Cultural Mining

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Canada’s film industry turns out lots of good movies every year, but we rarely hear about them — we just don’t have the monumental promotion budgets and tie-ins that come with mainstream Hollywood films. Even so Canada did quite well at the Oscars this year, with the NFB’s The Girl Who Cried Pearls winning best animated short, K-Pop Demon Hunters scoring best animated feature, and Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, which was shot in and around Toronto, picking up more awards.

But the Oscars are about last year; what if you want to watch some Canadian movies that haven’t been released yet? Well now is your chance: CFF (aka the Canadian Film Festival) is having its 20th anniversary next week. 

So this week I’m talking about two new Canadian movies: a crime thriller involving a reluctant surgeon; and an erotic drama about an inquisitive journalist. But first, let’s take a look at this year’s CFF.

CFF

For their 20th anniversary, the CFF is showing brand-new features and shorts  in Toronto from March 24–29, including a number of world premieres. I’ve been covering the CFF for many years, and I keep coming back it’s hard to find low-budget, independent local movies that are also fun to watch: comedies, thrillers, and dramas, that aren’t afraid to be weird or quirky without worrying about product placements or studio politics. The shorts at CFF turn into features a couple years later. And they’re generally made by filmmakers you haven’t heard of yet, but probably will in a year or two be well- known, like Jeremy Lalonde’s (Sex After Kids, James vs His Future Self, The Go-Getters) whack comedies. I first saw Halifax’s Taylor Olsen’s work at CFF a couple years ago; now his films like What We Dreamed of Then are being released nationally.

Here are some features playing at this year’s CFF that caught my eye: 

James is described as a “Hoser-Noir comedy” about an East Vancouver nihilist who finds a new purpose after finding a racing bike in the trash. 

Nesting from Quebec, tells about a young mother who loses her grip on reality following a harrowing hold-up with her baby. 

 

Lucid is about a struggling art school student in Toronto in the 1990s whose creativity is blocked until she takes a magical elixir… which releases actual demons. 

And The Bearded Girl, where a sideshow performer runs away from the circus and tries to live a normal, small-town life.

These are just a few of the Canadian movies you can catch next week at CFF, starting on March 24.

Maya & Samar

Dir: Anita Doron

Maya (Nicolette Pearse) is an investigative journalist from Toronto, who specializes in exploitation articles on sex-and-drug-fuelled decadence. She’s in Athens, Greece not to chase stories but to enjoy a long-awaited and much-needed vacation; she bleached her hair and dug up her shortest cut-offs just for this trip. She’ll be staying with her bestie Becca (Brenna Coates). She and Becca were a dynamic duo back in Toronto, committed party girls known for their ribald reveries, staying up all night, getting sloshed and stoned, and picking up any guy that looks good through their beer goggles. Maya is still totally committed to that lifestyle, ogling the buff guy she sees tinkering with his motorcycle in Becca’s courtyard.

But her best friend seems to have left all that behind. She’s married now and pregnant, so no more drinking, drugs or dancing. So Maya ends up going out that night with Yan — the motorcycle dude —  to a rave in a secret location. He supplies the MDMA, and they start dancing to the music. But he makes her put her camera away. Why? The partiers at this rave are undocumented refugees, who face deportation — or worse — if their faces are seen.  And that’s where she meets Samar (Amanda Babaei Vieira), a lithe and lovely woman with curly black tresses. Sparks fly, and soon they’re making out on the dance floor. But like  Cinderella, Samar disappears before Maya gets to know her. Who’s that girl? Turns out Samar is an Afghan sex worker in an Athens strip bar, having escaped the Taliban in Kabul. While Maya doesn’t give up her commitment to heterosexuality — she has a quickie with Yan on the beach later that night — she can’t get Samar out of her head. So she tracks her down… leading to a weekend of wild sex. Maya’s body and soul embraces the love and lust between her and Samar. But her journalistic mind, sees a story that must be told.  But what will happen to Samar if Maya reveals  her secrets?

Maya and Samar is a woman-driven dramatic romance with a surprising, political twist. It’s a passionate, feminist story set within the precarious world of undocumented workers. And it’s sexy as all get-out.

You remember that French flick from 2013 called Blue is the Warmest Colour? There was a lot of controversy at the time about the explicit (though mechanical) sex scenes between Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos’s characters. Well, Maya and Samar blows that one out of the water. The frequent sex scenes in this movie are passionate and erotic, and the characters seem to be totally into it. Though all of the characters in this movie (written by Tamara Berger) are flawed at best, they’re all interesting to watch. And the chemistry between Pearce and Vieira is palpable. 

If you’re looking for a hot night on the town, check out Maya & Samar. 

Plan C

Wri/Dir: Scott Anthony Cavalheiro

It’s daytime, somewhere in the rustbelt. A young man wearing a rubber mask and carrying a black bag pushes his way through open doors and down dark alleys, pursued by armed police.  He manages to escape into a waiting getaway car. But who he is and what he’s carrying is not what you expect. Beneath the mask and the hoodie is a woman, with lank red hair and gaunt features. Why is she in a hurry? Clare (Claire Cavalheiro) is carrying a plastic medical case filled with organs ready for transplant. Along with some good, hard cash — 30,000 smackers, to be exact. It’s all for her brother Danny (Daniel DeSanto) who is at death’s door with stage 4 colorectal cancer. He needs an intestine transplant, and he needs it now! Clare hopes her Plan C, her Hail Mary attempt, will save Danny when everything else has clearly failed. (They’re both dirt-poor, so can’t afford legitimate hospital bills.) 

Her plan is to force at gunpoint a plastic surgeon and a nurse (Jamie Spilchuk, Vivica A. Fox) at a sketchy private clinic to perform the life-saving surgery, and then escape by crossing the border to Canada. But the police are on their tail — after all, she stole a transplant from another patient in line for surgery. And then there’s the wild card, a gangster named Leeko (Joris Jarsky). With a facial tattoo and a trigger-happy finger, he’s a mean mo-fo who doesn’t care who he kills as long as it quenches his thirst for money and power. Can Clare’s plan possibly succeed? Or is it just another accident waiting to happen?

Plan C is a taut, fast-moving thriller about a series of disastrous crimes that stem from an attempt to save a life. It’s gritty, bloody and intense. I love the way it operates under a series of time constraints: the transplant has to be performed before the organ’s time range expires, and before the patient dies — an interesting reverse-take on the usual “ticking bomb” premise. And the constant motion and chase scenes— on foot, in cars, and on open waters — keep you glued to the action. Claire Cavalheiro stands out as the foul-mouthed, low-life killer with a heart of gold. And Viveca A Fox provides some much-needed comic relief as a reluctant nurse who’d rather just watch her soaps.

Plan C is a dark and gritty thriller that never slows down.

Maya & Samar opens this weekend; check your local listings. And Plan C is the opening night feature at the CFF on July 24th.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com