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The Field family has some issues. Father Jim is a functioning alcoholic, a semi-functioning car salesman, and a fully functioning shit-head at home. Mother Mary is a decidedly non-functioning alcoholic, who spends most of her days pickled and zombified in front of the TV. In fact, the only three times we see her out of the house she is either having a psychotic break, or is dead. The three daughters, who make up the meat of the story are, first, Lou, the nihilist who takes after her father more than she is willing to admit.
Second is Sandy, the princess with a wild side that shocks even her; and, finally, Norma, the heavyset stanchion of the family who packs a very clichéd boxed lunch. The daughters attempt to find themselves while the parents frantically try to lose themselves, culminating in a tragedy that finally breaks through the self-interest and brings some much-needed epiphanies.
| I’m not sure what I was supposed to take from Falling Angels. Barbara Gowdy has said that the genesis for her source novel was the concept of not a Nuclear Family, but a Nuclear Bomb Shelter Family. In the film there a series of flashbacks to a time, about a decade prior to the film’s events, when Jim gets his Irish up and wakes the family in the middle of the night proclaiming that the Ruskies had dropped the big one. They all file into the shelter, and are essentially held prisoner by Jim for two weeks. The kids don’t twig to the fact that it is a drill until much later on, and during the stay two of the girls come upon a vital piece of information that serves as the catalyst for the steady disintegration of the family unit. |
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Now, I’ve never read Gowdy’s book, but I assume from her own words that the bomb shelter stuff was the entry point for her to the story, but it feels like a tacked on device in the film. An artifice devoid of real meaning. Yes, that is where the girls find out about their brother that died before they were born, but mom was already a basket case, and dad was already a beer-breathed douche. Well before we get to the shelter, we are accosted by all the stereotypes better films either avoid, or subvert. I love Katherine Isabelle and Miranda Richardson, but their characters, Lou and Mary, are the worst offenders. Subtly was not built into either the script or direction.
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Sandy has a little more complexity, but still, the perfect housewife template turning out to be promiscuous and ending up pregnant is not exactly inspired. Jim should be sympathetic, being a war vet and attempting to provide for his family while dealing with his emotionally and (presumably physically) distant near catatonic wife, but mostly he comes off as a tyrannical sot. No offense to Callum Rennie, who is a great actor. He’s just in a thanklessly underwritten role. The same goes for former Kid in the Hall Mark McKinney. He’s always been really funny, but his character, the older married dude who knocks Sandy up, was apparently given two types of direction: “Be Smarmy in this scene,” and, “Okay, in this scene, I want you to really stretch your character, and be smarmy while smoking.” |
Norma was my favorite character, which is probably why she was given shortest shrift. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a little biased. The actress, Monte Gagne, and I share a last name. Also, I dig the full-figured ladies. But from her dowdy dress and carpentry skills, it’s sort of depressing when they reveal she’s gay. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with lesbians. Trust me. Not a goddamn thing in the world wrong with it. But her father gives her a tool belt for Christmas for Christ’s sake. I don’t know. It just rang false with me. Like, well, Lou is the hippie losing her virginity in the bomb shelter after dropping acid (another triteness, to say the least), Sandy is the princess slut, so I guess Norma will have to be the dyke. And the girl with whom this proclivity becomes apparent dresses and acts like a club kid, with short dresses and extreme, shiny, alien makeup and half-lidded, faraway eyes and a weird, squeaky type of speech. She downright stalks Norma. It’s is incongruent without a backstory for the girl, which we never get because we’re too busy choking on the clichés.
| On another note, to quote the great and wise Crow T. Robot, this movie has the bacony stink of Canada all over it. Half of my lineage comes from Canada, but it’s not the better half. Anyway, the film takes place in 1969, right on the cusp of 1970, but it looks very much like America a decade earlier than that. I am not sure if this is an accurate portrayal of the times, or the author or director’s idea of taking the piss out of Canada. It never comes off as a direct joke, so I guess we’re just supposed to infer that the times are indeed behind in Greater Canuckistan, which I’ll further assume was a metaphor for how insulated the individual family members were. |
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Oh yeah, and the mom dies at the end, and everyone gains a better understanding of each other, like a big, warm, cinematic hug.
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