TIFF 2021: ALL MY PUNY SORROWS & KICKING BLOOD

Canadian cinema has a rather strong presence at the 2021 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, which is hopefully a sign of the local industry’s growing creative output. The following two films deal with mental health in very different ways, but both are engaging in their own unique manner. While Michael McGowan‘s All My Puny Sorrows depicts the very real struggles of depression and suicide, Blaine Thurier‘s Kicking Blood takes a more supernatural approach in tackling the subject of addiction through a vampire narrative. Despite their flaws, both films are solid examples of creative storytelling through the art of filmmaking.

All My Puny Sorrows (Michael McGowan)

Based on Miriam Toews‘ award-winning novel, Michael McGowan‘s All My Puny Sorrows is a true balancing act of melodramatic storytelling. Given its subject matter, the film is understandably a bit of an emotional roller coaster at times. But it also has a surprising amount of levitating wit to soothe audiences through its dramatic course. The film can be a bit uneven at times, and is far from perfect, but does serve as a thoughtful examination of the intricate complexities of depression.

Opening up with a man (Donal Logue) standing in front of an incoming fast-moving train, the theme of suicide becomes front and centre. Coming from a small Mennonite community, the film primarily follows this troubled man’s daughters, Yoli (Alison Pill) and Elf (Sarah Gadon), who grapple with the emotional aftermath of this event. While Yoli is in the midst of a divorce and faces the challenges of raising a teenage daughter (Amybeth McNulty), Elf struggles with mental health issues that feel all too familiar to her family. After Elf has another suicide attempt, Yoli does all she can to help her sister find a will to live and avoid the same outcome that became their father. Mare Winningham plays the matriarch of the family, with Mimi Kuzyk, Aly Mawji, and Michael Musi turning in strong supporting role performances as well.

It’s never easy to paint a story with such a dark thematic centrepiece without treading into a void of complete darkness, which to be honest, can often be a detriment to creating a narrative that doesn’t reflexively push audiences away. There are many different ways of doing this, and in All My Puny Sorrows, a sense of sarcasm and tonally appropriate comedic moments are scattered throughout the story’s dark thesis. The relationship between Yoli and Elf is enigmatic and finds ways of revealing love and joy, despite all the darkness brooding in their lived realities. A lot of credit goes to McGowan’s adaptation of Toews’ affecting source material, but it goes without saying that the performances of Pill and Gadon are what makes this sense of brevity work. Their interactions, no matter how serious and emotional, are always magnetizing and find a way to envelop the scene and feel naturally relatable. Certainly career-best performances by two of Canada’s most talented working actresses, and their longstanding personal relationship with one another likely served as a backbone for the beauty we end up seeing on screen. Winningham is also a source of many winning comedic moments, who maintains a shield of strength in someone who is obviously grieving in her own, if not silent, way.

The dramatic tension of the film is also very heartfelt, and McGowan never loses sight of its seriousness. All My Puny Sorrows doesn’t necessarily take place in a happy world, and when the emotions are supposed to hit high, they certainly do that in perfect pitch. But the story also crams in a lot of commentary on grief, religion, and society’s overall acceptance and understanding of mental health, which is an admirable task for a contained feature film. The problem is that some of these thoughts end up being muddled in the film’s already abundantly busy emotional narrative. Certain thoughts feel a bit half-baked, and one can assume that they were likely more fleshed out in Toews’ original novel. Nevertheless, this doesn’t really take away from the film’s overall messaging, and perhaps any haziness in these subplots is a reflection of the messiness of everyday living. And because of that, in its own chaotic way, despite not always being clear, the film does somehow work and feels cohesive in the end.

All My Puny Sorrows ends up tackling some pretty dense topics, and its emotional bearings are far from puny. And as someone who always roots for local Canadian talent, it’s a true joy to see Pill and Gadon inhabit roles that are truly deserving of their crafts. Their masterclass performances help anchor a film that is not void of imperfections, and ultimately makes this narrative exercise a worthwhile experience.

Kicking Blood (Blaine Thurier)

Vampire narratives may be tried and true, but filmmakers continue to find ways of advancing this storied sub-genre of cinema. Such is the case with Blaine Thurier‘s Kicking Blood, which draws a corollary between vampirism and addiction. The film is a refreshingly nuanced take on the inner turmoils faced by blood-thirsting immortals and is a surprisingly touching exercise in storytelling.

The film revolves around Anna (Alanna Bale), a vampire with a conscience who decides to kick her addiction of blood after forming a relationship with a struggling alcoholic, Robbie (Luke Bilyk). Fellow vampires Nina (Ella Jonas Farlinger) and Boris (Benjamin Sutherland), whom she has hunted with regularly for hundreds of years, are not in agreement with Anna’s decision to leave their sacred way of living. This conflict culminates in a series of difficult decisions, creating a story that tackles addiction in a unique and bloody fashion.

Bale does an excellent job at humanizing Anna, while also demonstrating her more ferocious qualities as a vampire who is constantly on the hunt for new blood. She’s seductively impressive with her deep gazes that seem emotional-less at first but speaks volume the more you peer into them. Her performance sews the film’s grander mythology with its more grounded thematic appraisal of addiction. Kicking Blood paints vampiric behaviour as a form of addiction itself, and creates a lens for audiences to contemplate these fictional beings in an ingenious way. The intensity of the highs and lows of craving for any specific substance actually fits perfectly with the demonic drive that we have come to expect from vampires. Thurier uses these thematic familiarities to create feelings of thirst, hunger, and desire through his seemingly tame command as a director. But when these thematic senses are meant to be heightened, he demonstrates that he can also have a rather commanding presence behind the camera.

The tone of the film is also noteworthy for its deliberately isolating ambiance. Serving as a reflection of the loneliness that most of the characters in the film are experiencing, Thurier steers away from anything too stylistically flashy, knowing that it would only take away from the narrative’s haunting dimensions. This approach helps set up the film’s most emotionally significant message in its examination of the beauty of mortality. It constantly poses the question of whether someone is afraid of death, regardless of what degree of control they may or may not have. And perhaps through its thematic contrast, Kicking Blood manages to feel rather hopefully at the end, which is a poignant way of wrapping up such a unique story.

Some of the film’s supporting characters, including Nina and Boris aren’t as fleshed out as one might hope, especially given how the film’s climactic ending reveals them to be more multi-dimensional than initially advertised. But on the whole, Kicking Blood finds a way to express a lot of interesting emotions that feel inherently like a vampire story, but also glaringly different. There’s certainly a sense that the explorations of addiction and how this gets weaved into the vampire mythology could have been pushed further, particularly given the interesting premise of the film’s setup. But perhaps Thurier made a conscious effort to stay within the lane of vampirism, without steering it into a story that veers too far into the social commentary it already engages in. And because of this somewhat missed opportunity, Kicking Blood film doesn’t necessarily re-invent the whole vampire narrative, but Thurier makes his mark on this very important sub-genre of cinema and does so with an impressive kick in the emotional gut.

All My Puny Sorrows and Kicking Blood premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.