As I did last year, I
wanted to make sure that this year at the Vancouver International
Film Festival, that I watched at least one Canadian made film because
I like supporting Canadian cinema, when it's actually good anyway. I
went to see In No Particular Order for a couple of reasons.
First, I found out that one of my teachers in film school, Byron
Lamarque, was the movie's cinematographer. Second, its showing
actually fit really well into my schedule. So I went to watch it on
its second showing on an early Thursday afternoon and was pleased to
see a very healthy amount of support for the film, nearly filling up
the modest sized theatre, which is a pretty good achievement. Filmed
in Vancouver, this film really felt like a piece of local art and I
was glad that it saw its screening at our biggest film festival.
Sarah (Kristine Cofsky)
is a twenty-something girl who can't seem to get free of her bad
habits. She works two jobs, a barista by day and bartender by night,
the latter leading into nights of drinking and sleeping around. Her
irresponsibility gets her into some trouble at her sister, Claire's
(Sonja Bennett) wedding where, after promising not to get drunk and
not following through with that promise, she has sex with a married
man. The two part ways, but she does find a romance with the best
man of the wedding, someone she had a brief sexual encounter
previously, Ryan (Ben Cotton), who tries to build their relationship
on stronger ground than before, with stuff like talking, hanging out,
and maybe even some actual romance. But that encounter with the
married man still lingers with her...
Why In No Particular
Order works as well as it does is because it comes across as very
honest, seeming like a very real struggle that a number of wandering
twenty-somethings in our generation are going through. I think that
we are a generation that lacks commitment and responsibility and this
film diagnosis that, and while not necessarily presenting a solution,
at the very least we get to see a portrayal of that struggle and
realize that we're not alone in facing this disconnect from the
burdens of real life. Yet, the film doesn't come across as
judgemental; it simply shows us what Sarah's life is like at time
time of her life.
Sarah is a precarious
character, teetering on the verge of being unlikeable, but Kristine
Cofsky does a great job at keeping her charismatic, but believably
flawed. We see that she tries so hard to make good choices, but seems
naturally drawn to bad ones. Not everyone can perform such a
balancing act as it's easy to sway in the direction of being pathetic
to watch or not really believable in the struggle. Cofsky, who also
wrote and directed the film, seems to understand what it is that
draws Sarah to her bad decisions, but knows that a person isn't
necessarily defined by their lifestyle, unless they are fully
overtaken by it. What keeps the film compelling is that Sarah has
not been overtaken and so we retain hope that she can change and
follow through with her romance with Ryan and that she can maintain a
healthy relationship with her sister.
What I like about In
No Particular Order is that it's a modest production, but was
done well thanks to a script that maintains a smart level of humour
and humanity, and a cast that can perform well with their material.
It is clearly a low budget feature, but it doesn't feel like the
story was impaired or in any way compromised for it. There is a level
of professionalism apparent despite the budget confines. This is
encouraging to me because I think with my level of knowledge, I could
make a film like this. It's done very well, but it's not
unobtainable in its scope. Not to say that making a film of this
calibre wouldn't be challenging, because it certainly would be, but
if you watch primarily Hollywood mainstream cinema, it often feels
like something that is completely unreachable. This film is not
unreachable, but it is good.
3.5 Stars
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