Review
EMILE
Starring Sir Ian McKellen, Deborah Kara Unger and Theo Crane
Written and directed by Carl Bessai
Opens Friday, April 9
Globe Cinema
If there’s one thing you can say for Vancouver-based filmmaker Carl Bessai, it’s that he has chutzpah.
The story goes that Bessai placed the script for his third and latest film, Emile, in the hands of Sir Ian (Gandalf) McKellen when the veteran actor was in Lotus Land shooting X2: X-Men United. As it turns out, the story is by and large apocryphal – conjectures blown on the pipe of rumour, as the Shakespearean thespian McKellen might say. But it still required a fair bit of brash self-confidence for Bessai to pursue McKellen through proper channels, especially considering that Bessai’s previous film, Lola (2001), had been such an abomination. One wonders whether McKellen had seen Lola when he agreed to take this part, slicing his usual fee in half so Emile could go into production in Victoria in the fall of 2002.
Whatever the case, Emile largely redeems Bessai for his past transgressions behind the camera, even if he’s still searching for something profound to say about humanity. Granted, it’s commendable that Bessai has been struggling to make meaningful films since his debut, Johnny (1999). It’s also permissible to ask whether Emile would have been just as painful and pretentious as Lola were it not for McKellen’s stately presence elevating proceedings above the banal.
Starring in the title role, McKellen plays an aging professor whose memories of his coming-of-age on the prairies are brought troublingly back into focus when he returns to Canada from England to receive an honorary degree. Finally forced to reconcile with his past, Emile attempts to rationalize the choices that estranged him from his family. At the same time, he strives to kindle a relationship with his long-lost niece (Deborah Kara Unger), who is none too keen to have someone dredging up her own difficult memories, and her daughter (Theo Crane).
Emile traverses the vast expanse between past and present with a flashback structure similar to that seen in David Cronenberg’s Spider, although with less troubling observations about the subjectivity of memory. Bessai juggles the intersecting stories deftly, right up until the film’s climax, which unfortunately reveals his ambition outstripping his talent. Bessai crams far too much into this crucial scene, badly botching the film’s emotional progression and giving us bathos where mere pathos would do. It’s a shame because, up to this point, he’s stayed on the right side of subtle, coaxing nuanced performances from all his leads, Unger and Crane working hard to justify their presence alongside McKellen.
Emile may be uneven, but it’s also Bessai’s most assured film to date so I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him yet. If nothing else, he’s an excellent self-promoter and an unabashed booster of the Canadian film industry. (A motor-mouth who gives good quotes, Bessai can occasionally be heard opining on CBC Radio One, among other media.) Even if he never directs another picture, he’s clearly got the chutzpah for a long career as a fast-talking producer. |
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