A committed couple finds their life slipping away, not because they’ve done anything in particular, but because their history is unwriting itself. Sort of.
The debut feature from Fredericton filmmaker Arianna Martinez is easier to experience than describe. It’s a multiverse picture without a single visual effect, unless you count the actors.
Several years after their meet-cute — at a wedding, of course — Olive (Caroline Bell) and Benny (Ian Ottis Goff) are spending an entirely ordinary day at their lake house. Until, that is, things start to shift, little by little. At first it’s just an apparently misplaced package or some scrambled letters on the fridge. Then, it’s more meaningful stuff. And then, almost casually, Olive finds Benny replaced by a woman named Ada (Mallory Amirault), who can’t understand why Olive doesn’t know her. They’ve been together for years, after all. Since they met at that wedding.
Working from a script she co-wrote with producer Gordon Mihan, Martinez keeps the storytelling clear and coherent even when her characters don’t know what’s happening, using a slightly theatrical style and making the most of a very limited budget. And New Brunswick stage actor and playwright Bell is sensational in her first film role as Olive. She glows — sometimes literally — as a woman slowly realizing she might not have been living the life she wants, and grappling with everything that means. It’s slippery and strange, and sort of wonderful. You’ll want to hold this one close.
NORM WILNER
Content advisory: sexual innuendo, coarse language
Screenings
Scotiabank 11
Scotiabank 13
Scotiabank 7
Scotiabank 6
Scotiabank 5