Vancouver International Film Festival 2008

Canada

Heaven on Earth

Review by Desirée Leal

I am always grateful to Deepa Mehta for using the experience of her cultural background to speak about universal issues such as isolation and victimization. Heaven on Earth is no exception. We follow the journey of Chand, a young Indian woman who is married off to a family in Canada as part of a bargain for immigration sponsorship into Canada. Chand starts out on her journey excited and looking forward to being a new wife in a new country, but is soon plunged into a life of abuse and isolation at the hands of her husband Rocky and his family. This is a film about a woman finding strength and taking power for herself in the knowledge of her own sense of justice. Chand finally does break free from her situation, though it's unclear how. She escapes into her imagination at times when her world seems particularly bleak and tells herself a story. This story begins to take on real form in Chan's regular daily life and, eventually, the lines between reality and imagination blur beyond recognition. The allegorical element of the film drifts in and out of the narrative in a way that can be confusing at times, but the intensity of the performances draw the viewer in and make the "reality" portion of the story - Chan's day to day at work and at home - almost feel like a dream and Chan's imaginative tale feel like the true reality, where the real Chan lives.

Heaven on Earth is a beautiful film, though far less lyrical than Water. The narrative is fractured with abrupt changes in mood as well as within the aesthetic (changes from black and white to colour, hallucination to reality). But all this seems to work in that it brings about in the viewer a general sense of nervousness that jolts us awake to the brutality what we are watching.

Heaven on Earth
Deepa Mehta | Canada | 2008 | 106min

Canada

Belonging

Review by Desirée Leal

Environmental documentaries are a dime a dozen nowadays and - no matter how noble the cause or how urgent the message - it seems as though most of them blend together like so much recycled paper product. It seems terrible to say, but we've heard it all before, and we all know we're in deep sh*% (literally!). As more people become educated about environmental concerns, the vast majority of audiences who go to see environmental docs are already pretty aware of many if not all of the issues that are most pressing to the overall health of our planet. And, more often than not, these films become little more than a simple case of preaching to the choir. This was sadly the case for directors Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy at VIFF's first screening of BELONGING. Though the overall look of the film is more consistent with something you might flick to at midnight on a public television station on a Sunday night, the images were quite beautifully shot and gracefully edited in a way that really draws you in. But unfortunately that was not enough to sustain my interest and I found myself becoming increasingly bored and eventually irritated - like being in grade ten with no substitute teacher for Biology class.

This is not to say that the subject matter addressed is not interesting or deeply moving. The main problem with BELONGING lays in the fact that it is far too general. At first I thought I was about to watch a film about the Inuit and how environmental abuses have impacted their lives, but soon the narrative digressed into a wide rage of discussions which, although connected, are not immediately relevant to the initial journey. After a while, BELONGING becomes diluted - like dipping an inked brush into a glass of water. The ink disperses into the liquid and colours it, but in the end it's still just murky water which you can't exactly paint with. Having said all of this, I applaud Ungerman and Brohy for their efforts and hope that many more filmmakers will, like them, take up the challenge of communicating the urgency of the environmental message to the world. The act of delivering these messages shouldn't be regarded as futile or depressing. But the message is too important to muddle and therefore needs - now more than ever - to be bold, loud and, most of all, clear. BELONGING carries a noble intention, but lacks the clarity of vision needed to make an impact in a noisy and cluttered visual world.

Belonging
Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy | Canada | 2008 | 58min

Thur. Oct. 2 | 8:45pm | Empire Granville Theatre 5
Sat. Oct. 4 | 1:15pm | Vancity Theatre

Canada

Growing Op

Review by Chris Walts

Growing Op is a good Canadian film. I know that these are words often seem like an oxymoron, but, unlike the stereotypical Canadian film set in the Prairies in the middle of winter, Growing Op is set in the suburbs, and it has a good Canadian twist on the high school coming of age story: the parents run an extensive grow-op. While this concept is nothing new to Douglas Coupland fans (he used it in "Everything's Gone Green" and "Jpod"), director Michael Melski puts his own unique spin on the twist by presenting the pot-growers (Rosanna Arquette and Wallace Langham) as overbearing parents who vehemently conform to a strict set of rules - the rules just happen to be their own. Unfortunately for the son Quinn (wonderfully played by Steven Yaffee), one of these rules means being home schooled, which results in him having no friends and even fewer social skills. All of this changes when a sexy new girl (Rachel Blanchard) moves in next door and asks Quinn to walk her to school. Quinn accepts, and is exposed to a whole new world outside that of his hippie parents - and he loves it.

Growing Op is loaded with laugh out loud jokes, but thankfully most of them aren't based on pot smoking teenagers. The humour in this film comes from the heart of what it is really about - the difficulty and awkwardness of growing up. Underneath all of the smoke and mirrors, Growing Op has a real story that is wonderfully acted and a pleasure to watch. It almost makes you proud to be Canadian.

Growing Op
Michael Melski | Canada | 2008 | 100min

Canada

Control Alt Delete

Review by Cameron Maitland

The cruel hardships that face an independent comedy are often ignored when a success is examined. Working indie comedies' effortlessness seems to prove that comedy is the genre to attempt on a low budget. Films that don’t work so well though, such as Cameron Labine's debut Control Alt Delete, bring light the fact that pitch-perfect writing, acting and directing are necessary for a bare-bones comedy to succeed.

If nothing else, the film has a unique premise; it follows the trials of a computer programmer who, facing the Y2K crisis and stress at home turns to having sex with his machines. Y2K and the increasing disastrous nature of his actions drive the plot, as well as a few romantic and comedic interludes in between..

Labine has written a film that mostly seems like a whimsical drama but much of the directing and acting, save that of Labine's brother in the lead, often errs of the side of slapstick or screwball humour. An entire b-plot about co-workers trying to find the computer rapist seems out of place compared to the subtler comedy at play in the main characters relationships. Thankfully the film never has moments where as an audience you can see a joke that doesn’t play. Instead Control Alt Delete just seems to consistently miss its own full potential by spreading itself so thin the audience is left confused as to the filmmaker's intentions both in story and direction.

Overall the film has chuckles throughout but unless you think a fat man nude or the idea of a man humping a computer is hilarious, you aren’t likely to think it much of a masterpiece. Still, for a first time Canadian filmmaker on a micro-budget, that may still be considered a triumph.

Control Alt Delete
Cameron Labine | Canada | 2008 | 91min

Canada

Maman est chez le coiffeur

Review by gloria wong

The latest from veteran Quebecois director Lea Pool (Emporte-Moi) displays the director's key strengths - a light comic touch, the ability to develop complex relationships, and especially her remarkable gift for working with young actors. Maman est chez le coiffeur depicts one trasformative summer in the lives of a 1960's Quebecois family.

On the surface, they are living an idyllic small-town life. Dad is the town doctor. Simone, the mother, is a journalist for the CBC. Youngest son Benoit seems adorably eccentric. Middle son Coco's summer project is creating a kick-ass go cart... But eldest child Elise is right at that age (13-ish) when she's just becoming old enough to see adults for what they are but hasn't yet grown the skin most people eventually do to insulate themselves from the horror.

One day, a small, nearly wordless scene involving a mother and daughter and eavesdropping on the telephone confirms long-held fears for the other while leaving the other devasted. Within days, Simone has left the family to start a new life in faraway London, and the small cracks in the family's facade turn soon to breaks. Elise decides she will start to do whatever she wants, while Benoit's eccentricities give way to dangerous behavioural problems.

A tender and sweetly evocative coming-of-age story from one of Canada's great filmmakers.

Maman est chez le coiffeur
Lea Pool | Quebec | 2008 | 97min