Review
THE DELICATE ART OF PARKING
Starring Dov Tiefenbach and Fred Ewanuick
Directed by Trent Carlson
Opens May 14
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Is there anything else as simultaneously deflating and infuriating as failed humour? The Delicate Art of Parking presses the question to such increasingly pitched degrees throughout its 90-minute plunge, one can only assume the film is on a kamikaze mission.
The debut feature of Vancouver-based writer-director Trent Carlson, it also wields an exclusively Canadian strain of mediocrity – the sort of exaggerated but ultimately underdeveloped characters that have made the Royal Canadian Air Farce a national shame, Degrassi-calibre acting and, in its embracing of the mockumentary format, an overarching esthetic that falls several years behind a fatigued international trend.
Lonny Goosen (Dov Tiefenbach) is a failed documentary filmmaker (he has yet to get around to completing any of his numerous projects) who has accumulated almost $3,000 in unpaid parking fines. He decides to make a film about what he supposes to be the inherently misanthropic world of parking enforcement officers, tow-truck drivers and impound supervisors. But early on in shooting, he and his small crew – Russian boom-mic operator Olena (Diana Pavlovska) and an unseen cameraman – befriend officer Grant Parker (Fred Ewanuick) after witnessing him being attacked by an enraged driver. Parker – a thin amalgam of WKRP’s Les Nessman and Radar from M*A*S*H – is dedicated to his job in a way that only sexless nerds ever are – he truly believes that ticketing contributes to the greater good, often deferring to the philosophies of chief officer Murray Schwartz (Gary Jones), who has achieved an almost guru-like status among his subordinates. Goofily fascinated by the filmmaking endeavour and by Olena’s comely charms, a French-Canadian tow-truck driver, Jerome (Tony Conte), also becomes a key participant.
When Murray is knocked into a coma after being run down by a motorist he’s just ticketed, Lonny, Grant and Jerome begin collaborating in a covert investigation of the accident’s circumstances. Was it an accident at all? And if Grant’s worst suspicions are confirmed, will his profound emotional investment in his livelihood all have been for naught?
Parking, and the rage it engenders in motorists, is a topic rich with satirical possibilities that almost every urban dweller – including those who don’t drive – can relate to. In downtown Vancouver, where the film’s action is unofficially located, parking officers and tow trucks do indeed patrol and prosecute with the infuriating precision of organized weasels, stripping away the ostensibly laid-back veneer of West Coast folk.
The Delicate Art of Parking means to give dimension and sympathy to one of the most dehumanized and hated professions, while also commenting on how the pressure cooker of city life can make monsters of us all. But virtually every joke here feels like a missed opportunity that someone like Christopher Guest (whose influence hangs heavy here) could have given much more resonance, to say nothing of sheer comic oomph. |
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