When I came into Toronto for the film festival one of the first things I was awed by was the diversity. I think I noticed it at Union Station most prominently: people from so many different cultures and backgrounds and languages and identities. It really felt the cosmopolitan city, one rich for its’ variety of distinct peoples, its’ variety of distinct stories. This Place, the feature debut of director V.T. Nayani is in some ways a testament to this mosaic that exists within Toronto; the ethnic communities and immigrant communities, the queer communities and youth communities. And it is about the uniquely cultural dramas that effect these peoples’ lives and relationships. A little indie glimpse into the myriad worlds and tragedies therein that are a quiet but significant part of the multicultural make-up of these strong urban centres.
I chose this movie as my final watch for this years’ TIFF because it felt right to go out on a Canadian film and because I’ve been a curious follower of Devery Jacobs’ career since first discovering Rhymes for Young Ghouls last year. She’s one of Canada’s brightest stars and certainly a vital voice in Indigenous representation on both sides of the border. And this was a movie she not only stars in but co-wrote with Nayani and Golshan Abdmoulaie.
She stars as Kawenniióhstha, a half-Mohawk girl from Kahnawake studying in Toronto for the first time in part to find her Iranian father whom she’s never met. While there she happens to encounter Malai (Priya Guns), a Tamil student with whom she develops an instant attraction, but who is also preoccupied with the illness of her estranged Sri Lankan father and her brothers’ seeming ambivalence due to their difficult upbringing.
This Place is a short movie, cramming a lot of plot and character drama into just ninety minutes; and its’ pacing for this isn’t particularly consistent as it goes from gradually developing the burgeoning romance between Kawenniióhstha and Malai, to each of them going off into their own family storylines for the latter half -their relationship established and even fairly secure. The film also opens with and includes flashbacks to the early 1990s and the circumstances that developed between Kawenniióhstha’s parents that led to their split. They aren’t terribly well-integrated on a technical standpoint, especially in light of the flashbacks doing little to render actors Ali Badshah and Brittany LeBorgne younger. They do very little for the story that couldn’t be achieved in each characters’ interactions with Kawenniióhstha as well, existing mainly to emphasize their choices in a volatile point of history. Structurally the movie would have been better served without them, and with each plotline threaded throughout so that it doesn’t feel that the love story is put on pause for a half hour.
However those dramas themselves are rather interesting. As is the love story. They each exemplify a curious distinction of Canadian identity, ones that are messy and complicated and yet have certain crucial common denominators. Both Kawenniióhstha and Malai are here because of the effects of political violence. Each of their fathers fled Iran and Sri Lanka respectively during times of war, in the case of the latter a war coupled with genocide. Kawenniióhstha’s mother then left her lover to fight a war at home, in this case the 1990 Oka Crisis. And such a thing has left each of them with difficult views on their heritage. On a date when discussing these histories, Malai says she doesn’t consider herself Sri Lankan because of her distaste for its’ actions as a nation -Kawenniióhstha feels the same about Canada.
And yet the figures who cultivated these strong feelings in them, their parent who saw the violence firsthand, is also in both cases someone they have a difficult relationship with. Kawenniióhstha resents how her mother lied for so long about her father, shielding her from a mixed cultural identity she wasn’t aware she had -and her desperation to understand that is deeply felt. For Malai, though the specifics aren’t revealed, it can be gathered the severity of her family’s dissolution as being emphatically cultural, to the point her brother Ahrun (Alex Joseph) especially still feels that alienation and hostility enough to be resistant about visiting their fathers’ deathbed. These are compelling issues to work through, the way these women confront them, Kawenniióhstha especially, is interesting. At the same time though the narratives can feel a bit shallow, or at least scaled back from some of the nuance that can exist there. It might have been nice to know exactly where the conflict stems between Malai and Ahrun and their father. And what Kawenniióhstha learns about her father and the way his relationship to her mother dissolved might be a bit reductive -as though Nayani is unwilling to confront certain realities in service of her larger theme.
But the one area of the film that is pretty unimpeachable is that relationship between Kawenniióhstha and Malai, that for the entire movie is incredibly cute. There’s a lot of teenage flirtation to it, conspicuous glances or blushing or comments, but Nayani and Jacobs and Guns play it so seriously and so honestly that it is quite endearing. They go dancing together at a club, one that seems to be specifically a hive for queer people of colour, and an intimate scene that follows, shot and lit to a gorgeous ambient mood, is very sweet. It’s a shame the movie chooses to fast-track their relationship a bit after this (at least that’s how it comes across), because how they get to know one another as partners and as women of divergent racial and cultural backgrounds is the most enticing part of the movie and it is where the films’ heart ought to be. The actresses are both really good at emphasizing both the subtle gestures of attraction, that kind of awkward juvenile first love that surprisingly works with these characters in their twenties, and the inherent non-whiteness to just about every inch of their dynamic. Nayani’s approach of dealing with her characters’ issues independent of their relationship I can see the logic in, as these separate facets of their identities are so innately personal; but it does have the effect of diluting that romance and preventing it from developing as gratifyingly as it could. And it makes for the depth of feeling to the reunion and resolution at the end seem a tad unearned.
The movie is called This Place, a title which of course has many meanings. It is the multi-ethnic hub of urban Toronto where these girls live and meet, it is the mental state of being between cultures, it is the emotional state of being in the presence of someone special. It is “place” in both a sense of permanence and transience. It’s complicated, just as the cultural and personal identities of Kawenniióhstha and Malai are. I think it’s very fortuitous I ended my experience at the Toronto International Film Festival here -a movie that represents that city and the people within it quite well, regardless of its’ lapses in structure and focus. I had a very good time in This Place, and I can’t wait for another chance to come back.
A release date for This Place is still to be determined.
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