SLEEPING GIANT (Andrew Cividino). 90 minutes. Opens Friday (December 11). See listings. Rating: NNNN
Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant was named best Canadian first feature at TIFF earlier this year, and just this week it’s been honoured again by inclusion in Canada’s Top Ten. Wondering what all the fuss is about? Just get yourself down to the Carlton.
Sleeping Giant is a study of three teenage boys – city kid Adam (Jackson Martin) and rural cousins Riley (Reece Moffett) and Nate (Nick Serino) – bonding and fighting in cottage country.
They flirt with trouble. Mostly it’s petty kid crap, like egging houses and boosting beer from a variety store. But there’s something dark about the way Nate needles the other two, and it just gets darker as the weeks pass.
Writer/director Cividino expanded this from a 2014 short film, and the padding occasionally shows. But it’s still an assured and beautiful first feature, observing the ugly awkwardness of male adolescence against the gorgeous, indifferent backdrop of Lake Superior.
Further credit should go to Chris Thornborrow and Bruce Peninsula, who wrote and performed the music, and cinematographer James Klopko. If the plotting is a little on the obvious side, the details are painfully specific and smartly observed, and all three leads are solid.
I can’t wait to see what these guys do next.
