A documentary by Al Arsenault and Ken Jubenvill. Unrated. Opens Friday, November 30, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Followers of reality TV may get more than they bargained for in Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens, an utterly unsparing look at life if you can call it that in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The documentary is a follow-up, almost a decade later, to Through a Blue Lens, a National Film Board project that looked at the efforts of some Vancouver cops who called themselves the Odd Squad. They are led by former constable Al Arsenault (now retired), who describes himself as "an expert on the pain drugs can cause people".

Arsenault, it turns out, has a lot in common with documentary makers through history, as he declares here that when it comes to photographing sensitive areas of life "It's easier to apologize later than to beg before." In this case, the images are of people who undergo shocking deteriorations, losing teeth, hair, muscles, and skin, sometimes in just a few years.

Central to this process is one April Reoch, a part-Native woman who was hooked and hooking by the age of 16. You can tell from the title that this won't end well, but Arsenault, codirecting with Ken Jubenvill, mixes April's story with those of several other addicts who go through various stages of denial, hope, and humiliating collapse.

There is some disturbing stuff along the way as no-hopers disappoint yet again. (One scrawny user, taken in by her family, immediately starts complaining about cat dander.) But human beings are unpredictable. The worst case, who resembles a shell-shocked war veteran when first seen at Main and Hastings streets, makes the best recovery, eventually joining the police to lecture students about drug abuse.

"This time," he declares poignantly, "I get to ride in the front seat with my hands free."

The film, which can't by nature resist being somewhat repetitive, doesn't address the persistent criminalization of drug culture, which turns cops into social workers. Clearly, the best ones do work that has to be done. But do we really want a society in which police are the most caring speakers at a funeral service?