originally published at the National Post
by Vanessa Farquharson (April 29, 2010)
A scene near the end of Passenger Side involves Michael (Adam Scott) trying to figure out whether he's a stupid white guy sadly wasting his life, or a sad white guy stupidly wasting his life.
He concludes it's the former, although if this is true, one must admit that watching a feature-length film about precisely how a stupid white guy sadly wastes his life has never been so entertaining -- or come with a better soundtrack (think Wilco, Leonard Cohen, Dinosaur Jr., Evan Dando and more).
The third effort from Canadian writer-director Matthew Bissonnette, whose 2006 film Who Loves The Sun was nominated for a Genie award, Passenger Side relies very much on its script, achieving that elusive balance of smart, funny and -- most difficult of all -- authentic.
That said, Bissonnette can't take all the credit; his brother Joel, who plays recovering drug addict Tobey, and Scott, in the role of a not-quite-successful writer with a not-quite girlfriend, have clearly spent enough time together off-screen that their chemistry and sense of timing is bang-on. After all, it's one thing to come up with snarky banter and lines like, "I love the future -- in fact, I have a feeling it's going to be the next big thing," but quite another to deliver this with the perfect mix of ennui, defensiveness and bitter sarcasm.
Certain moments seem so natural, it's hard to know whether they were improvised or not -- one, in particular, comes when the guys are standing outside a car wash; Michael compliments Tobey on his new shoes, which are fire-engine red. "They look really good," he says, pausing only for a second before adding, "They match your eyes."
The story itself involves a languorous, day-long drive in and around Los Angeles to find Theresa (Robin Tunney), the love of Tobey's life. A range of bizarre characters end up tumbling in and out of their car (the dog is the only one that sticks around until the end), which makes for some added humour amidst the more serious discussion.
There's a nice twist, too, but it's hardly essential -- audiences will feel as though they could sit in the backseat forever, alternately listening to Guided By Voices (on cassette, of course) and the ramblings of Michael and Tobey as they tackle everything from existentialism to how the Habs will win the Stanley Cup again and whether they'd have sex with Laura Bush or Dick Cheney.
About halfway through the film, they get a flat tire while in the desert -- but just when viewers may be thinking this feels slightly clichéd, Scott's character comments on how flat tires never provide much in the way of plot development.
Clearly, this director is always one step ahead, incredibly self-aware, and even willing to poke fun at himself. These are traits not often found amongst the indie Canadian filmmaking set; hopefully, it leads to more critical recognition and a long road ahead for Bissonnette.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Globe and Mail: Passenger Side
originally published at the Globe and Mail:
by Liam Lacey
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
Simple and smart, Canadian director Matt Bissonnette’s Passenger Side is what’s known in theatre circles as a two-hander, a two-person play in which everything depends on dialogue and performance. The film also fits into another familiar genre, the road movie, although in this case it’s two brothers on a wandering day trip around Los Angeles and its environs in a beat-up vintage BMW. The older brother, an acerbic writer, is Michael (Adam Scott); the younger brother is a recovering junkie named Tobey (the director’s brother Joel Bissonnette).
The film begins with that most annoying of attention-getting devices – the unanswered telephone – which rings in Michael’s apartment repeatedly. Michael is a technophobe; his answering machine still uses a cassette tape. We subsequently learn that he’s an author struggling to write a second novel, and to compound things, today is his 37th birthday. Tobey wants Michael to pick him up and drive him around town to run errands since his own car has broken down. Reluctantly, Michael agrees and the rest of the movie consists of their day, as they go on a sojourn out of the city, to the desert and back.
Michael and Tobey dive immediately into a kind of hostile, familiar banter. Tobey’s annoyed with Michael’s message machine, which he describes as “like calling East Germany in 1982…You have a fear of the future.”
“No, I don’t,” says Michael. “I love the future. I think it’s going to be the next big thing.”
And so the talk goes along with the journey, both pointed and somehow pointless. Tobey says he has a new job. Michael sounds skeptical. Sad, indie-rock songs play on the soundtrack. We learn that Tobey is a failure but an optimist, while Michael is slightly successful but embittered. While Tobey keeps stopping to visit various houses, we spend a lot of time sitting with Michael in his car. At one point a trans-sexual prostitute, Carla, hops in with him and begins initiating business, which rattles Michael’s facade of cynical composure.
In the course of their day travelling through un-touristy backstreets and dull byways of Los Angeles, they meet a lot of eccentric characters, including a Mexican man who has just severed two fingers, a spooky clairvoyant who serves them lunch, a drunken party girl with right-wing political views and the cast of a porn movie. Early on, Michael believes Tobey is using him for a drug connection, but Tobey says no, he’s on a different kind of quest, a search for a woman.
At times, the plot meanders, but there’s a shape to the events, a sense that the brothers – Canadians, as it turns out – have been orphaned here in Los Angeles in their adult lives. In the midst of the verbal and physical detours, there’s a conversation about hockey (like director Bissonnette, they’re Montrealers). Later, they’re chased by an angry anti-Canadian gas station owner, one of the film’s quirky evocations of The Odyssey. Finally, they arrive back in Los Angeles for an ending that has been signalled but has a twist which puts their journey in perspective.
The lead actors have their familiar, sibling banter down cold – dialogue that’s half-funny, half-bitter and designed mostly to kill time. Scott, in particular, shows himself to be one of the best young American actors going. Though he has appeared in small roles in dubious mainstream films (Monster-in-Law, Leap Year and Step Brothers) and has a lead role in the upcoming horror film (Piranha 3D), his best work is here and in another indie film The Vicious Kind, which had its debut at Sundance last year. There are echoes of a young Michael Keaton or even Jack Nicholson in his performances, which have that great rare quality of vulnerability and danger.
by Liam Lacey
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
Simple and smart, Canadian director Matt Bissonnette’s Passenger Side is what’s known in theatre circles as a two-hander, a two-person play in which everything depends on dialogue and performance. The film also fits into another familiar genre, the road movie, although in this case it’s two brothers on a wandering day trip around Los Angeles and its environs in a beat-up vintage BMW. The older brother, an acerbic writer, is Michael (Adam Scott); the younger brother is a recovering junkie named Tobey (the director’s brother Joel Bissonnette).
The film begins with that most annoying of attention-getting devices – the unanswered telephone – which rings in Michael’s apartment repeatedly. Michael is a technophobe; his answering machine still uses a cassette tape. We subsequently learn that he’s an author struggling to write a second novel, and to compound things, today is his 37th birthday. Tobey wants Michael to pick him up and drive him around town to run errands since his own car has broken down. Reluctantly, Michael agrees and the rest of the movie consists of their day, as they go on a sojourn out of the city, to the desert and back.
Michael and Tobey dive immediately into a kind of hostile, familiar banter. Tobey’s annoyed with Michael’s message machine, which he describes as “like calling East Germany in 1982…You have a fear of the future.”
“No, I don’t,” says Michael. “I love the future. I think it’s going to be the next big thing.”
And so the talk goes along with the journey, both pointed and somehow pointless. Tobey says he has a new job. Michael sounds skeptical. Sad, indie-rock songs play on the soundtrack. We learn that Tobey is a failure but an optimist, while Michael is slightly successful but embittered. While Tobey keeps stopping to visit various houses, we spend a lot of time sitting with Michael in his car. At one point a trans-sexual prostitute, Carla, hops in with him and begins initiating business, which rattles Michael’s facade of cynical composure.
In the course of their day travelling through un-touristy backstreets and dull byways of Los Angeles, they meet a lot of eccentric characters, including a Mexican man who has just severed two fingers, a spooky clairvoyant who serves them lunch, a drunken party girl with right-wing political views and the cast of a porn movie. Early on, Michael believes Tobey is using him for a drug connection, but Tobey says no, he’s on a different kind of quest, a search for a woman.
At times, the plot meanders, but there’s a shape to the events, a sense that the brothers – Canadians, as it turns out – have been orphaned here in Los Angeles in their adult lives. In the midst of the verbal and physical detours, there’s a conversation about hockey (like director Bissonnette, they’re Montrealers). Later, they’re chased by an angry anti-Canadian gas station owner, one of the film’s quirky evocations of The Odyssey. Finally, they arrive back in Los Angeles for an ending that has been signalled but has a twist which puts their journey in perspective.
The lead actors have their familiar, sibling banter down cold – dialogue that’s half-funny, half-bitter and designed mostly to kill time. Scott, in particular, shows himself to be one of the best young American actors going. Though he has appeared in small roles in dubious mainstream films (Monster-in-Law, Leap Year and Step Brothers) and has a lead role in the upcoming horror film (Piranha 3D), his best work is here and in another indie film The Vicious Kind, which had its debut at Sundance last year. There are echoes of a young Michael Keaton or even Jack Nicholson in his performances, which have that great rare quality of vulnerability and danger.
Eye Weekly: Passenger Side
originally published at Eye Weekly:
by Chris Bilton
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 5)
In director Matthew Bissonette’s third feature, Passenger Side, much fantastic dialogue punctuates the cassette-tape aesthetic of older brother Michael (Adam Scott) and the whims of his dubiously life-embracing ex-junkie brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette) as the pair drive around on a hopeless day-long journey from place to place through regular people’s LA. (There’s not one pass by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre or the Disney/Gehry opera house.)
Carefully paced and, at times, cleverly self-conscious, the gentle unfolding of the brothers’ relationship via an urban road trip is full of nostalgia and regret, hope and forgiveness, all of which emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Consequently, Passenger Side feels a bit like Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy if it were set in downtown LA instead of the Pacific Northwest wilderness. Bonus points for the Can-con hockey talk, which is excellently paired with a Leonard Cohen song.
by Chris Bilton
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 5)
In director Matthew Bissonette’s third feature, Passenger Side, much fantastic dialogue punctuates the cassette-tape aesthetic of older brother Michael (Adam Scott) and the whims of his dubiously life-embracing ex-junkie brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette) as the pair drive around on a hopeless day-long journey from place to place through regular people’s LA. (There’s not one pass by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre or the Disney/Gehry opera house.)
Carefully paced and, at times, cleverly self-conscious, the gentle unfolding of the brothers’ relationship via an urban road trip is full of nostalgia and regret, hope and forgiveness, all of which emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Consequently, Passenger Side feels a bit like Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy if it were set in downtown LA instead of the Pacific Northwest wilderness. Bonus points for the Can-con hockey talk, which is excellently paired with a Leonard Cohen song.
NOW Toronto: Passenger Side
originally published at NOW Toronto:
by Norman Wilner
Editorial Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
In writer/director Matthew Bissonnette’s follow-up to Who Loves The Sun, brothers Tobey and Michael (played by the director’s brother Joel and Step Brothers’ Adam Scott) spend a day driving around the greater Los Angeles area looking for Tobey’s ex-girlfriend.
It’s like a Richard Linklater movie from the mid-1990s: very little happens, and that’s sort of the point. The conversation is engaging, the two leads snap instantly into the relaxed but guarded vibe of lifelong adversaries, and the script parcels out little bits of information as needed.
The twist at the end is unnecessary, though. Had Passenger Side ended five minutes earlier, it would have been much more fulfilling.
by Norman Wilner
Editorial Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
In writer/director Matthew Bissonnette’s follow-up to Who Loves The Sun, brothers Tobey and Michael (played by the director’s brother Joel and Step Brothers’ Adam Scott) spend a day driving around the greater Los Angeles area looking for Tobey’s ex-girlfriend.
It’s like a Richard Linklater movie from the mid-1990s: very little happens, and that’s sort of the point. The conversation is engaging, the two leads snap instantly into the relaxed but guarded vibe of lifelong adversaries, and the script parcels out little bits of information as needed.
The twist at the end is unnecessary, though. Had Passenger Side ended five minutes earlier, it would have been much more fulfilling.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Montreal Gazette: Passenger Side Takes On Gunless
originally posted at the Montreal Gazette:
by Brendan Kelly (April 28, 2010)
How about this for a David vs. Goliath battle? In one corner, we have Gunless, the new multi-million-buck western spoof starring Paul Gross, who is like the closest thing we have to a real bona-fide movie-star in English Canada. In the other corner, the ultimate underdog - former Montrealer Matthew Bissonnette's micro-budget, shot-on-the-run Passenger Side. Matt Bissonnette's flick opens on a grand total of 3 screens Friday - one each in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Gunless, well it opens on a load more screens across the country and benefits from a mega promotional campaign from heavy-weight distributor Alliance Films.
It's the battle of two oh-so-different visions of Canadian cinema. On one side, you have the Paul Gross school - spend a lot of money, go for big commercial projects and chances are it'll work (which it did for both Men With Brooms and Passchendaele).
Then there's the auteur guy. Bissonnette makes little ultra-personal films, like the memorable Looking for Leonard and Who Loves the Sun, and with Passenger Side, he's hit his stride creatively. L.A. Weekly called it "a thinking man's Judd Apatow flick" and they're right. It's a brilliant film - smart, funny, a little disturbing and utterly original. It's about two brothers who spend a day driving around L.A. looking for one brother's ex-girlfriend. That's it for plot. (For more on the movie, I will have a profile of lead actor Joel Bissonnette in The Gazette Monday.)
Like I said, two different visions of Canadian cinema. Now wouldn't it be cool if Passenger Side somehow turned into this year's little-Canadian-film-that-could. You could help make it happen if you live in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. Go see the film. And, if you still have any money, then you can go see Gunless too, if you want.
by Brendan Kelly (April 28, 2010)
How about this for a David vs. Goliath battle? In one corner, we have Gunless, the new multi-million-buck western spoof starring Paul Gross, who is like the closest thing we have to a real bona-fide movie-star in English Canada. In the other corner, the ultimate underdog - former Montrealer Matthew Bissonnette's micro-budget, shot-on-the-run Passenger Side. Matt Bissonnette's flick opens on a grand total of 3 screens Friday - one each in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Gunless, well it opens on a load more screens across the country and benefits from a mega promotional campaign from heavy-weight distributor Alliance Films.
It's the battle of two oh-so-different visions of Canadian cinema. On one side, you have the Paul Gross school - spend a lot of money, go for big commercial projects and chances are it'll work (which it did for both Men With Brooms and Passchendaele).
Then there's the auteur guy. Bissonnette makes little ultra-personal films, like the memorable Looking for Leonard and Who Loves the Sun, and with Passenger Side, he's hit his stride creatively. L.A. Weekly called it "a thinking man's Judd Apatow flick" and they're right. It's a brilliant film - smart, funny, a little disturbing and utterly original. It's about two brothers who spend a day driving around L.A. looking for one brother's ex-girlfriend. That's it for plot. (For more on the movie, I will have a profile of lead actor Joel Bissonnette in The Gazette Monday.)
Like I said, two different visions of Canadian cinema. Now wouldn't it be cool if Passenger Side somehow turned into this year's little-Canadian-film-that-could. You could help make it happen if you live in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. Go see the film. And, if you still have any money, then you can go see Gunless too, if you want.
Eye Weekly: Land
originally published at Eye Weekly:
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 5)
by Jason Anderson (April 28, 2010)
Some developers’ dreams of creating a “Nicaraguan Riviera” inevitably run into more than a few hitches in the land of the Sandinistas. This engrossing and wryly funny doc by Toronto’s Julian Pinder introduces viewers to a wealth of colourful figures, from big-talking would-be hoteliers to a hippie farmer to a one-eyed revolutionary poet. All prove to be subject to historical forces far beyond their control as we witness the latest weird chapter in Nicaragua’s long and tumultuous relationship with interlopers and profiteers from El Norte.
Land screens as part of the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival on Sunday May 2nd at 9:30pm at the Royal Cinema and Sunday May 9 at 2pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre. Buy Tickets.
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 5)
by Jason Anderson (April 28, 2010)
Some developers’ dreams of creating a “Nicaraguan Riviera” inevitably run into more than a few hitches in the land of the Sandinistas. This engrossing and wryly funny doc by Toronto’s Julian Pinder introduces viewers to a wealth of colourful figures, from big-talking would-be hoteliers to a hippie farmer to a one-eyed revolutionary poet. All prove to be subject to historical forces far beyond their control as we witness the latest weird chapter in Nicaragua’s long and tumultuous relationship with interlopers and profiteers from El Norte.
Land screens as part of the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival on Sunday May 2nd at 9:30pm at the Royal Cinema and Sunday May 9 at 2pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre. Buy Tickets.
Friday, March 5, 2010
The Province: Last Train Home
originally posted at The Province:
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Katherine Monk
Montreal-based director and former Chinese broadcaster Lixin Fan directs this verite-style documentary that takes a close-up look at the annual migration of 130 million factory workers from major cities to their agrarian homes. Homing in on the Zhang family, Fan exposes the generational rifts as tradition faces off against prosperity and personal ego. It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Moving through Chinese society like a large paper dragon on parade, economic fortune is not only dividing huge swaths of the population between rich and poor, it's also changing the way Chinese see themselves in relation to both traditional values and the western world.
It's a complicated, taboo-laden, and culturally spicy noodle of a situation to twirl with your mental chopsticks, but Lixin Fan does an elegant job of grabbing the hydra-headed beast by the throat in his feature documentary debut, Last Train Home.
A former TV news professional for Chinese state television, Fan decided to take a close-up look at changing Chinese society through a very specific portal: the annual migration of 130 million people during New Year celebrations.
Forget Mecca. This is the largest annual human migration in the world, as factory workers leave city centres to return to their ancestral villages and reconnect with family.
It's a brilliant place to start for a few reasons, and prime among them are the images. Fan's camera captures the frenetic chaos at train stations as hordes of people cram the platforms hoping to get a seat in oversold coaches.
The density of people as they scurry, laden with luggage, through the frame makes the reality of living in China undeniable. This is a place where people are so numerous and so apparently disposable, that finding personal identity and ego among the millions of other souls is a sizable challenge.
At times, the sea of people seem to move more like amoebae under a microscope than any sentient mass of humanity, and using a scientist's empirical process, Fan sorts through the specimens by finding ideal examples, and getting even closer.
The central focus in Last Train Home becomes the Zhang family. A typical clan from a small, agrarian village, the Zhang parents left their children for factory work, in the hopes they'd be able to provide their offspring with opportunities for improvement.
When their eldest daughter decides to turn her back on the family's larger plan, and drop out of school to seek work in a factory for herself, there's a crisis of epic proportions.
The moment is captured in all its uncomfortable drama as the father strikes his daughter in the face, and she - somewhat surprisingly - fights back like a feral bobcat.
One is never sure just how much the camera's presence has influenced or inspired the participants in this verite exploration, but it doesn't really matter if the whole movie is contrived, acted, or even scripted.
The reel derives a sense of authenticity from the way it's made. The camera becomes our window to a whole other world, where we're given the luxury of simply watching life unfold without overt commentary or an articulated point of view.
You can't really tell what Fan is thinking, as he maps the rifts and crevasses in a monolithic culture. There is no palpable agenda working here, and that releases the film from any obligation other than to entertain and enlighten the viewer.
The entertainment factor comes through the pictures of the metamorphosing Chinese landscape, as well as the soap-opera family dynamics, but the enlightenment is something the viewer has to create for herself.
Is economic success the be-all and end-all for a society, or is there something more to the human experience beneath the emotional permafrost of cold, hard cash?
Fan keeps the film open-ended, which only makes the experience richer for those willing to do a little work, but in the end, this feels like a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
by Katherine Monk
Montreal-based director and former Chinese broadcaster Lixin Fan directs this verite-style documentary that takes a close-up look at the annual migration of 130 million factory workers from major cities to their agrarian homes. Homing in on the Zhang family, Fan exposes the generational rifts as tradition faces off against prosperity and personal ego. It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Moving through Chinese society like a large paper dragon on parade, economic fortune is not only dividing huge swaths of the population between rich and poor, it's also changing the way Chinese see themselves in relation to both traditional values and the western world.
It's a complicated, taboo-laden, and culturally spicy noodle of a situation to twirl with your mental chopsticks, but Lixin Fan does an elegant job of grabbing the hydra-headed beast by the throat in his feature documentary debut, Last Train Home.
A former TV news professional for Chinese state television, Fan decided to take a close-up look at changing Chinese society through a very specific portal: the annual migration of 130 million people during New Year celebrations.
Forget Mecca. This is the largest annual human migration in the world, as factory workers leave city centres to return to their ancestral villages and reconnect with family.
It's a brilliant place to start for a few reasons, and prime among them are the images. Fan's camera captures the frenetic chaos at train stations as hordes of people cram the platforms hoping to get a seat in oversold coaches.
The density of people as they scurry, laden with luggage, through the frame makes the reality of living in China undeniable. This is a place where people are so numerous and so apparently disposable, that finding personal identity and ego among the millions of other souls is a sizable challenge.
At times, the sea of people seem to move more like amoebae under a microscope than any sentient mass of humanity, and using a scientist's empirical process, Fan sorts through the specimens by finding ideal examples, and getting even closer.
The central focus in Last Train Home becomes the Zhang family. A typical clan from a small, agrarian village, the Zhang parents left their children for factory work, in the hopes they'd be able to provide their offspring with opportunities for improvement.
When their eldest daughter decides to turn her back on the family's larger plan, and drop out of school to seek work in a factory for herself, there's a crisis of epic proportions.
The moment is captured in all its uncomfortable drama as the father strikes his daughter in the face, and she - somewhat surprisingly - fights back like a feral bobcat.
One is never sure just how much the camera's presence has influenced or inspired the participants in this verite exploration, but it doesn't really matter if the whole movie is contrived, acted, or even scripted.
The reel derives a sense of authenticity from the way it's made. The camera becomes our window to a whole other world, where we're given the luxury of simply watching life unfold without overt commentary or an articulated point of view.
You can't really tell what Fan is thinking, as he maps the rifts and crevasses in a monolithic culture. There is no palpable agenda working here, and that releases the film from any obligation other than to entertain and enlighten the viewer.
The entertainment factor comes through the pictures of the metamorphosing Chinese landscape, as well as the soap-opera family dynamics, but the enlightenment is something the viewer has to create for herself.
Is economic success the be-all and end-all for a society, or is there something more to the human experience beneath the emotional permafrost of cold, hard cash?
Fan keeps the film open-ended, which only makes the experience richer for those willing to do a little work, but in the end, this feels like a small piece of a much larger puzzle.
It can't give us the big picture, but through great detail and editorial positioning, Last Train Home takes us on a ride that's at once exotic, terrifying and eerily prophetic of what lies ahead.
Globe and Mail: Call it the low-budget, Canuck take on Scenes from a Marriage
originally appeared at The Globe and Mail:
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by James Adams
Canadians have a knack for making depressing films - think Goin’ Down the Road, Act of the Heart, Between Friends, Le Confessional. Zooey & Adam is very much in that tradition.
Shot on HD in and around Winnipeg on a budget so low as to be subterranean, it’s the story of a couple, the eponymous duo of the title, married one year, who are trying every which way to conceive. One summer weekend - this occurs less than 15 minutes into the film - they head to the bush on a camping trip where a late-night romantic revel is interrupted by a trio of belligerent, drunken males. As the husband is pinned to the ground by two of the threesome, his wife is raped. In short order, she discovers she is pregnant. Is the baby Adam’s? Or the result of the rape? Whatever the answer, does it even matter?
Zooey, who’s on the cusp of 30, believes it doesn’t: “It’s my baby; it’s our baby; it’s a baby,” she declares. “It’s ours if we decide it’s ours.” Adam is not so easily convinced. There’s talk of an abortion (she had one at 18 and isn’t keen to repeat), of a sperm test (he thinks his count may be low), of a DNA analysis (at 12 weeks, with seemingly a high chance for a miscarriage) -- but finally Adam relents to Zooey’s determination to bring the pregnancy to term. It’s a fateful decision, the harrowing ramifications of which Garrity traces in unsparing, quasi-documentary detail for the remainder of the film’s 85 minutes.
What to make of this Canuck Scenes from a Marriage? Certainly Garrity, who reportedly used only a three-page outline as a script for this, his third feature, and let his characters improvise much of the dialogue, was wise to cast fellow Winnipeggers Tom Keenan and Daria Puttaert as the leads. They are a thoroughly credible couple. The same adjective could be applied to pretty much the rest of the cast, including Omar Khan who plays Zooey’s new love interest as her relationship with Adam fades over three or four years to a blacker shade of dark and Adam himself unravels.
Had Garrity had the budget to hire, say, Evangeline Lilly as Zooey and Ryan Reynolds as Adam, the film almost surely would have capsized into laughable melodrama. Zooey & Adam remains a melodrama, but its very lack of glossy, blemish-free star power, gives the viewer the sense that real lives are being lived, not just acted. Certainly it’s not a great film: for all its handicam-DIY it is pretty conventional, with an ending that swerves into sub-Gothic Robert Aldrich territory (Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?) while too neatly tying up what has gone before.
Still, this is a little movie that prompts big thoughts. Like: Has Hollywood so corrupted our taste that when an unabashedly serious film dealing with truly adult issues crosses our eyes we start groping for dismissives like “pretentious,” “overwrought,” “excruciating” and “bathetic”? Maybe we should also entertain words such as “brave” and “thought-provoking.”
Zooey & Adam plays at the Royal Cinema in Toronto Friday through March 11.
Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)
by James Adams
Canadians have a knack for making depressing films - think Goin’ Down the Road, Act of the Heart, Between Friends, Le Confessional. Zooey & Adam is very much in that tradition.
Shot on HD in and around Winnipeg on a budget so low as to be subterranean, it’s the story of a couple, the eponymous duo of the title, married one year, who are trying every which way to conceive. One summer weekend - this occurs less than 15 minutes into the film - they head to the bush on a camping trip where a late-night romantic revel is interrupted by a trio of belligerent, drunken males. As the husband is pinned to the ground by two of the threesome, his wife is raped. In short order, she discovers she is pregnant. Is the baby Adam’s? Or the result of the rape? Whatever the answer, does it even matter?
Zooey, who’s on the cusp of 30, believes it doesn’t: “It’s my baby; it’s our baby; it’s a baby,” she declares. “It’s ours if we decide it’s ours.” Adam is not so easily convinced. There’s talk of an abortion (she had one at 18 and isn’t keen to repeat), of a sperm test (he thinks his count may be low), of a DNA analysis (at 12 weeks, with seemingly a high chance for a miscarriage) -- but finally Adam relents to Zooey’s determination to bring the pregnancy to term. It’s a fateful decision, the harrowing ramifications of which Garrity traces in unsparing, quasi-documentary detail for the remainder of the film’s 85 minutes.
What to make of this Canuck Scenes from a Marriage? Certainly Garrity, who reportedly used only a three-page outline as a script for this, his third feature, and let his characters improvise much of the dialogue, was wise to cast fellow Winnipeggers Tom Keenan and Daria Puttaert as the leads. They are a thoroughly credible couple. The same adjective could be applied to pretty much the rest of the cast, including Omar Khan who plays Zooey’s new love interest as her relationship with Adam fades over three or four years to a blacker shade of dark and Adam himself unravels.
Had Garrity had the budget to hire, say, Evangeline Lilly as Zooey and Ryan Reynolds as Adam, the film almost surely would have capsized into laughable melodrama. Zooey & Adam remains a melodrama, but its very lack of glossy, blemish-free star power, gives the viewer the sense that real lives are being lived, not just acted. Certainly it’s not a great film: for all its handicam-DIY it is pretty conventional, with an ending that swerves into sub-Gothic Robert Aldrich territory (Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?) while too neatly tying up what has gone before.
Still, this is a little movie that prompts big thoughts. Like: Has Hollywood so corrupted our taste that when an unabashedly serious film dealing with truly adult issues crosses our eyes we start groping for dismissives like “pretentious,” “overwrought,” “excruciating” and “bathetic”? Maybe we should also entertain words such as “brave” and “thought-provoking.”
Zooey & Adam plays at the Royal Cinema in Toronto Friday through March 11.
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.
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.
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