Beirne

VIFF 2024 Review: Paying For It

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Emily Le and Dan Beirne play a couple who try open love and go in unorthodox directions in the oddball romance Paying For It.

I first took an interest to Paying For It knowing it’s directed by Sook-Yin Lee. I had no clue of what to expect. Boy was I in for a surprise!

Chester Brown and Sonny Lee are a Toronto couple in a tough situation. They’ve had a romantic relationship together for years and do a lot together, but they haven’t had sex in a long time. Both Chester and Sonny come from two different worlds in the arts. Sonny is a video jockey on the music channel Max Music and Chester is an illustrator/author of cartoon books that detail his personal life. Sonny has a few friends at her place of work while Chester frequently meets with his work colleagues from the same writing community and has a close friendship bond with them. Sonny has a lot of success but Chester is struggling to make a name for himself. Chester is quite introverted and keeps to his circle while Sonny’s not afraid to meet new people.

Sonny recommends they try open love. Maybe they were or weren’t meant for each other and maybe they need time away to figure it out. Sonny being famous on national television has no problem finding other men. Chester on the other hand struggles. His author friends warn him jealousy will sink in pretty soon. Chester does become frustrated how Sonny is able to find many a nightly partner. It even reflects in his illustrations. Chester tries an unorthodox route advised from one of his writer friends: prostitutes. Besides, he’s given up on romantic love.

Over time, both find a lot of pleasure from what they get into but they struggle to find the one. Every other man Sonny hitches up with, he’s a great passionate lover but they’re not as fun as Chester and they don’t relate to her as well. Also at work, she learns one of her female colleagues is attracted to her. Meanwhile each prostitute and escort Chester gets involved with involves something complicating or some kind of discomfort. Many are willing to give Chester what he wants that night but most of them completely back off of any commitment. Some even have demands of their own. Despite it all, Chester is finding a quality in this he feels is missing in monogamy.

Simultaneously, both have difficulties and challenges at their own jobs. Sonny had no problem being a VJ while the alternative rock wave of the 90’s was riding high, but the wave has become a ripple and in came the tsunami of boy bands and other teenpop acts Sonny does not like introducing at all. Over time, Chester and his friends question about what’s going on with his many hook-ups and it affects the art for his latest literature. Especially since Chester hasn’t found ‘the one’ and it’s frustrating for him.

Then things change over time. Chester’s writing career and the careers of his writer-colleagues get a boost. Chester also spends the night with an escort who’s her own madam and it changes his life. Sonny, on the other hand, won’t be silent about the frustration with her job and her life, even on live TV. That eventually leads her to be dropped form Max Music. The two eventually reunite during a tragic moment. The death of her dog. It’s as they mourn together they learn they had something so special, no new love of theirs can replace that, even though they have to move on.

The film is about this complicated thing called love. I’m sure a lot of you look at the situation in your relationships and find yourselves asking why can’t we just love? Why do we have to make it complicated? This film itself is about that human fallibility of making love more complicated than it should. In this case, it’s not just creating the freedom of an open relationship but also the types of people both of them date during that time. Then there’s the mix of the two professions that are similar that they’re both in art or entertainment, but very different. Then there’s the talking with friends. The people they most trust to confide into and divulge their personal feelings. Then there are the changes in their lives. Then there are human idiocies and their attitudes. All that is what makes love more complicated than it should be.

Basically this is a story about a relationship that was doomed to end. Chester and Sonny are close, but complicated. The expired birth control should send that message. Eventually Chester and Sonny grew as different people and learned in the end, they were best as friends. Chester may have found a new love with an escort who’s her own madam but his relationship with Sonny made clear he’ll never have a closeness with another that’s the same. Sonny may have found men that were better at making love, but she learned they all made lousy partners. It was Chester who had no problem with her squirt gun or her dog or any of her other oddities. The ending gave a message I have seen often enough where two in a relationship couldn’t succeed as a couple but they could succeed as soul mates.

The film does give a lot of humor and in a lot of ways is somewhat biographical of both Brown and Lee. For those that remember MuchMusic during the 80’s and 90’s, you will remember Sook-Yin Lee as one of the VJ’s in the 1990’s. Yep, Canadian Generation Xer’s like me and early Millennials will have fond memories of her. Those of us who remember her from that and see the film will see the humor in how what’s happening in the film mirrors her own life and will laugh at the humor involved. Those who have read the book Paying For It will know that Brown and Lee were romantically linked and it detailed the complications. The film does some changes with the dates as it has the film taking place as Sonny’s career is bustling while Brown’s is struggling. In real life, Brown started his relationship with Sook-Yin in 1992, before she was signed onto MuchMusic and the relationship ended in 1996 just shortly as Sook-Yin’s MuchMusic fame took off.

This is a great alternative comedy from director Sook Yin-Lee. It is a very personal story to her and she’s able to show the comedy in it in this story she co-wrote with writer Joanne Sarazen. She’s also able to make some of the changes in chronology work for the flow of the film. There were some elements of shock in the film, but the story and settings made the shock humor work. Emily Le is great as Sonny Lee. She’s great at doing the comically side of the story as well as some of the more serious moments. She may not be Sook-Yin’s twin as far as personality goes but she knows how to do it well. Dan Beirne was also great as Chester Brown. I myself never knew Chester or read his works so I’m judging his performance for how well Dan did his role. Beirne was very good at playing an introvert engaging in a sexual activity most introverts wouldn’t normally try and it changes him. His awkward traits made the character and the story. The addition of the other supporting characters like Chester’s writer friends or Sonny’s ‘other men’ also added to the storytelling and the comedy of the film.

Paying For It isn’t just a sex comedy full of sex humor and some shock humor. It’s also quite a smart comedy about a couple that could no longer be but have a special bond. It’s even a comedy that tells about our own idiocies when it comes to love.

VIFF 2017 Review: Suck It Up

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Suck It Up
Erin Carter (left) and Grace Glowicki play two old friends trying to rekindle their friendship after a tragedy in Suck It Up.

The VIFF is my best chance to see a Canadian feature film each year. I got my chance with Suck It Up. I’m glad I saw it.

The film begins with Ronnie collapsing by a lawnmower drunk. Ronnie has just lost her older brother Garrett. Faye is in Vancouver having a job interview for a school board job she really wants when she learns the news about Ronnie. Ronnie was her best friend until Faye broke up with Garrett last year. She is encouraged by Ronnie’s guardian aunt and uncle to come over to Calgary. Faye meets with them all and they feel the best way to help Ronnie recuperate is for her and Faye to go someplace for a getaway. Faye decides to go to their old cabin in Invermere.

At first, you think things won’t work. Faye is the cool one under control while Ronnie is outrageous enough to flash her breasts to any car full of guys passing by. Once in Invermere, they try to make themselves comfortable in the cabin. However it seems Ronnie is making herself all too comfortable with every guy she meets up with. Especially this creepy guy names Dale who rubs Faye the wrong way. As Ronnie is getting closer to a guy names Shamus and his freewheeling friends from the bowling alley, Faye meets a guy of her own. His name is Granville. Granville may come across as geeky at first because of his asthma and diabetes, but the two connect as Faye is charmed by his artistic dreaminess.

Things prove too much for Faye as Ronnie’s craziness is cramping her style and her life. Faye tries to have a good time, but can’t deny that she has things to take care of in her life, like a potential job in Vancouver. One day, Ronnie and her friends come after a day of fun and give Faye some lemonade. It’s after Faye drinks it that she finds out it’s laced with MDMA, and just 1/2 an hour before her job interview on Skype! Faye humiliates herself during the interview.

Even though Faye is given a second interview days from now, Faye appears to be the one falling apart now. It’s not just about the interview and dealing with Ronnie. It’s because Faye is having trouble dealing with Garrett’s death. She can’t handle that she didn’t answer the call from Garrett’s phone just hours before he died. She came to Invermere with Garrett’s ashes and two envelopes from Garrett: one for her and one for Ronnie. She open’s Ronnie’s envelope instead. Even hearing info about Garrett from a woman names Alex who works at the town ice cream parlor makes things all that more frustrating for Faye.

Then the two decide to hold a party at the cabin. All of their Invermere friends are invited and they all show up, including shady Dale and his mud-filled inflatable pool for mud wrestling. Ronnie’s in a partying mood but Faye is having issues. It’s still all about Garrett. Spending time with Granville doesn’t make things easier and talking with Alex makes things worse. Then Ronnie films out what Faye did with her letter. She confronts Faye with harsh words about the phone call from Garrett’s phone. This leads to a fist fight where they both end up in the pool of mud. But after that, the two suddenly make peace and resolve all that happened. Even the opened letter. It turns out Garrett was a controlling person in his life and tried to control both of them. Faye and Ronnie pack up with Ronnie being in great spirits and not looking as troubled as she was at the beginning. They promise to get together again soon.

At first, I found this comedy entertaining. Then I did a bit of thinking. This is a kind of comedy that I can see the script working in Hollywood. Have you seen a lot of the Hollywood comedies in theatres now? They’re pretty dreadful, eh? They’re relying too much on jokes with shock value and even lewd or crude one-liners to get a laugh. They make you think they’re that desperate for laughs. This comedy doesn’t need to rely on one-liners or crude jokes. All it has to rely on are the characters and the scenarios to make this work. That’s what made this comedy work. We have a bizarre situation of two friends who are two opposites going away to a resort town to help one recover from her brother’s death. The other friend has unresolved issues over his death too. The mix of the two causes havoc, but it all ends when they get into a fight where they accidentally end up in the mud wrestling pool. Then the friendship is rekindled and they’re both able to make peace with his death. To think Hollywood couldn’t think this up, but Canadians did!

The film is also about ironies. The two girls are complete opposites. You first wonder how on earth they became friends in the first place. You first think Granville is a nerdy guy, but he becomes the perfect one for Faye. There are even times later on when you wonder which of the two are having a harder time dealing with Garrett’s death.  It’s the fistfight that becomes the turning point where Faye and Ronnie are finally able to resolve things and go back to being the good friends they were. In the end, both get over his death when they come to terms with what a control freak he was in his lifetime. Even seeing Ronnie toss Garrett’s ashes off a cliff with them still in the jar is a bit of comedic irony too.

One thing about the film is that it doesn’t try to mess with the crowd too much. The subject of death and how Ronnie’s family is full of cancer-related deaths even makes you wonder if this would become a tragedy soon, but it doesn’t. It’s able to take a dark troubling matter and turn it into a good comedy. It also won’t get too manipulative. One thing you’ll notice is that there are no flashbacks to when Garrett was alive, nor are there scenes of Garrett coming from nowhere to talk to either of the two. Another thing about this film is that the story lines are placed out very well. I’ll admit the film starts on a scene that makes you think it could have been given another take, but the film gets better over time and the whole story is kept consistent from start to finish.

This film directed by Jordan Canning and written by Julia Hoff was very well-done and well put-together, even more than most Hollywood comedies nowadays. This is kudos for Julia because this is her first screenplay for a feature-length film. Erin Carter did a great job as Faye and Grace Glowicki was great as Ronnie. The film needed them to be in their characters to make it work, but they were able to keep their roles from being one-dimensional. I addition, they had the right chemistry together to make this story work on screen. Dan Beirne was also very good portraying the misfit Granville who wins Faye’s love. Toby Marks was also great as Alex: the one caught in the middle between Faye and Garrett.

Suck It Up is a Canadian-made comedy that is way better-done than most of today’s Hollywood comedies. It starts out sluggish and even may appear to tread into ‘drama territory’ at times, but it ends on the right note.