VICTORIA DAY written and directed by David Bezmozgis, with Mark Rendall, John Mavro and Holly Deveaux. An E1 release. 89 minutes. Opens Friday (June 19). For venues and times, see Movies.
When young actors John Mavro and Mark Rendall sit down to talk about Victoria Day, the story of teenagers dealing with the disappearance of a fellow Newtonbrook student in Toronto, I want to know differences between being in high school in 88, when the film is set, and what it’s like in 2009.
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“The cellphone,” says Mavro in a heartbeat. “They didn’t have them then.”
“There wouldn’t be a story if it were made in 2009,” adds Rendall. “You’d know right away that someone was in trouble,” he says, referring to the fact that it’s days before Ben (Rendall) and Sammy (Mavro) can be sure Jordan isn’t coming back. “It would be ‘We haven’t heard from him in a day’ – he’s gone, end of movie.”
The two actors are like night and day. Garrulous and energetic, Mavro’s got black curly locks and leans in when he talks. Red-headed Rendall has the aura of a tortured soul and literally recoils as he talks.
Director David Bezmozgis hasn’t made a typical teen pic. There are no sniggering jokes, no predictable boy-meets-girl-and-gets-it-on.
“Teen movies are usually formulaic. [Filmmakers think] teenagers are stupid and can’t imagine anything else,” says the soft-spoken Bezmozgis in a separate interview. “I asked the teenaged actors, ‘How does the script feel to you?’ and they said, ‘It feels like what our lives are really like.’ It was exciting to them because it felt real.”
Ben, like Bezmozgis, is the son of Russian immigrants, and the film conveys that experience with meticulous care.
“In 1988, nobody expected the Soviet Union to collapse,” Bezmozgis explains, “and Ben’s parents’ mentality is still very much coloured by their Soviet life. You see that in their relationship to the cops, for example.
“Then there’s the way they carry themselves, which is why it was important to cast real Russians. Just to watch Sergiy (Kotelenets, who plays the dad) walk or bang the table or slap his forehead – you could never get a North American actor do that and make it believable.”
At a screening at Newtonbrook organized to thank the school for letting the crew shoot there, current students with Russian-born parents went out of their minds with excitement at seeing something so familiar on the screen.
“They couldn’t believe that what they experience at home could be the stuff of cinema,” Bezmozgis recalls.
He says the film depicts a particular moment in time when kids envied people who grew up in the 60s. Jordan goes missing at a Bob Dylan show at the old Ontario Place Forum.
“I was fascinated with what it was like to grow up in the 80s idealizing the 60s, and those cultural markers were all over the place,” Bezmozgis remembers. He and his friends who grew up in that era wished they had an issue like the Vietnam war to get upset about.
Mavro and Rendall don’t exactly feel the love for Dylan. In a great sequence, Ben, Sammy and their friends sing Love Minus Zero/No Limit in the car.
“Whoa,” says Mavro, “there was no way I could learn all the words. I had to tape the lyrics to the dashboard.”
“Yeah,” grumbles Rendall, “and they don’t even rhyme.”
Interview Clips
On the hockey theme
On the beauty of a Toronto-set movie
susanc@nowtoronto.com
