Winnipeg-shot movie ‘Normal’ gets raucous reception in Toronto

Die Hard meets Fargo.

That was one of the more on-the-nose critical reactions to the Winnipeg-lensed movie Normal, which got its world première Sunday at midnight at the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The film starring Bob Odenkirk, scripted by Derek Kolstad (John Wick) and directed by British filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Free Fire), got a raucous reception in the sumptuous Royal Alexandra Theatre, posh King Street digs for a film with a rather bloody, grindhouse sensibility.

(Bear in mind, any movie in TIFF’s Midnight Madness program tends to draw a crowd that’s effusive in its appreciation of genre films, cheering at every gruesome death.)

But it did not hurt that Sunday night’s sold-out crowd of 1,200 was filled with Winnipeg actors who appeared in the film, including Rainbow Stage artistic director Carson Nattrass (who walked the red carpet with his wife Sharon Bajer, herself a veteran of the locally shot Odenkirk movie Nobody), Aaron Merke, clad in an elegantly red-splattered jacket, his partner Lauren Cochran, David Lawrence Brown and Dan De Jaeger.

While no one is saying any of those actors will meet a gory death in the film, suffice it to say Normal is the kind of movie that makes the phrase “juicy role” quite literal.

Filmed last year not long after Odenkirk wrapped Nobody 2 (in theatres now), Normal casts the Better Call Saul star as Ulysses, a “substitute” sheriff in the town of Normal, Minn., where the former lawman met a mysterious demise.

When a bank robbery goes terribly wrong, Ulysses discovers the whole community seems to be hiding a dark secret.

“The acting pool is really amazing in Manitoba. I’ve really enjoyed my experience in Winnipeg,” Wheatley said on the red carpet preceding the première.

In the cast, Merke and Cochrane, both seasoned improv artists, were delighted to find Wheatley was happy to tap into those talents.

“Every day, there were (script) changes and every day, it was: ‘Try this! Do this! For an improviser, he was such a dream to work with,” Merke said.

Odenkirk said he too appreciated the cast, the crew and even the winter weather.

“I’m from Chicago. It’s not quite Winnipeg or Calgary where I shot (the TV series) Fargo, but it is pretty darn cold in Chicago,” Odenkirk said.

“There’s a lot of similarities to Chicago. Canadians are down-to-earth people and Chicagoans are too. They don’t suffer fancypants people and they’re hard people, they’re tough people, but they’re friendly and I like them very much.”

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The only other Manitoba film on the TIFF roster is Rhayne Vermette’s feature Levers, a mysterious and enigmatic work that presents a surreal glimpse of the world in which the sun doesn’t come up.

It follows the Notre Dame de Lourdes-born filmmaker’s last feature, St. Anne, which won the $10,000 Amplify Voices award at TIFF in 2021.

Shot with “broken cameras,” according to Vermette, the unapologetically avant-garde film begins with the ominous quote from jazz musician Sun Ra: “The light was crucified on this planet, there’s nothing but darkness anyway. And it’s knocking at your door.”

The low-key cataclysm is an event preceded by a bureaucratic unveiling of a mysterious statue.

You’ll actually wait until after the credits to get a silhouetted glimpse of the statue that opens a notorious moment in Manitoba’s cultural history. This may be the first instance of a post-credits stinger in an avant-garde film.

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Selkirk’s own Dana Solomon stars in the TIFF drama Blood Lines, a romantic drama set against the backdrop of a Métis community in Ontario, written and directed by Gail Maurice, who played the title character in last year’s Winnipeg-shot TIFF entry Aberdeen.

In the Short Cuts program at TIFF, Solomon directs and stars in Niimi, a drama in which a dancer comes to terms with the trauma of a sexual assault at a dance school perpetrated by a teacher.

Solomon, who studied dance at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, says the film is fictional.

“But a lot of it is birthed out of my own experiences. I just really wanted to make a film that was about healing and how movement can be healing,” she says.

TIFF wraps on Sunday.

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