Harrowing premise, thoughtful film

Fortunately, Winnipeg director Garrity (Inertia) is not interested in that kind of momsploitation melodrama. Garrity was inspired by a surprising statistic: Of the estimated 36,000 women in North America who become pregnant as a result of rape each year, only 50 per cent opt to terminate the pregnancy and the majority of the remainder actually keep their babies.

From that, Garrity posits a scenario where a young married couple trying to get pregnant has its plans cruelly subverted. Armed with a high-def handicam and no film crew, he simply let his cast improvise their scenes according to a three-page story outline.

The movie establishes a kind of verisimilitude early on with Zooey (Daria Puttaert) and Adam (Tom Keenan) on the conception job, tenderly making love, with some of the awkwardness and none of the string accompaniment that goes with Hollywood love scenes.

When the couple take their mission on a camping trip, they are accosted by a trio of thugs, one of whom rapes Zooey while his friends hold Adam on the sidelines, helpless.

The case goes through the criminal justice system, but that aspect of the story is placed on the periphery when Zooey learns she is pregnant and tells Adam she wants to have the baby, regardless of its paternity.

Adam is mortified by the possibility of possibly looking at his son and seeing the face of his wife's rapist, but Zooey prevails with an argument that nurture trumps nature and the two embark on parenthood on this shaky ground that will eventually shatter their marriage.

Some film festivals rejected Garrity's film, probably under the assumption that the drama was some kind of anti-abortion tract in the guise of an indie film.

In fact, the film is not an examination of big issues as much as it is a thoughtful surveying of the post-rape terrain, encompassing the feminine perspective but also acknowledging demolished masculine pride.

The improvisational approach pays off in a few moments that feel uncomfortable, as when Zooey laughs nervously before telling investigating police officers: "I was raped."

Keenan and Puttaert (who can also be seen in the current MTC Warehouse production of Top Girls) are fine in the title roles, although the storyline occasionally gets them in over their heads, especially in the denouement, which is simultaneously weird and too tidy a wrap-up to the comparatively credible events that came before.

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The 7 p.m. screening tonight will be introduced by Sean Garrity. After the Saturday screening, Garrity will participate in a panel discussion on the issues raised in the film with Arthur Schaefer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

MOVIE REVIEW

Zooey & Adam

Starring Tom Keenan and Daria Puttaert

Cinematheque

14A

3 out of 5 stars

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 29, 2010 D4