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>>> The Mend

THE MEND (John Magary). Opens Friday (September 25). 109 minutes. See listings. Rating: NNNNN

Where to watch: iTunes


I can imagine an audience rejecting The Mend just out of reflex. John Magary’s first feature focuses on unpleasant people doing unpleasant things – and if you boil it down to a Facebook synopsis, no, it doesn’t sound like one of the best debuts of the year. But it is. Trust me. It absolutely is.

The Mend is one hell of a movie. Magary turns the grim trajectory of grown-up failure into a prismatic character study, zeroing in on two brothers who fall back into toxic co-dependence when they wind up sharing a Harlem apartment. 

Mat (Josh Lucas) is the older one, I think, though it’s hard to tell. He certainly looks like he’s got more miles on him, especially now that he’s been thrown out by his girlfriend (Lucy Owen). Crashing a party his brother Alan (Stephen Plunkett) and Alan’s girlfriend Farrah (Mickey Sumner) are throwing before a trip to Canada, Mat winds up squatting at their place and waiting for something else to happen.

It turns out that the next thing is Alan’s return, solo, after a fight with Farrah. And as the two of them mope around together, The Mend burrows ever further into their souls.

Magary wears his influences on his sleeve: the handheld domestic tensions are straight out of Cassavetes, the recurring iris effect a favourite signifier of Arnaud Despleschin, and there’s a lot of Dead Ringers in the dynamic between useless Mat and hapless Alan. 

But these aren’t just references. Magary is drawing a new map on existing terrain, or shaking up a stylistic snow globe to see what’s left when it settles. When Mat’s studied indifference slips to reveal an aching loneliness, or when an unexpected jump cut launches us straight from post-coital bliss into a relationship-ending blowout, The Mend feels raw and real, as though it’s remaking the world in front of our eyes.

You need to see this movie.

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