Locally shot young-adult tale struggles with troublesome tone

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This article was published 24/11/2017 (2893 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shot in Winnipeg by Winnipeg-born, Calgary-based director Dave Schultz (45 RPM), Considering Love and Other Magic may draw you in with a young-adult premise that is fanciful, fun and semi-supernatural.

How curious it is that the pervasive mood of the thing is so bleak.

Our heroine is Jessie (Maddie Phillips), a high-school student whom the other kids refer to as “Rigor Mortis,” owing to her depressive aura. 

Maddie has a right to her melancholy. We learn her 12-year-old brother committed suicide. Maddie loiters dangerously around the scene of the tragedy, taking pictures of the blood-soaked carpet her father (Darcy Fehr) has put in the trash, and testing the edge of the same kind of utility knife her brother used to do the deed.

Maddie’s mother (Nancy Sorel) copes by preparing her dead son’s favourite dishes and washing his clothes. It drives Maddie close to the edge.

But she is distracted soon when she takes a job tutoring a mysterious young man named Tommy (Ryan Grantham) who lives a ghost-like existence in the home of one-time literary darling Veronica (Sheila McCarthy).

In their first meeting, Tommy explains to Maddie that he has been living in the house for 60 years, and is in fact a fictional character who can be seen by others only when he wants to be seen.

Apart from Veronica, Tommy communes with another literary creation, “Uncle Jasper” (Eric McCormack) who attempts to impart his own worldly experience to the lad, a challenge considering… you know, the fictional thing.

Apart from a troublesome tone — it’s difficult to be droll when the background of pre-teen suicide looms large — the film at least looks good, with crisp cinematography by Thom Best that subtly layers a sense of the surreal on the commonplace.

The two young leads gamely take up the challenge of making the fantastic premise resonate with some dramatic truth. They play their parts a little closer to the bone than their elder co-stars, who seem to be treating the project as a bit of a lark. (Given that he’s playing the role of a fictional sleuth in the real world, you can’t actually fault McCormack for that.) 

But their job would have been easier if the script were more considered. As it is, the movie has trouble conjoining its various elements into a cohesive whole. It feels simultaneously too heavy and too thin.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing