April in Autumn: The prodigal daughter comes home to some good ol' home-cooked Canadian ennui
By Jim Slotek
Rating: C-plus
Maybe it’s because I’ve complained so much about melancholy being the default mode in Canadian movies, there was a stretch during April in Autumn where I thought I was watching a very dry satire of same.
The title character, April (Caitlyn Sponheimer) comes home to Toronto from a “find yourself” couple of years in India, Thailand and Cambodia where she “taught yoga” (Um, to people in Hindu and Buddhist countries? You know they invented it, right?) and met an Argentinean named Oscar (Oscar Moreno) who fancies himself her fiancée, but whom she now seems happy to keep at arms’ length in the Southern hemisphere.
April (Caitlyn Sponheimer) discovers secrets to her mother’s romantic past buried in the garden
Having come home to her mother (Sandra Pascuzzi), who has health problems that are never specified, and her classical pianist sister Sara (Elizabeth Stuart-Morris), April seems aimless, claiming, “I feel I know less about myself.”
But her mood is energized when she discovers, while gardening, a decades-old metal box of love letters and watercolour paintings to her mom from a mysterious admirer. Sara strongly feels the box should be put back in the ground, since it was originally buried for a reason. But April is on a mission.
All this sounds more antic then it is. April in Autumn moves with a languid pace and sad piano music. But what made me think it was a satire of sad Canadian movies was that literally all the characters we meet (and we meet lots) unburden themselves almost immediately upon introduction.
April takes the paintings to a gallery where the manager (Jimmy Limb) immediately allows that he has been stuck in the gallery too long, has mordant, depressing analyses of the works on display, and soon confesses that he hates art and is quitting his job.
She renews ties with a first-love named Mark (director Warren Sulatycky) who’d dumped her to become a TV producer in Hollywood, found it an empty experience, came home to become an artist and now bears the sadness of having only partial custody of his daughter from a failed marriage.
Sara is conflicted because she admires the avant garde French composer Erik Satie and wishes she could push the envelope like he did (though she plays the same sad piano we hear through the film).
Amid her ennui, Sara becomes friends with a scruffy elder gent (Mike Sniezek) who sits on a bench cadging smokes and people-watching. She names him Erik.
Erik is being treated for social/mental problems by a therapist named Damian (Constantine Pavlou), who, upon meeting Sara, is soon unburdening himself about the pressures of his job and his habit of treating himself with walks and absorbing the beauty of ambient light.
I’m here to say, this is not how Canadians are. Or at least not Torontonians. I know Maritimers who will happily tell you their life story seconds after “Hello.” In Toronto, we are polite, but we are on a need-to-know basis when it comes to sharing any personal information beyond humble-bragging about the market value of our house/condo.
Speaking of which, Sara tells April early that she and mom are on a very tight budget. But everybody seems to spend an awful lot of money on biscotti and coffee from hipster baristas. (Also, mother and daughters live in a great house with shiny new kitchen appliances).
But I digress. In 90-plus minutes, April in Autumn should be a lot more focused than it is. April is the protagonist only to the extent that she gets the best shots in a movie artfully full of them (there’s one close-up where she’s adoringly shot lying in a pile of autumn leaves). But at the end of the movie, it seems like everybody’s emotional cards have been laid upon the table but hers.
(The plot culminates in one of those dinners where everybody invites an unexpected guest, secrets are on offer, and usually, hilarious and embarrassing revelations follow. The latter is, sadly not to be).
All that said, Caitlyn Sponheimer plays the part of the emotional wild-card well. There’s a vibe to her that commands attention, even when we’re not sure what it is her character wants to say.
April in Autumn. Directed by Warren Sulatycky. Written by Warren Sulatycky and Caitlyn Sponheimer. Starring Caitlyn Sponheimer, Elizabeth Stuart-Morris and Warren Sulatycky. Opens Friday, October 18 at the Carlton Cinema.