EIFF REVIEW: Happy Place an Emotionally Draining Film
The closing feature at the Edmonton International Film Festival is based on the personal experience of writer-actor Pamela Mala Sinha – who was violently raped after she moved to Montreal to begin theatre school. Her attacker not only physically violated her but stole her subsequent life.
“I don’t fit anywhere in the world,” is one line in the film. “I keep thinking there must be a way to bring back what I was before – but she’s dead.”
Five years later, Sinha attempted suicide and entered a private clinic with a diverse group of women who suffered somewhat similar mental and physical dislocations.
Sinha painfully recreated her experience in a one-woman show and then expanded the work into this movie. Last year the CBC (along with a gaggle of other producing entities) fashioned a film of the play shot amidst the fall glories of Ontario’s cottage country – starring Clark Backo as Sinha. It tells the story of seven different women who battle their demons as they endeavour to connect with each other and reclaim what they can of the people they once were.
Canadian director Helen Shaver (Westworld, Lovecraft Country, Snowpiercer) skilfully places the main character in a series of angular expressionist rooms and endless hallways. Her nightmares repeat and repeat as each time she (and we) get closer to that which becomes more terrible and real as we enter the dark pathways of her mind.
In the meantime Sinha listlessly tries the art classes and physical exercises that come with the group therapies at the clinic. At the same time she moves toward these damaged women – and we learn of their distress. Sometimes the women help each other as they grope toward salvation. The film shows us that at times mental stability is as much found in supportive groups as in the system. At other times their own pain drives them to tear away at each other and those who are trying to help them.
“They are all fucking crazy here!” one bursts out.
Shaver, a virtuoso director who is in command of her film, has assembled an ace Canadian cast – some new faces along with many familiar to Canadian film and television viewers: Mary Walsh (recycling her brusque Marg Delahunty character from This Hour has 22 Minutes and dominating every scene she’s in); Sheila McCarthy, whose motor-mouthed meddling in the lives of the others is off-putting but in the hands of this skilful actor moves us strongly as later she taps into the well of pain that led her to the clinic. Tara Rosling is the counsellor who is the voice of reason in frequent bedlam. Other performers include Liisa Repo-Martell, who has played the Citadel, and for local fans with good memories Edmonton’s Jennifer Wigmore. None of these women are templates or cliches – they are a disparate lot and each has an individual story. Together they put a real human face and bring a nuanced dimension to mental illness.
Backo is in almost every scene and displays a remarkable range of emotions. Her dark eyes mirror her agony and dislocation. The actor is capable of displaying great vulnerability ranging to the tensile strength that tells us that she will finally find some degree of contentment.
At the end of the movie, alas, Shaver lets some of the artsy elements that bubble to the surface from time to time take over a climax that should be overpowering. Despite that, I suspect that many seeing this superb and masterful film will find themselves in tears when “The End” finally flickers onto the screen.
Happy Place screens at Landmark Cinemas 9 City Centre on Saturday, Oct. 10, at 6:30 pm and 7:30 pm.
