DIAMOND TONGUES (Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson) 100 minutes. Opens Friday (August 7). Rating: NNNN
Where to watch: iTunes
A dramedy about a young woman (Leah Goldstein) trying establish an acting career in Toronto, Diamond Tongues works both as a character study and an exercise in cringe comedy: you spend an hour and a half watching someone make a lot of bad choices, hoping that she’ll learn from at least one of them.
Pavan Moondi’s script is sharp and thoughtful, and he and co-director Brian Robertson create a terrific sense of place, bouncing around their downtown locations with just the right level of now-what exasperation.
The movie bristles with musical talent: Brendan Canning composed and supervised the score, and Goldstein – you may know her better as July Talk frontwoman Leah Fay – gives a great, twitchy performance as the self-sabotaging Edith.
But Goldstein’s bandmate Peter Dreimanis turns out to be the picture’s secret weapon: his alert, nimble camera is as important to the storytelling as any other element of Diamond Tongues, making the drama feel alive and immediate in exactly the right way.
See our interview with writer/director Pavan Moondi here.
