It’s disappointing, to say the least, to see a movie like Maren Ade’s Everyone Else surface so briefly in Toronto.
Ade’s visually stark, emotionally knotty study of a young German couple on the verge of disintegration – or worse – on a vacation in Sardinia didn’t make it to last year’s Toronto Film Festival, premiering instead in Vancouver. A weekend engagement at TIFF Cinematheque marks the first time it’ll screen locally … and probably the last.
I’m not pointing fingers. Everyone Else is a defiantly inaccessible film, eschewing conventional dramatic beats to trace the more subtle emotional and tonal shifts in the relationship of attractive twentysomethings Chris (Lars Eidinger) and Gitti (Brigit Minichmayr). It’s a film of quiet moments and sideways observations, developing along emotional lines rather than structured to a narrative.
If a distributor tried to book this into the Cumberland or the AMC, it’d probably die a quick death no matter how many critics got behind it the audience for a movie like this is awfully small, and three Cinematheque screenings is probably enough to draw them all in.
This is just the way things are now. A solid festival favourite like 2008’s Revanche struggles to find a distributor, and ultimately gets picked up by Criterion with an eye towards a deluxe DVD and Blu-ray release. Everyone Else will likely find its audience on disc, as well.
Dammit. Go see it now, would you?
And speaking of films that failed to find an audience, David Christensen’s excellent 2005 thriller Six Figures will be resurrected Tuesday night at the Revue Cinema as the latest entry in Alan Bacchus’s ongoing Canadian Cinema in Revue series.
The taut psychological study – which barely made a ripple on its original theatrical release – stars JR Bourne as a put-upon Calgary man who may or may not be responsible for the brutal assault that leaves his wife (Caroline Cave) comatose. Christensen will be present to introduce the film, and my good friend and fellow “Go!” panelist Adam Nayman will moderate a Q&A following the screening. And yes, you really ought to be there.
Everyone Else screens tonight (March 12) at 7 pm, Saturday (March 13) at 9:15 pm and Sunday (March 14) at 7 pm at Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas St. West. For tickets, call 416-968-FILM.
Six Figures screens Tuesday (March 16) at 7 pm at the Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Avenue.
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