Rom-com done right

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This article was published 22/08/2020 (2219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The title is a mouthful: I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight. From that, one could reasonably expect a movie laden with heavy dialogue between the two young lovers at the movie’s core. Indeed, one expects something along the lines of a Winnipeg version of Richard Linklater’s 2005 romance Before Sunrise, wherein Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy talked a whole night away before he had to leave Europe to return home to the U.S.

But I Propose is something else entirely. It’s a Sean Garrity film very much in the vein of the Winnipeg filmmaker’s 2001 comedy Inertia, which likewise explored the messy love lives of Winnipeg 20-somethings.

The twist is that the titular proposition doesn’t take. On a frigid Winnipeg night, the pert Iris DelaCruz (Hera Nalam) meets on the street with the handsome Simon (Kristian Jordan) — pushing a car over an icy windrow, natch — and the two just click.

They go for a drink. Iris makes the titular proposition. That turns into a licence to “overshare,” each confessing some deep secrets over beers before going their separate ways into the night.

Yet both parties remain fixated on each other, though they haven’t exchanged phone numbers, let alone names. Simon’s friend Gord (Matthew Paris Irvine) is no help. He may, in fact, be carrying his own torch for Simon.

Fortunately, it’s one-degree-of-separation Winnipeg, so they do meet again while ordering food in an Asian eatery. (My own confession: This movie left me with a deep craving for some good pancit noodles.)

Yes, romance blossoms. But at some point, both realize that their opening salvo of secret-sharing did not come anywhere near revealing some essential truths in their different pasts.

The film has been packaged on that Filipina-girl-meets-Mennonite-boy dynamic, but it doesn’t quite bear scrutiny. Simon is apparently not a practising Mennonite, and the reasons, it turns out, run deep. That absence is felt in the character, who, despite Jordan’s best efforts, remains an enigma.

But the film does deliver Filipino culture in spades. As it happens, Iris’s sister Agnes (local theatre star Andrea Macasaet) is about to get married to an awkward, touchy-feely fiancé (Aaron Pridham), and that instigates a lot of family drama, not only between the sisters but between Iris and her mother (Mithus Mallari), who disapproves of Iris’s intention to move in with Simon. 

Agnes’s social is coming up fast, and Iris’s plans to introduce her family to Simon at that event go off the rails in a big way.

Garrity has presumably done his homework when it comes to reflecting life in a Filipino home, where food is always on offer — feel free to recommend pancit to the email address below, by the way — and everybody seems to know everybody.

It’s such a pleasantly surprising background that, for Winnipeggers, feels like it’s been hiding in plain sight.

The romantic comedy has been going through a years-long dry spell, because the genre tropes are so dismayingly predictable. (Hollywood even made a satiric comedy about this stale state of affairs, titled Isn’t It Romantic.) Fortunately, Garrity, who also scripted the film, has always coloured outside the genre lines, seeking out new thematic frontiers whenever possible. He’s also an artist who seems to relish unconventional casting. 

That pays off especially well with the designated leading lady. Hera Nalam is the main reason to see the film. Nalam is no manic pixie dream girl. She keeps Iris’s emotions grounded, making her entirely relatable, especially in her battles with her disapproving mom.

But Nalam has big-time charm onscreen. She’s by turns funny, earthy, sexy and poignantly vulnerable.

Credit to Garrity: He’s one of a very few filmmakers who could see that elusive quality and work hard to catch it on the screen.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing