Michael McGowan personifies most Canadian storytellers in that, unlike their American counterparts they’re often compared to, few specialize in a genre. While One Week shows some similarities to All My Puny Sorrows in regards to the stakes at the heart of the drama, the story structure is different. And, it can’t be overlooked that between the two films, he made Score: A Hockey Musical, which is exactly what it sounds like. Despite this, his films share a consistency. They don’t shy away from acknowledging that they’re Canadian (cynics will say that is all for funding reasons). While One Week was the most overt, featuring a cross country journey, All My Puny Sorrows continues this trend. Be it with Blue Jays references (played for comedy), or more foundationally like having the main characters come from a Mennonite community. The inclusion of a Mennonite community, while not exclusive to Canada, gave the film a feel of Southern Ontario, even if it was filmed up in North Bay.
Based on the Canadian novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, the story is about generational trauma centred on two sisters, Yoli (played by Alison Pill) and Elf (played by Sarah Gadon). Elf suffers from depression, probably like her father before her, and Yoli links it back to her ancestors fleeing from persecution after the Russian revolution (and having to hide in piles of shit to do so). The inciting incident of the film is Elf trying to kill herself and ending up in the hospital. However, she doesn’t have regrets, she still wants to leave the world, going so far as to ask Yoli to take her to Switzerland where an assisted suicide can be done. Yoli spends much of the film fighting to find a reason for Elf to want to live, to change the lines in the snow. The ones that connected Elf with her dad and Yoli with her mother (a mother who would outlive all 15 of her siblings). Yoli is also fighting the health care system the whole time.
The film’s backbone is the performances, particularly those of the two leads. According to the post-screening Q&A, Pill and Gadon filmed all their scenes together in the hospital over the last three days of production, giving them both plenty of time to rehearse the stuff prior. These scenes carry so much of the emotional weight of the film and both actors brought it, effortlessly going from banter to anger or devastating sorrow on a pin. They did it with a familiarity that sold that they were sisters.
Filmed in 20 days up in North Bay last fall, if they’d had a COVID outbreak that probably would’ve been the end of the film. They had three false-positive tests, one being the director. While they waited for the director to get the results of the 2nd test, they had someone else direct a scene of them, but the film is so cohesive unless someone involved points out which scene it was, it’s unlikely anyone will notice.
There were subtle visual cues the film utilized to show the divide between Elf and Yoli. In the hospital, in addition to having Yoli often sitting at the far end of the room opposite Elf, which divided them so that outside of a wide shot, they really could only be framed solo, they were often dressed in contrast with Elf in lights and Yoli in darks. The background was darker behind Elf and lighter behind Yoli, like keys on a piano or computer. Tying the wardrobe and set design to their professions, pianist and writer.
All My Puny Sorrows is dark and funny, filled with many literary references from characters who care about books, there’s even a striptease to the Philip Larkin poem “Days,” that like most things in the film, is both funny and foreboding. The film has great performances, not just its two leads, but the entire (predominately female) cast. Its theme is a hard one to wrestle with, you can feel the struggle in the character of Yoli, clearly based on Miriam Toews, who wrote the story inspired by her own experiences.
Premiered at TIFF. If the credits are anything to go by, expect to find the film on Crave and CBC in the future.