I Like Movies

  Writer-director Chandler Levack has delivered a perfect gem of Growing Up teen film. 

        At 17 Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen) is traumatized by the recent suicide of his father and his own implausible ambition to get into the $90,000 Tisch film program in New York. If his ambition and film nerdery might qualify him, his secretary mother’s sparse salary and his own narcissism imperil his path.

In foolish hopes of earning his way he takes a part-time job at the Sequels video rental store. The store name accurately connotes the industry faith in remakes and reissues but also suggests the sequentiality of film and life experiences. But we immediately see through the union rep’s promise of a long career in that business. We know what has happened to video rental outlets.

Lawrence finds an illuminating parallel in the store manager, Alana (Romina D’ugo), who confesses that a traumatic casting couch experience in Hollywood drove her from her acting dream to the vicarious world of videos. Thus alerted to his own limitations, and realizing his selfishness in his one school friendship, Lawrence settles into the consolation prize, a $60,000 scholarship to the film program at Carleton. Similarly enlightened, Alana resumes her acting ambition.  Video rentals don’t resolve life’s problems. 

That happy ending incidentally affirms the integrity and value of working in one’s native Canada instead of blindly aspiring to the supposedly superior industry below the 49th. This film is so scrupulously paced, so perfectly cast, so quietly and movingly acted, that it could never have been made in Hollywood. Its final brilliance is in asserting its national values and spirit. In the micro of that theme, Lawrence fiddles with but his buddy completes the grad class memorial movie.

Levack reminds us how joyous a small perfection can be. As a human experience it's way more marvellous than all those Marvel spinouts. This film is good enough to win Levack a ticket to Hollywood. Hope it doesn't spoil him.