Happening
(Audrey Diwan)
The recent ruckus over Roe v. Wade makes the Happening more topical than expected. But the harrowing story about a smart and electric young French college girl (Anamaria Vartolomei) in the early-60s seeing her opportunities and freedoms dwindle away when she gets pregnant is powerful even without that context. Vartolomei gives a wonderfully precise performance of vitality being restrained, as her Anne explores every horrifying avenue to end a pregnancy at a time when abortions were criminalized. As depicted, those moments feel honest, harrowing, and perhaps triggering. But Happening goes further as a beautiful coming-of-age story, where Anne’s long pursuit to end the pregnancy is also one of self-discovery. Fighting for her bodily autonomy becomes a sadly formative experience that shapes who she is and points to what she wants to become. Subtitled. 99 min. NOW playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. NNNNN
Senior Year
(Alex Hardcastle)
Rebel Wilson stars in a likeable enough ode to the high school movies of her high school years from Clueless to Never Been Kissed. Her Stephanie is a late-millennial who wakes up from a 20-year coma in 2022, which is the result of a cheerleading basket toss gone wrong. She goes back to high school to finish off senior year, trying to relive her popular high school days, which for her feel just like yesterday, and realize her prom queen goals. The comedy gets a lot of mileage from its time leap. Those who went to high school when S Club Party and Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi were topping the charts will feel their 2002 selves processing 2022, wrapping our heads around the new metrics for popularity thanks to social media and the very different conversations about inclusivity happening in high school hallways. But Senior Year also goes for a sentimental kick about celebrating your genuine selves that Rebel Wilson just can’t land. Her performance can’t sell the sincerity. 111 min. NOW playing on Netflix. NNN
Firestarter
(Keith Thomas)
Local audiences may get a kick out of seeing U of T Scarborough’s bomb shelter architecture used as a facility imprisoning and experimenting on extraordinarily gifted people. Though this Toronto-shot adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 novel about a young girl who can control fire is a sluggish whimper of a movie. Lazily written and featuring CGI that betrays incompetence or a meagre budget, the movie, which stars Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong as an X-family on the run from shadowy government types, is evidence that the post-Stranger Things Stephen King renaissance is dying out. At least this one is mercifully short. 94 min. NOW playing in theatres. N
Also opening theatrically this week
Memoria
Tilda Swinton; directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Also playing on Disney+
Sneakerella
Chosen Jacobs, Lexi Underwood, Devyn Nekoda; directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum
Streaming guides
Everything on streaming platforms this month:
