IMPETUS: Ambitious Hybrid On Loss & Letting Go

A few years ago, during a harsh, North American winter, Canadian writer-director Jennifer Alleyn was left by the man she loved, and it opened a wound in her that has taken – and is probably still taking – immense time and effort to try and mend. This is the anecdote that thrusts you into her film, Impetus – a narrative/documentary crossbreed that blends the two genres together, blurring the lines between the story within the documentary, and the documentary within her story. It’s a film about working through the pain of losing in its many forms; how we cope with the burden of loneliness, and how we triumph through even the worst despair.

Thus, it is a formidable if often inaccessible piece of art, that requires not only patience but a dedication to the craft to really enjoy sitting through anecdotes that occasionally feel self-important rather than introspective, and a level of meta that sometimes teeters into the unwanted realm of the student film. But, in the end, Impetus is clearly a very personal film for Alleyn, and it often seems like the film is only for her. It details the struggle she endured while working on a narrative that ended up turning into the hybrid presented today, and it becomes clear that the film was less of an artistic endeavor and more of a self-healing one.

A way to work through the struggle of making her initial film, the struggle of dealing with her ghosts; to reach some sort of understanding about the impetus we can find in the deepest depths of longing, even if the way that understanding is presented is a little murky at best.

The Story, and The Story Within the Story

Impetus follows Jennifer Alleyn in a mostly non-linear structure, as she wrestles to get an unnamed narrative off the ground. Everything is set side-by-side with documentary interviews and her own narration which both describes, in a very meta-textual way, and provides context for these scenes of the film she’s already shot. Though actor Emmanuel “Manu” Schwartz is initially cast as the lead, he proves to be in higher demand than Alleyn realized.

He returns to her production after stepping away for two years (illustrated by a scene shot in 2014 in which his character falls asleep, and then wakes up in a scene shot in 2016), but is eventually forced to leave for good after being offered a part in a larger production, the dates of which directly conflict with Alleyn’s.

The narrative followed Manu’s character, Rudolph, a down-on-his-luck guy, as he traveled to New York after finally being offered the job of pet-sitting a gecko. Alleyn describes this character, originally written as a woman, as dealing with “a woman’s longing that won’t go away” and “pain that sticks”, which is true – because unless there were parts of the film that were never shown, the story seems to revolve mostly around this character brooding sullenly in an empty apartment.  After Manu’s departure, Alleyn onboards actress and friend Pascale Bussières for the lead, and they finish the film together in the way that it was originally intended.

The documentary aspects include interviews with two people mostly disconnected from Alleyn’s film within the film (a retired musician named John and a pianist named Esfir Dyachkov) who have both dealt with loss, and Alleyn skewers the ongoing effects that its had on them. In addition to this, she adds documentation of her filming process and the production struggles; conversations with her team, with Manu, Pascale, and the highs and lows of dealing with a film that seems as hampered by as much loss as Alleyn’s interviewees.

Both documentary and narrative film even occasionally spill into each other, causing the audience to question what is intentionally part of Alleyn’s original film, and what is only part of the documentary. There are scenes of Manu, while in character, going through Alleyn’s footage of John on her camera, and John even makes an appearance opposite Pascale after she’s been cast as the gecko-sitter. Was John merely an interview subject, or was he a part of Alleyn’s narrative film all along?

Thoughtful and Thought-Provoking

The strengths of Impetus can be largely attributed to its interviews and the audacious filmmaking style itself, the mystery of which is equal parts intriguing even if occasionally frustrating. The interviews with John and the pianist are simply fascinating all on their own, as both of them are fascinating individuals. John, who had succumbed to the death of his sister and his wife, and who mentions he is on welfare and often ends up with only seven dollars in his bank account, seems both a melancholy and undeniably content person.

Though he has been through the ringer and is still going through it, he leads a very quiet life with his plants and his small apartment filled with old memorabilia and tokens of his past, and embraces his solitude. His views on letting go and moving on are maybe a little cold, but they could also be considered not only a means of self-preservation, but simply realistic. The pianist, Dyachkov, an older Siberian woman who lost her son, and whose husband left her after two decades of marriage, cannot play piano unless accompanied by someone else, but who still seems otherwise quite sturdy, if a little cracked, from the pain that she has endured.

Additionally, the way the combined genres of the film slip into one another adds an extra level of mystique to an already quite mystifying film. It is never at once a straightforward documentary, but never committed to the narrative within the film either. The blend of the genres speak to one another in the same way that Jennifer Alleyn speaks directly to us and to herself, and it all only serves to embolden the film’s complicated message in an equally multifaceted way. Everything in the film is working with one another to mirror the varied ways in which people are effected by loss, loneliness, and moving on. Nothing is certain or stable when it comes to our methods of dealing with trauma, and thus the film reflects that ongoing fluidity.

A Bit of a Commitment

When it all comes down to it, this is not a film that can be easily digested by the average moviegoer, or even someone such as this critic. There are scenes and lines that will induce an apt amount of eye-rolling; in particular, one from the narrative, of a scene in which Pascale’s character goes to a pet shop. After accidentally harming the gecko she’d been pet-sitting, causing it’s tail to fall off, she seeks confirmation that the tail will, in fact, grow back, and has a brief exchange with the shopkeeper. The underlying message within the exchange between these two characters is running directly parallel with an allegory for the length it will take someone to move on from emotional pain, and it is all so lacking in any nuance or subtlety that it feels intentional to be that way.

In general, the film requires an immense amount of patience, and if you are not someone who is particularly interested in avant-garde documentary filmmaking, this is not the film for you. This is a film for those very dedicated to the filmmaking craft, in all the unconventional ways it can be molded and shaped to create new, unique means of storytelling. It feels mostly more like a diary entry, or an art installation, than a movie but, then again, who’s to say films can’t be either of those things. In the end, Impetus is tailored to a certain kind of cinematic palette, and it is not one that will please just any cinephile.

But even more than the film being tailored to a certain kind of cinephile, it mostly feels like the film is tailored specifically for Jennifer Alleyn herself. This is a film about her, about her struggle, and about how she worked to turn it into something entirely its own. It is, in its own way, a triumph; how she took these fragmented pieces and crafted them into a work of art that is whole. In the end, Impetus is clearly  a very personal endeavor for Alleyn, and it feels like whether or not we approve of what she’s done is somehow ultimately inconsequential.

Impetus: Conclusion

Though a film that will certainly not be to everyone’s tastes, it is worth checking out if only to satisfy curiosity. Impetus is, above most things, an extremely interesting film, but perhaps mostly for those who know that they lean more favorably towards the experimental with the slightest waftings of pretentiousness. It is a film that pulls you in with definite questions, but does not close itself with definite answers. It is a testament to the malleability of storytelling and of human endurance, and, possibly, to the endurance of one’s patience as well.

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Impetus will play at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 26, 2019.