Toronto Star: Zooey and Adam, Experimental Cinema Worth Watching

originally appeared at the Toronto Star:

Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)

by Jason Anderson

Fifteen years after a group of Danish mavericks outlined a manifesto for a leaner, purer brand of cinema they dubbed Dogme, some directors are still trying to strip down the filmmaking process to its bare essentials.

In the case of Zooey & Adam – an often harrowing drama about a married couple coping with the aftermath of a violent crime – Winnipeg filmmaker Sean Garrity did away with such apparent necessities as a script, a budget and even the tiniest of crews.

Instead, he and his actors developed Zooey & Adam scene by scene in chronological order, with Garrity filming all by his lonesome with a digital camcorder. Only toward the end of the shoot did the participants realize that this exercise – which Garrity originally hoped would be the basis of a future screenplay – was yielding a bona-fide movie.

Garrity, whose debut film Inertia won the award for best Canadian first feature at TIFF in 2001, has referred to his third feature as an example of "solo cinema." Whether other directors will follow in his stead remains to be seen – it's hard to resist the allure of having your own craft services table. Yet Zooey & Adam's unusual degree of intimacy and emotional power prove that methods like Garrity's can produce strong results.

They also facilitate courageous performances by Daria Puttaert and Tom Keenan as the titular couple. These young Winnipeggers' plans for a happy family life are torn apart when Zooey is sexually assaulted during a camping trip. When Zooey discovers that she's pregnant, Adam agonizes over the question of whether he's the father.

As time goes on, their torments are compounded by some difficult and arguably callous decisions by both parties. In other words, neither character is easy to like, a fact that may further alienate audience members already put off by Garrity's barebones tactics.

The rising tensions and mostly grim mood can make for a gruelling viewing experience. And as often happens with improvisation-based narrative features, the movie's essential volatility works against the possibility of a satisfying and coherent conclusion.

Then again, Zooey & Adam is designed to provoke viewers rather than coddle them. The characters' moral, ethical and emotional dilemmas would be plenty troubling even if Garrity weren't so keen on challenging assumptions about how a movie fiction ought to look and function. His film's sheer boldness makes this accidental experiment in solo cinema well worth watching.