By Anne Brodie
Switzerland is a wealthy country, but it has failed to keep an unnamed mother and her three small children from falling into desperate poverty and increasing lawlessness. Ophélia Kolb leads the cast of The Courageous; she’s three months behind on rent and faces an unkind future, finding shelter where she can, an empty house that’s on the market that she tells the children they own, a remote spot in the woods, and eating what and when they can, a shared single glass of lemonade a diner, cherries from a private property. She has a record. One day she leaves the children alone and disappears. They walk miles home across busy highways, as a diner owner reports her to police. The little ones know she’s not doing right but accept it, and they love her despite the constant stress roller-coaster of their lives. The school principal lectures her for their absenteeism and she doesn’t take kindly; by now she’s so far off the straight and narrow that she organises the theft of a stash of money from a locker she knows about. And when seeking help at a local social services office, she argues with the officer and storms out, without help. Kolb’s conflicted character is someone we don’t see in films often, a mother and desperado who refuses to live up to her responsibilities, threatening her family’s very existence. It’s an uncomfortable experience; we feel little empathy for her, but our hearts break for the children. Uncomfortable? Make that deeply challenging. But a triumph of expression and humanity from award-winning filmmaker Jasmin Gordon and Kolb. Varsity Theatre in Toronto.
I get it. A film’s colour and tone palette are important to helping set a mood or emphasising what’s happening on the screen. They help set the tone, emotionally and mentally. But The Narrow Road to the Deep North directed by Justin Kurzel, based on Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize winning novel, takes its darkness too literally. Its difficult to see what’s happening. I mean, come on. Except for the opening sequences in the harsh landscape of Tasmania in Dorrigo Evans’ (heartthrob Jacob Elordi, played in later life by Ciarán Hinds) early years. The Prime Video five eppie series, streaming now, follows his experiences, internal and external, journeying through love and war. He’s held captive in a POW camp where the men are brutalised and kept alive to build the Death Railway linking Thailand and Burma. Evans suffers and sees death and horror and is wracked with fear that stays with him through his life as trauma; perhaps why he fails to recognise what could heal him most. He’s given the chance of love with Amy Mulvaney (Odessa Young) his uncle’s wife with whom he has a passionate affair. Later he becomes a renowned surgeon, perhaps a way of “healing” those he witnessed in bad shape during his internment. But he mishandles things. Dorrigo, the old man, gathers his thoughts for a memoir. Astonishingly he remembers his baptism and the light through the church window. It’s a tough slog, make tougher by the “subdued” light and colour.
I don’ know when I’ve had such fun watching a TV show. Would I Lie to You? No, I wouldn’t and that its name. It streams on BritBox; all 18 seasons and you’ll wish you had time to watch every single episode. Hosted by British comic actor Ron Brydon, it features two team captains David Mitchell (Ludwig) and standup comedian Lee Mack. Celebrity guests – ok – British celebrities – but many you’ll know – with witty bents duke it out to determine who is telling the truth and who isn’t. The stories contestants put forth of things that happened to them sound likes whoppers. One guest says he saved P. Diddy from drowning, another claims she was kicked out of school for showing up in a bikini while drunk, another follows joggers in the woods to refine his tracking skills, and a German guest brings up WWII, and gets big laughs. Coronation Street star Simon Gregson says he and a friend got drunk in Manchester one night and woke up in a Copenhagen hotel room. Those Brits are funny/clever in ways we North Americans simply cannot achieve; the irony, surreal, speed of the wit is uniquely theirs. And the slightly bored stance delivers major belly laughs, plus their resistance to breaking down, and rapid, dead-on comebacks are genius. One belly laugh after another; when have North American comedy series ever delivered multiples? Oh- and stone-faced mystery guests appear in an insane segment each episode. This is the most fun you’ll have watching a screen these days. Here are TWO clips, first Lily Allen:
and a Pussycat Girl: