THE MANOR (Shawney Cohen). 78 minutes. Opens Friday (May 10). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NNNN
A lot of documentarians get their start shooting footage of their own family. Shawney Cohen’s family just happens to run a legendary Guelph strip club, which maybe makes them a little more interesting than most.
Arriving on the heels of its triumphant premiere at Hot Docs last month, The Manor uses the eponymous business to provide context for the Cohens’ simmering goulash of psychological issues – including but not limited to self-denial, substance abuse and matters of body image, the latter of which is almost certainly related to the constant objectification in which the Manor traffics.
A strip club is an emotional and visual gold mine for an aspiring documentarian. In addition to the expected scenes of barely dressed dancers, The Manor captures Roger Cohen’s paternal relationship with another of his employees, a tattooed recovering addict named Bobby who lives in one of the Manor’s motel rooms.
The doc could easily have tipped into caricature or grotesquerie, but Cohen’s compassion for his subjects keeps the project steady and respectful, only coming up short in the awkward final movement, when the lack of any real drama leaves the film fumbling for an exit point.
