If the members of the fictional Field clan were all happy, normal, nice people, then Falling Angels would be a dull short, not a compelling feature.
As it is, the Fields make up one spectacularly dysfunctional family. Dad (Callum Keith Rennie) is a demented, domineering misfit. Mom (Miranda Richardson) slipped into a deep depression a lifetime ago and never re-emerged.
Their daughters (Katharine Isabelle, Kristin Adams and Monte Gagne) barely tolerate or even survive Dad and his reign of mad-military tyranny. They do babysit Mom reasonably well but remain haunted by an unknown tragedy that set the family into its downward spiral before they were born.
Each of them also acts out in a unique fashion, one through hippiedom, one through an awkward affair with an older man and one through a home renovation project in the basement.
Set primarily in 1969 but structured with flashbacks into earlier, more dangerous times for the Field family -- including a surreal experience in a 1950s bomb shelter -- Falling Angels is based on a Barbara Gowdy novel.
That accounts for much of its wackiness. There is fun in dysfunctional. Toronto-based Gowdy is skilled at creating off-kilter characters while mining them for universal truths about behaviour.
Falling Angels was adapted to the screen by Esta Spalding. In turn, the script fell into the hands of Vancouver-trained director Scott Smith (Rollercoaster), an emerging talent.
Smith's work is unpolished, even raw and chaotic at times -- something like the Field family. Some scenes do not appear to sit properly in juxtaposition. So the film feels disjointed, and not just because some of the characters may be insane.
But Smith still crafted something primal here. Plumbing the depths of his uniformly excellent cast, he creates a haunting portrait of a family in anger, confusion and crisis.
Strangely, Smith and his actors also found a way to infuse the piece with a sense of hope, too. Not all is despair.
Rennie is eye-poppingly good. Clearly, with his haggard looks and psychologically unstable behaviour, the character is not a conventional leading man. Yet Rennie fearlessly gobbles him up and spits him out at the audience with no ego hangups.
Richardson has a strange, ethereal presence in the film but has no opportunity to really strut her stuff. Being catatonic most of the time does not lead to showing off.
Then there are the three women, each of them wonderful, each unique. Saskatoon-born Gagne is a stage actress making her film debut; Adams, a TV actress, also debuts; Isabelle is the big-screen veteran, with credits such as Disturbing Behavior, The Secret Life Of Zoey, Josie And The Pussycats, Insomnia (with Al Pacino and Robin Williams) and the hip Canadian horror comedy Ginger Snaps.
Falling Angels may be rough at times but it has so much going for it, from content to performance, that it demands to be seen, appreciated and talked about.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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