A Simple Curve

Craig and I just attended a Canada Screens evening which is a new program being run at the Vancity Theater of the VIFF Centre where they spotlight one Canadian film every month www.canadascreens.firstweeendclub.ca. Check them out! They are doing real good work. Despite the great reviews and awards, the film is in limited distribution and might not make it on the screens for long, it just got pulled from Toronto but it is breaking records in Nelson, BC.

We saw A simple Curve: a belatedl coming of age story of a young man who lives in the last hippie heartland in Canada - and maybe the world. Set in the majestic mountains of the Kootenays in south-eastern BC where small towns are beaded along the valley highways that were once so popular among the fleeing US deserters in the 60’s and are still popular today with self absorbed young granolas and counter culture folk who congregate there to live off the land and the grid. It’s a very mature and funny portrayal of rural life in a very special part of the world.

Caleb, played by Kris Lemche of Joan of Arcadia, a 27 YO guy still living at home, is contemplating his future in the economically stagnant backwater town where he and his Vietnam draft dodging widower father, who had pitched his commune tent there once, operate a non-lucrative woodworking shop. Their financial hardship is only heightened by his fathers’ idealistic approach to the craft that defies business sense and economic realities. They live a meagre but wholesome lifestyle but Caleb is faced with the challenge of carving out a living so he can start his own family in his native town.

As one retiring captain of a cross-Atlantic ship said to a young couple emigrating to BC from Scotland: “You can’t eat the Mountains!” Making a living in the country can be difficult, but the high fibre diet of nature is quite good for the soul.

Enter rich developer uncle. A renounced-hippie who rekindles the alpha male head butting of the yesteryears with the father who challenges our young hero to make his Sophie’s Choice.
With a witty and well written script, and a great cast, the film depicts the wonderful relationship of father and son who each have something to teach the other as they reach across age and cultural gaps that separate the older hippy from the young Gen Xer.

Huge stunning vistas of the rolling forrests and valleys also add a flavour to the film that is unique. Life in the Kootenays is very special indeed, not only can you have all the sexual partners of you ever had under one roof at one time, but it’s a place where time stands still, where mountains, lakes and forests murmur the wisdom of the ages, where teeppee dwelling urban-expats congregate to commune with nature and live the simple life.

Your urban-narrator was once such a pilgrim in the late 90’s, and to this day I remember the effect that landscape had on me. I noticed on my return trip from Montreal in 2005 where the sight of the once familiar skyline filled me with nostalgia and charged my batteries. Apparently everywhere that this film was shown, there has been someone who was from the Kootenays who attested to the authenticity of the movie…a great backdrop for a beautiful story of people who have to leave their home and loved ones to be able to find peace.

I think this film might make a great TV series though. Given the desperate need of the CBC to marry tender dramas with CanCon, coming of age stories in obscure Canadian locations are de rigueur nowadays ...which can be made even more dramatic were you to add the rednecks and pot growers, who were absent from the casting call, into the equation. However, the filmmaker, who is originally from the Slocan Valley, thinks that it would be stretching the story too much; but overstretching a thin story down to an even thinner veneer is a not-too uncomfortable reach for Hollywood producers, which means that we might see a carbon copy of this film, specially with the recent attention that the deserters of this current war are getting.