The description on the Vancity site does it justice, for those who want to know the story. It's a "dealing with an impossible parent" narrative - one you can't help love, but who is undoubtedly toxic. People with remarkable-but-toxic others in their lives will find things to identify with in the movie. It has terrific performances from its leads, and is really nicely designed and shot; the film has a lush, Sirkian retro quality that rather spoils the eye. It also has, at least in the version I saw, a very strange "timelessness." I couldn't begin to figure out what decade the film was set in. The money we see is contemporary Canadian stuff; the swindles and the decor/ hairstyle/ costuming of the title character - played by Suzanne Clément, above left - is very 1950's; and the evangelical group seems to favour a sort of square 70's roller-disco-Christian aesthetic or something. I actually asked the young star of Black Fly, the excellent Dakota Daulby - who also appears in this film, and whom I interviewed just a few blocks from the locations mentioned above, in the Starbucks attached to our now-doomed Target - whether he could figure out what decade the film was set in, and while I don't recall his exact answer, the very clear upshot was, "no." Which makes me curious to revisit the film, to see if this anachronistic quality comes across as a deliberate stylistic choice - some sort of meta-cinematic way of connecting the film to other genres or movies? (Or perhaps it was an error not yet corrected, and the brand new Canadian bills will all be CGI'd to appear older or something?).
I'm more excited about Clearcut, sure. (See below). And about my favourite life of Christ movie, the provocative, political, unabashedly Marxist Pasonli film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew. But still: this is a neat BC film. And hey, Callum Keith Rennie is in it! Those cinephiles in whom I have an interest will more or less see anything that he's in, just on principle...
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