considered the bigger questions. I blindly bought into the capitalist marketing machine that stands behind cancer research and never thought to make a stink about it because I, in some capacity, thought it great that companies were stepping up to the plate and helping the community at large by investing money and effort to try and save lives.
What a joke.
Based on Samantha King’s book which various sources note as being very academic in its approach to breast cancer philanthropy, Pool’s film takes a much more human and easily accessible approach to the subject. Questions on everything from where the money comes from to where it goes are addressed and Pool doesn’t shy away from the difficult questions. In some cases, we just don’t know the answers and it’s infuriating. How a disease that has been in the public eye since the 1940s with the Women’s Field Army for Cancer Control and for which various organizations have raised billions of dollars, still doesn’t have a cure… it’s staggering. There’s a good reason for this of course: money. It all comes down to money.
(4/5)
Co-written by Scott and Martin Petit, this plot is one that will have you shaking your head. 
With few details on either Benoit or Logan, the opening few scenes of Mitrani’s film plays with viewer expectation and as we wait for Benoit, the potential rapist, to strike, it soon becomes apparent that he’s not the one with troubled tendencies. On their third evening together, Kate shows Benoit her gun. At first he refuses but pushed by Kate and curious, he follows her lead, points and squeezes the trigger. The firing takes the two by surprise but immediately Kate starts to freak out, explaining that she’s going to lose her job if it’s discovered that the bullet was fired from her gun, a gun she’s not supposed to be carrying while off-duty.
