Robert
J. Lewis gave Cole, which played at the 2009
Festival Nouveau Cinéma, 3.0 out of
4 stars. For the FNC ratings page, click
HERE.
If
they were from south of the border instead of small-town,
pulchritudinous Lytton, British Columbia, most of them, not
as young as they once were, would be serving in either Iraq
or Afghanistan -- the elect joining the ranks of those mentioned
in silence on PBS nightly news. But 
the
award winning film Cole, directed by Carl Bessai,
is set in Canada, where instead of fighting someone else’s
war, a town's steady supply of losers gets wrecked on beer
and the local bud (cannabis) until something happens;
and when it does, it’s usually ugly.
Bobby
(Chad Willett) can’t find work, wants to set up a car
wash, but his wife Maybelline (Sonja Bennett) won’t
give him the money she’s saved for her young son’s
education. So when his frustration predictably hits the fan,
he confuses her with a punching bag, and his post-attack apologetic
for a pardon. When he treats one of the local women like a
slut and the slut strikes back, the booze spills, glass shatters
and all hell breaks loose. Looking for an excuse to pick a
fight with the promise of another empty day, Cole's best friend
Frogger (Michael Eisner), for whom successfully waking up
in the morning is an excuse to get high, takes to sniffing
Super 98 and almost forgets how to breathe.
Welcome
to Lytton, population 350. This is where Cole Chambers (Richard
de Klerk), in his early 20s and worried about his next 20,
has been growing up and from where he gleans his material
for his writing, which he hopes one day will be his passport
to a better life. In the meantime, he has to help his sister
Maybelline -- who has two young ones -- run a broke-back gas
station and keep her from getting beaten up by El Frustrato:
the father and fist to one of the kids. Adding to the dead
weight, both Cole and Maybelline must watch after a footloose
mother whose neocortical functions have flown the cuckoo’s
nest.
But
despite the broken lives and the town’s disconnect from
any meaningful future, director Carl Bessai, who gave us Mothers
& Daughters (2008) and Normal
(2007), infuses Lytton with a lyricism that transcends the
patheticness and pathos of events that overwhelm his well-scripted
characters and their no-exit deals and dealings with destiny.
Filling in for what is left unsaid as the film unfolds, time
takes on a suspended quality so that what is universal in
small-town life gets a sympathetic telling as the day breaks
and mind wakes to the ruins and remains of another day in
the life.
Memorably
caught in the cross hairs of Bessai’s relentlessly roving
eye are the film’s many subplots that are neatly warped
and woofed into a cohesive narrative. In a writing class,
Cole meets Serafina (Kandyse McClure), who is Black and beautiful
and wears gold. But contrary to expectation, their budding
relationship will be forced to run not the race but the class
gauntlet. Cole’s small-minded friends, who fear the
written word, resent him for writing about what he knows best,
but they don’t want to let him go. With a way out, Cole
has to decide what kind of relationship he’s to have
with Lytton and Serafina, and his sister who refuses to get
tough on spousal abuse.
Cole
is a film whose many parts are more than equal to the sum
of life in the boondocks, whose agenda keeps on rolling long
after the films credits have rolled by. One can only hope
that the film’s marketers will do as good a job as the
film’s makers and actors. Kudos to Carl Bessai and his
talented team with a big time nod to the note-perfect, home-grown
soundtrack.
