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

This week, I’m looking at two new films opening this weekend — a horror movie from Canada and a biopic from the US. There’s a young conductor with his eyes on Carnegie Hall, and a young werewolf with her eyes on a figure skater at the hockey rink.

My Animal 

Dir: Jacqueline Castel

Wri: Jae Matthews

It’s a cold day in the 1980s somewhere in Northern Ontario. Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) is a young woman with blood-red hair. She reads women’s bodybuilding magazines on the sly and watches female pro-wrestlers late at night on TV. She’s athletic herself — works part-time at the arena’s snack bar — and hopes to join the local hockey team as goalie. Heather lives in the outskirts of town with her grizzled dad who runs a diner (Stephen McHattie), her angry, alcoholic mom (Heidi von Palleske) and the twins Cooper and Hardy (Charles and Harrison Halpenny). She and her little brothers inherited red hair from their mom and an unusual trait from their Dad. That’s why their mom keeps everyone shackled to their beds whenever there’s a full moon. Can’t have them running around unwatched after midnight — they might bite someone! Yup… they’re werewolves.

Everyone knows everyone in this town, so when a new face appears at the rink, Heather takes notice. Jonny (Amandla Stenberg) is a beautiful, young, pro figure skater.  She’s kept under tight control by her effeminate father (who is also her ice-dance-partner) and her domineering baseball-player boyfriend (Cory Lipman).

But when Heather meets Jonny, they both sense something electric between them. They start going out late at night to parties and adventures, like dropping acid at the casino with their friend Otto (Joe Apollonio). Heather says she wants to show Jonny new things — if she’s not too scared to try. Are they just friends? Or something more? Will Jonny accept Heather’s shape-shifting… never mind her sexuality? Or will Heather’s late-night risk-taking lead to violence, or even death?

My Animal is a beautiful look at a bittersweet romance between a lesbian, hockey-playing werewolf and a (possibly) straight figure skater.  Although the two lead roles (starring the wonderful Stenberg and cool newcomer Menuez) are played by Americans, they, and the movie itself, feel totally Canadian, from the Zamboni to the snack bar to the snow-swept highway. (It was shot in Timmins, Ontario). I love the look of this film, playing with red, black and white, from Heather’s dark red bed sheets and ginger hair, to the hockey uniforms and maple leaf flags at the rink. From its gorgeous nighttime photography, to its blurry 80s music tracks, it’s relatively low-budget and simple but really good. Appropriately — and keeping with the red and white colour scheme — it won Best Director, Best Screenplay & Best Cinematography at the Blood in the Snow Film Festival. My Animal picks up on paths paved by classic female werewolf pics like Ginger Snaps.

I liked this one a lot.

Maestro

Co-Wri/Dir: Bradley Cooper

It’s 1943 in New York City. Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) is a musician, composer and conductor in his mid-20s, who suddenly gets a phone call from Carnegie Hall. Their regular conductor is ill, and they want Lennie to come in that day,  without any rehearsals, to take his place.  He leaps into the role, feeling the music and motivating al the musicians to play with passion. The concert is broadcast live on radio, nationwide, to huge response. This kickstarts his future as a conductor and suddenly the world is his oyster. He celebrates his newfound success with his boyfriend David (Matt Bomer) also a musician, and his career starts to soar.

Later, he meets Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) a broadway actress originally from Chile. They fall in love and raise three children together. He composes movie and stage scores for hit musicals like West Side Story and Candide, and brings largely unknown composers, like Mahler,  into the public eye. But Lennie is never quite ready to give up his gay sex life, and has a series of longtime lovers. Can Lennie and Felicia’s relationship weather both his superstar status and his sexuality? Or will it tear their marriage apart?

Maestro is a biopic about the personal and professional life of the celebrated conductor Leonard Bernstein. The musical side of this film is a visual and audio treat, with extended performances recreated with detailed care, in the original locations, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, and a cathedral in London. Beautiful music and photography. The film itself is told chronologically in three parts. The 40s and 50s are filmed in the style of movies from that period — gorgeous black and white, with elliptical scene changes, where he’ll leave his bedroom and walk straight onto a stage in front of a cheering crowd. Cooper perfectly captures Bernstein’s physicality in his conducting, jumping on the platform, thrusting a hand forward or balancing on one foot. The second part is in a grainier faded colour film to represent the 60s and 70s, while the third section is also in colour but with sharp photography, following his increasing fame and his faltering marriage.  These are punctuated by word-for-word recreations of actual interviews.

But there’s a big difference between accuracy and reality. The script seems to be based on actual letters and diaries that Lennie and Felicia wrote at the time.   This makes their lines sound scripted or transcribed, not real.  And in the first section they speak with mannered voices, as if they were characters in a 1940s movie.

Mulligan is wonderful as Felicia, but you wonder, why — in a movie that puts Bernstein’s gayness front and centre — are we seeing detailed and extended  private arguments between Lennie and Felicia, while his relationships with men are kept opaque? And for a movie about sexuality, why is it so non-sexual? Aside from an occasional post- coital cigarette (he was a chain smoker) or a short kiss, it’s kept anodyne and almost fully-dressed, a movie you could watch with your grandparents without blushing.

There are many delightful parts of the film, with good acting all around, and, as I said, the concerts are magnificent… I just never felt like I was learning anything new about Leonard and Felicia or delving deeply into their psyches. 

Maestro is playing now at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and opening soon at other theatres across Canada — check your local listings. My Animal is also playing nationally at select theatres. 

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