Reviews

Despite often being disappointed I still want to support ''small'' Canadian films, especially if they don't seem to be going for cheap, thought-to-be-funny gimmicks but to instead focus on real human experiences and the drama that can be found in everyday existence. Unfortunately, despite some strengths, ''We Had It Coming'' was another disappointment.

The positives: the cinematography is very well done and makes good use of settings in and around Montreal, treating the locations in a matter-of-fact way that avoided the self-conscious signalling of ''this is home!'' that plague too many Canadian productions; and the acting by Natalie Krill as the lead is strong and believable, with only one or two weak moments that are more likely due to the material she had to work with than her performance; Erin Agostino is also good in several scenes where she's by herself and has to convey her character's thoughts and emotions silently.

The negatives: the dialogue is badly written and might have worked better on stage or in prose fiction but fails here to be believable as real human interaction (or, in short, nobody really says these kinds of things, and conversations don't play out in these ways); this was especially the case with the lines spoken by the lead character's girlfriend (Alexia Fast). This problem with the dialogue and the way writer/director Paul Barbeau conceives of human interaction also affects the story itself, which is overly simplistic and lacking in the kind of structured development that sustains even a short feature-length film. One of the two biggest weaknesses on this front is the absence of any real inner conflict on the part of the lead character, which makes the ending anti-climactic (and not just because it's an ''open'' ending; there are good open endings that are suggestive and intriguing in their ambiguity, and then there are cop-outs; the ending here fell into the latter camp, since little was really established as being at stake). If the scene in the church (which isn't integrated into the rest of the plot) was intended to show such an inner conflict, it fails to do so. The other biggest weakness in the story is how simplistic and unnuanced its ''moral'' dimension is. The story is meant to show someone standing up to the victimization of women and to express the experience of this victimization, both in its overt and its subtler forms, from a female point of view. However, the way this victimization is understood and the way that empowerment is conceived is extremely unsophisticated and naive. Without exaggeration, every male character in the film is a misogynist and an abuser of women, and the experience of being female is reduced to one of constantly feeling oppressed or victimized, with even something like a truck driver's impatience and rudeness being presented as a kind of ''gendered violence''. And I can't help thinking that the openness and flatness of the ending was partly the result of a failure to imagine what a meaningful ''empowerment'' might be. In all of this, the film seemed more a product of the kind of victim mentality that thinks it's ''woke'' for seeing oppression everywhere but has no real insight or solutions and, more importantly, no maturity or ability to deal with genuine nuance and ambiguity.

This is not to say that films setting out to cast light on or critique problems like sexism can't be done well. Catherine Breillat's ''A Ma Soeur'' (''Fat Girl'') is an example of a much better film that is also open-ended, with every male character as a misogynist to some degree, but which has genuine insight into human psychology and interaction and knows how to develop conflicts that play out at the level of emotions and subtext vs. surface actions. Another film that comes to mind as succeeding at something ''We Had It Coming'' tries but fails to do, which is to tell a story about the drive for revenge and the moral complications about its justification, is Todd Field's ''In the Bedroom''. Ultimately, the weakness of ''We Had It Coming'' and its failure to live up to the potential of its technicians (cinematographer, art director, sound designer, composer, etc.) and its lead actor lies in what Barbeau lacks that Breillat and Field had, which is insight into human psychology, experience, and interaction.

(I couldn't help but think of another, much different film in connection with this: Tommy Wiseau's ''The Room''; several times when I was watching I felt like asking Barbeau ''Do you understand life?! Do you?!'')

What's most remarkable about this film is that it was made at all, let alone in Canada at the current time, when the available sources of funding are both risk- and art-averse, and tend to ruin potentially good concepts with their forced 'creative' input (too many cooks, etc. - especially when those 'cooks' are businesspeople with no real understanding of film). If only more young people, upon graduating from film school, would do what the production team behind this did: collaborate to make something without having to rely on the 'official' sources of funding, and without worrying about whether it would be 'commercial', etc.

As for the film itself: it's far from perfect, but overall it's quite good at what it's trying to do - while not quite there, it's at least trying to do something more along the lines of Tarr, Kiarostami, Akerman and the like rather than taking its cues from American films (whether Hollywood or the 'mumblecore' indies). The acting (by a non-professional, who does a far better job than most 'professional' Canadian actors these days would!) is very good and nicely demonstrates the point about film acting being mostly a matter of re-acting. The use of the camera is probably the film's strongest point - while there are some conventionally 'pretty' shots, there are also quite a few images that are formally striking and effective without being 'beautiful'. The editing is minimal and non-intrusive, and always seems to suit what's being shown; the sound editing, while excellent in some scenes, goes over-the-top or becomes on-the-nose in others - especially in regards to a couple of musical choices that break the otherwise strong mood created by image, editing and non-musical sounds and which just plain don't fit. Furthermore, the plot, which could so easily have fallen into cliché 'Can-lit' territory (and surely would have under the influence of the aforementioned funding agencies!) manages not to, and so becomes a solid addition to the 'canon' of works featuring this Canadian literary trope (isolation in the snowy wilderness) rather than a rip-off or unintentional parody of them.

Given the dire state of Canadian distribution for Canadian-made films, who knows if this will still be playing at the TIFF Lightbox by the time anyone reads this, or whether it will become available on DVD or some format after its theatrical run.

Telefilm's most recent Great White (Northern) Hype is another "Men With Brooms" (didn't they learn the first time?!). Ultra-contrived to match its funders' ideas of 'quirky', it manages to be a comedy almost entirely lacking any actual humour, with just about the shallowest, one- dimensional characters I've seen outside of third-rate TV shows.

As a Canadian, I would very much like for the films made in our country to be of high quality and worthy of taking pride in. Think of the output in the late 80's through the 90's, when we still funded auteur directors and invested in their development, regardless of how much 'commercial' potential their films had - this is how actual cinematic talents like Guy Maddin, Atom Egoyan, Deepa Mehta, Patricia Rozema, Don McKellar and Bruce MacDonald were able to get their start. Now, we're at a point where people in the industry think they've matured/progressed while they're making and promoting films like this one, which turns out, almost unbelievably, to be just as terrible a film as "The Love Guru". Seriously.

What is it going to take for those who are in a position to make decisions as to funding, etc. to realise that trying to pander to domestic audiences through forced, patronising, on-the- nose attempts at 'Canadian content' is never going to result in a film that is as commercially successful as they hope (not to mention that it's never going to result in anything of any actual cinematic or aesthetic quality)? And anyway, if they're really trying to appeal to some genuine, albeit misguided and juvenile, sense of Canadian patriotism, why make one of the main selling points of your film the casting of Olivia Newton-John?

While this isn't Haneke's best film (his 'glaciation trilogy' and "Code Unknown" are better cinematically, and are better examples of his personal directorial style), it is perhaps his most mature/restrained, since he doesn't resort to what, in his other work, may be seen by some as 'shock tactics' to get his point across. The use of a mystery plot as a way of exploring the characters' psyches and capacities for wrong-doing and self-denial is similar to what he did in "Cache", though the cinematography (which is outstanding in its starkness and formal composition), pacing and acting are more reminiscent of Bergman than any previous Haneke effort.

Not Atom Egoyan's most 'story-driven' film, but his best from a purely aesthetic/cinematic perspective. His use of non-linear chronology, repeated scenes that slowly give way to understanding, and long drawn out takes that let you really start to feel the moment (how many viewers start to notice the slight differences in the various sheep, or look for their birthdays on the pages of the wall-calendar?) puts this film close to the level of Tarkovsky, Angelopolous, Bresson, etc.

While "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter" are, understandably, his better known films (and good ones at that), "Calendar" works even better as the full realisation of theme and emotion using all the elements of cinema working in conjunction.

In this film, Terence Davies has managed to give the viewer a complex understanding of not only the lives (both external/social and internal/emotional) of a group of characters, but also of the experience of life in a particular time, place and social class that achieves incredible universality in its adherence to the specific details of the setting. The kinds, and levels, of understanding we come away from the film with rivals the kind we get from reading great literature, something which the medium of film has rarely achieved.

As an example of the profound effect this film can have, when I saw this recently at Cinematheque Ontario's Davies retrospective (and what a difference seeing this on actual film makes when compared to the image and sound quality of the VHS tape available in North America!) the audience sat motionless and in silence during the entire end credits, and for a few moments after the lights came up (whereas at a typical Cinematheque screening, most of the audience begins filing out while the credits roll...) This film is one of the best examples I've seen of what can be achieved through the combination of images and sounds unfolding in time; through characters that can't be defined by 'objectives' and personality 'quirks' but demand to be seen as full human beings; and through a non-linear narrative structure which asks us to draw parallels between and find meaning in the relation of moments separated by time and not linked through typical cause-and-effect plotting.

The kinds of stories being told by adherents of the Syd Field/Robert McKee brand of screen writing, with sympathetic protagonists, clear-cut conflicts, objectives and obstacles, resolutions, etc., etc., pale in comparison to this -- in short, none of those conventions of traditional cinematic storytelling (or 'rules of the formula') have anything to do with life as it is lived, whereas this film does.

As some other commenters have already mentioned, the fact that this film (and his earlier Trilogy) haven't had a proper North American DVD release yet (why not Criterion???) is a real shame.

With this film, Samantha Morton has done better than most actors-turned-directors, as she displays an understanding not just of the ways in which films make meaning and are experienced by their audience, but also of human behaviour and the way life itself unfolds. While similar subject matter has certainly been covered before in British films, from Ken Loach to Lynne Ramsay (from whom Morton seems to have learned cinematic pacing and how to "show and not tell"), this film is still able to give a fresh experience, just like how many people share very similar lives on the surface, yet each one is unique.

Without giving anything away plot-wise, the scenes which stand out for excellent direction, acting and pacing are the opening one between the main character and her father, another later on between these same characters in a pub, an outdoor rave, and a fight that breaks out between a group of adults who are supposed to be the responsible ones (though the beauty of the way this scene is handled lies in the fact that we can't be sure some of them *aren't* being responsible by doing what they're doing!).

The last shot could have been one of the stronger endings I've seen in recent cinema, but the music that plays over it detracts from the power it could have had - instead of allowing viewers to have their own individual reactions to this image (and there's enough power and emotion inherent in the situation that it would be nearly impossible not to experience something during this shot), the music tells us what the emotions are, through both instrumentation and lyrics. This serves to detach the audience somewhat from what we're seeing, instead of sucking us in like most of the film has already succeeded so well in doing.

I can only hope Morton directs another film in the (near) future.

For the first hour or so, the filmmaker does a good job of showing realistic interaction between the three characters, capturing the dynamics between mother, son and father. The camera-work and editing are sensible and mature, with no attempts at flashy style to get in the way of the material, a common failing for young filmmakers (only a brief dream/fantasy shot, seemingly played for laughs, breaks this tone).

Unfortunately, in the last two-thirds the believability of the characters and their behaviour, and the focus on the power struggle between them, loses focus and gets derailed (or maybe runs off the road?). The ending not only stretches believability compared to the naturalistic tone of what has come before, but fails to fully relate to what the rest of the film was about. It certainly isn't the case that endings need to give 'closure' in the mainstream/Hollywood sense, but they do need to function as an end point for their particular stories in order to give a sense of unity, and this is what was missing here - there was no necessary connection between what happened at the end and everything else we saw happening preceding it.

Directed like a car commercial and written as if by a teenager who has read a bad screen writing manual and been given the impression that simply adding 'twists' to a plot is what makes a story good, this has to be one of the worst films I've seen at the Toronto International Film Festival - and why this sort of film, which clearly aspires to be mainstream/commercial, was shown at a film festival to begin with is uncertain and reflects poorly on the judgement of the programmers.

The story itself is weak, not because the aforementioned twists were predictable, but because the fact that there are twists is predictable - it's just that sort of movie. Without them, there would have been nothing here to sustain any interest; with them, the story became laughable, and many in the audience for the screening I attended seemed to agree. In the Q&A afterwards, the director seemed to indicate that he'd been sincere in the 'love' relationships between the characters, but the moments where the characters were trying to express this 'love' were the ones that got the most laughs. Apart from these larger problems were smaller ones of basic credibility, especially in a scene in a forest near the end.

Additionally, as a minor note, "The Abduction of Alice Creed" would have made a better title, since that was the focus of the plot - the "Disappearance" in the title would have fitted a story told from the point of view of the police or her parents. Besides, calling something "The Disappearance of So-and-so" and then having that character present to the audience in nearly every scene is just a bit illogical...

One possible use for this film would be as an example of why filmmakers should learn about life and actual human behaviour before attempting to represent it on film, instead of flashy stylistics and technical 'smoothness', which ultimately amount to nothing more than a simulacrum of other films, relatable only to other films and not the real world.