THE HIGH COST OF LIVING written and directed by Deborah Chow, with Zach Braff, Isabelle Blais, Patrick Labbé and Julian Lo. A Filmoption International release. 92 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (April 22). See listing.
Zach Braff is a pretty charming guy. He’s affable, he’s intelligent and he’s funny – and he’s also got that sensitivity thing going for him, having written, directed and starred in 2004’s proto-hipster drama Garden State.
So perhaps you can understand why the former star of TV’s Scrubs would want to change up his image with a movie like Deborah Chow’s The High Cost Of Living. Braff plays Henry, a small-time Montreal drug dealer who finds himself drawn to Nathalie (Isabelle Blais), the pregnant woman he ran down in a hit-and-run. Charming or not, that’s a pretty terrible character to play.
“That was the challenge of the whole thing,” says Braff, folding his lanky frame into a couch in the blue room at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in advance of the film’s red-carpet screening earlier this month. “Can you make this person at all likeable? I really just tried to have him be genuinely horrified at himself. He’s not a bad person he’s just been led down a horrible path.”
The film follows both characters as they struggle with the aftermath of the accident. Braff says he was impressed with Chow’s understanding of regret.
“I think people can relate to wishing they could pause and go back, or reverse time,” he says. “Hopefully, most people don’t have anything as horrific as this, but we all have things in our lives where we go, ‘Oh, if I could just go back and switch that one moment. Why did I do that?’ I think that’s very relatable.”
I ask if he regrets not following up Garden State with another directorial venture.
“I’ve been trying, man,” he says. “I’m going for the record for number of movies about to happen [that] fall through. I’m active on Twitter and Facebook, and every third comment is ‘How come you haven’t made another movie?’ I find that very flattering, but the truth is, I’ve just had a number fall through.”
Braff ended up channelling his creative energy into writing a stage play that will open off-Broadway this summer.
“It’s called All New People,” he says. “A guy’s about to hang himself in a beach house in the dead of winter in New Jersey, and through a set of circumstances three strangers show up, stop him and spend the night getting wasted together, celebrating his birthday with him. And it’s a comedy.”
Has he thought about just going the no-budget route, buying an HD camera and making his own movie?
“That’s pretty much where I’m headed,” he says. “Obviously, if one of the things I’ve got going comes together, I’ll do that, but my new plan is to make something for no money – maybe even the adaptation of this play, because I could keep it very small. I’m running out of patience with having a zillion chefs in the kitchen.”
Interview Clips
Zach Braff on exploring regret in The High Cost Of Living:
Braff on the obstacles to making movies within the system, part one:
Braff on the obstacles to making movies within the system, part two:
normw@nowtoronto.com
