Tag: Canadian movie

Relationship lessons from movies

Without meaning to, we went through a series of movies about couples (before breaking the spell with Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which is very sweet, and not in a bad way): You Hurt My Feelings, Anatomy of a Fall, Simple comme Sylvain / The Nature of Love, and Past Lives. These are the key questions each one seems to address.

You Hurt My Feelings

Is honesty the best policy?

The least artsy of this collection of movies, I suppose, it centres on a happily married couple, Beth and Don, whose relationship is shook when she overhears him honestly tell his brother-in-law that he didn’t like her novel, which is still working its way toward publication. Things become tense and initially, Don has no idea why.

Beth and Don are also having work struggles: Don is a psychiatrist with some unhappy clients, who feel that he hasn’t really helped them. Beth is stunned to discover that the students in her small writing class not only hadn’t read her previous book; they didn’t even know she’d written one. And their son is wilting under the pressure of their expectations, and is angry about it.

So yeah, it’s a movie about relatively privileged people and their relatively minor personal problems. But it’s snappily written, funny, and very well cast, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies as the lead characters. Jean and I both enjoyed it.

As to the question… Well, in life, as in the movie, sometimes you do want to blunt your honesty in order to be encouraging. But it can go too far. At a certain point, a relationship should be strong enough to handle the truth that you don’t, in fact, appreciate those V-neck sweaters you’ve been gifted with every year.

Anatomy of a Fall

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

OK, the question is from Hamilton, but it still seems apropos for this movie. The husband and father, Samuel, dies at the start of it, from falling out of his office window. His wife Sandra is the only one home at time. Their partly sighted son Daniel is the one who comes across the body, after a walk with his dog. We, the audience, don’t see what caused the fall.

Sandra lives, Samuel dies, but who tells the story? Initially, Sandra, mostly, as she’s trying to defend herself against an accusation of murder. Daniel also participates, and in doing so, realizes that he has decide what he believes is the truth about what he heard. But in one of the movies many twists—the nature of which I won’t reveal—even Samuel is able to give some input as to his state of mind at the time.

This was a fascinating one, and I came to my own conclusions about what I believed happened—but not because the movie spoon-fed them to me. The facts remain ambiguous to the end, a fact Jean found deeply unsettling.

Simple comme Sylvain / The Nature of Love

Do opposites attract?

Sometimes, for sure, and this movie, the most popular Québecois film of 2023, presents one such case. Sophia, a philosophy professor, is in a comfortable but staid long-term relationship with another professor when she meets Sylvain, a handsome craftsman hired to do some renovations on her country home. Sophia and Sylvain’s attraction is quick and deep and soon consummated. And consummated again. And again.

Though she initially tells herself it will just be a fling, ending things proves harder than expected and Sophia starts to wonder about the possibility of a long-term relationship with Sylvain. But they are very different, in education, background, wealth, interests… Each phase of their relationship is punctuated by a section of Sophia’s lecture in the course she’s giving about the nature of love (philosophically speaking).

That structure made me think of Le déclin de l’empire américain, though this film, directed by Monia Chokry, definitely has its own strong vision. Jean and I were both drawn in, and he was better at predicting how things would turn out. Fun fact: This movie beat Oppenheimer as Best Foreign Film at the César Awards in France.

Past Lives

Do you ever really get over your first love?

Easy question; of course you don’t! But few people have the trajectory with their first love as the one followed in this film. Nora and Hae Sung are childhood friends in South Korea. Nora’s mom, wanting her to have good memories of South Korea before the family immigrates to Canada, arranges for them to go on a “date”, the apex of which is them holding hands.

But with her family’s pending departure, the two friends are separated before any true, mature romance can bloom. Years later, though, they find one another on Facebook. The sparks still seem to be there, but so is the distance…

By the time Nora and Hae Sung finally do meet again, in New York, Nora is married to Arthur, a perfectly decent guy who is a good sport about the whole thing.

This is a very low-key, gentle movie—too understated for Jean, who gave up partway through. But I quite enjoyed this exploration of the paths not taken, of the forces beyond your control, and what you do with that knowledge. It was lovely.

Movies 2023

I really didn’t write about movies much this year, but I did see some, so let’s catch up…

In theatres

We most recently (on Boxing Day) saw The Holdovers—appropriate timing, as the movie does take place at Christmas. It’s a story about a boy’s boarding school where a few students, “the holdovers”, are not able to go home at Christmas. One teacher, played by Paul Giamatti, is tasked with watching over them.

The movie is directed by Alexander Payne, who also directed Sideways, which also starred Paul Giamatti. It’s similar to that movie only in that it’s also a character-driven story focused on male relationships. I did enjoy it, even though it didn’t particularly pass the Bechdel Test. Jean liked it well enough also, though he prefers plot-driven movies.

Whereas Barbie…

Continue reading “Movies 2023” →

Reason of the day to not vote Conservative: Drive-by arts funding cuts

What do the Conservatives have against arts and culture?

Too many naughty words, maybe?

That was the suspicion behind Bill C-10, which gave give the Heritage Minister the power to deny tax credits retroactively to films or television shows that are “contrary to public policy.” The film Young People Fucking was said to be the impetus for it—or rather, the title of the film was, as few had (or have) actually seen this movie. (My favourite quip in response was that if we’re just judging by title, we better ban Dirty Dancing and see something wholesome like Last Tango in Paris.) What was said to be especially chilling was its “retroactive” nature—since hard-won federal grants could be withdrawn, no one would have the confidence to go ahead with any movie projects.

Given how much attention the Bill eventually got, it’s easy to forget now that the Conservatives snuck it into “a lengthy omnibus bill of technical changes to tax law” — where, for an alarmingly long time, no one noticed it.

And it wasn’t exactly the first time they’d tried something like this. In 2006, a $4.6 million reduction in spending on Canadian museums was buried in a much larger announcement. “The news was a shock to the museum community and particularly the Canadian Museums Association, which thought it had an agreement with the Heritage Ministry for a new museums policy that would be more generous with all museums and provide stable funding.”

Then this summer? When the House wasn’t sitting, when you were on vacation, when arts groups were gearing up their programs for the fall? First up was the $13.7 million cut to programs that support artists’ travel. Then the motherlode—$44.8 million in cuts to five arts programs. With promises of more to come.

Now, there may be defensible reasons for these cuts. Maybe the programs were inefficient. Maybe they were outdated. Maybe they were just great, but were frankly sacrificed on the altar of the stupid GST tax cut and an interest in preventing the deficit from getting any bigger.

We just don’t know. Because the Conservatives haven’t bothered to tell us. They didn’t let it go through debate in Parliament, they didn’t hold a press conference on it, they didn’t consult any experts in the field, they didn’t warn anyone whose livelihood was about to be damaged. They just cut it. Surprise!

“The government has departed from its usual consultative process and cut these programs without warning,” said Stephen Ellis, a board member and former chair of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association and president of Toronto-based Ellis Entertainment Group, an independent TV production company.”

Of course, they are campaigning now, so it’s a little harder to avoid the questions. But just a little. In the Globe and Mail this weekend, Harper mumbled something about these being programs “Canadians don’t want” (when did we say that?), while the Heritage Minister told a CBC reporter they would be redeployed to other areas, though she couldn’t say to what, ran away when pressed, and refused to be interviewed formally on the subject.

That’s the best these spin doctors can do? Wow, now I’m comforted that these cuts were so very well-thought and won’t harm this very important sector of our economy one bit. Aren’t you?

The Liberals, the NDP, and the Green Party have all spoken out against these cuts.

Maple flavour films

Cultural lessons in three movies… (Links are to YouTube trailers of same)

1

Last Saturday we wanted to go see The Stone Angel, but it was on at 7:00, and we just couldn’t get ourselves organized to get there on time. So as a kind of boobie prize, we thought, we decided to go see the comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Now, admittedly, that film had received pretty decent critical notices, which is why we considered it at all… But so did Knocked Up, and I was pretty underwhelmed by that one, with its many “man-boy” characters.

But Forgetting Sarah Marshall was different. It is what it is, which is unabashedly a sex comedy, but it rises above what I was expecting in that none of the characters were mere caricatures. Sarah wasn’t just a bitch. Her new boyfriend wasn’t just a stupid himbo. The main character wasn’t entirely blameless for the break-up. You kind of cared about these people. You kind of liked them.

We left the movie in a really good mood.

2

The next night we managed to get ourselves to The Stone Angel. It featured good performances (from the likes of Ellen Burstyn, Ellen Page*, and the yummy Kevin Zegers), moments of humour, and strong characters. But it is what it is, and that is a drama about a 90-year-old woman looking back at the tragedies of her life, and the decisions that led to them.

We didn’t dislike the film, but we weren’t in as good a mood afterwards.

3

By Thursday DH was a little movied-out, but I went to see Maple Flavour Films, a documentary about English-language Canadian movies, and why Canadians don’t go see them. (Ironically, very few people were there!) Various theories are put forward as to why that is—screens dominated by Hollywood movies; lack of star system; lack of promotion. But the director’s own view (he was there for the screening) was that Canadians make too many dramas, which never do as well as other genres. Why not make more of the types of movies people want to see—why not more comedies? Why wasn’t the low-budget, Scarborough-inspired Wayne’s World not made in Canada? “We need our Full Montey“!

And he may have a point. But I’m also thinking, even if The Stone Angel wasn’t a barrel of laughs, there are a number of Canadian movies that have a put big smile on my face. La Grande Séduction—OK, that’s a French-language film—but it’s still one of the damn funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Bon Cop, Bad Cop—bilingual—was rather a lot of fun as well. And Touch of Pink—all in English—was rather fun as well.

And—this sounds like damning with faint praise, but it’s not—some movies are lot more fun than their premise would make you think. Yes, in Saint Ralph, the boy is inspired to run because his mother’s in a coma… But the focus is on him, not her, and the journey is fun, funny, inspiring. Last Night is about the end of the world, but it’s Don McKellar, and to some extent, it restores your faith in humanity as you marvel at some of the absurd responses to this fact. Snow Cake begins with a terrible car crash (I’m maybe not helping the cause here), but gains considerable humour as the British driver involved (the lovely Alan Rickman) is thrust amongst Canadians in Wawa, of all places—including an autistic woman played Sigourney Weaver. And New Waterford Girl has overtones of Juno—a preternaturally smart and witty teenager finds pregnancy the only possible escape from her tiny home town, though in this case it’s a fake one (the pregnancy is, not the town).

And I’m not going to pretend that Les Invasions Barbares or Away from Her are anything but primarily dramatic, but they really do have a lot of humour, and they’re both just so good, everyone should see them.

Or maybe my tastes are weird. Certainly I see way, way more Canadian movies than other people do…

* In 2008, when this was written, this was the name of this actor.