Writer/director Michael Goldbach deserves enormous credit for pulling off a film like Daydream Nation, which shouldn’t work but somehow does despite being more like five films in one and completely contradictory of its essential premise: that is, that these characters are motivated by tedium brought on by their hick town. If most small towns had this much action, big cities would be dustbowls.
We follow preternaturally mature and vaguely unpleasant teen Caroline Wexler as she deliberately creates an icky love triangle between her hunky high school teacher and knock-kneed classmate in her adopted town where a fire burns ceaselessly and a killer roams. As a host of other characters fall in and out of love in coming-of-age fashion complete with drug use, clumsy make-out sessions and assorted parental run-ins, Caroline stomps fearlessly through the action, guiding us towards a white-knuckle climax that’s completely unforeseen and possibly ludicrous.
Daydream Nation has heaps of quality humour and some winking insider references, not least to NYC art-rockers Sonic Youth. And while it doesn’t exactly add up in the end (or persuade us that any teenager on planet Earth could be as confidently prepossessing as Kat Denning’s Caroline Wexler), it’s a pretty darn entertaining way to spend 98 minutes.
Rating: 6/10
TIFF Review: I Am Slave
A tale inspired by actual events evidently taking place in contemporary society, this dark UK drama follows an African girl kidnapped from her Sudanese homeland and sold into slavery. She eventually lands with an upper class Muslin family in modern-day London; from there, she plans her escape despite horrendous odds (wicked ‘masters,’ no passport, money or contacts on the ground).
Director Gabriel Range, best known for the controversial quasi-documentary Death of a President, doesn’t exactly have a light touch and the film’s lingering pallor is staggeringly grim. Forewarned is forearmed.
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