QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES

Leo Fife is a dying film director. He is succumbing to a metastised cancer, while also suffering from some sort of dementia. It is never entirely clear whether his unreliable memory is a side effect of the tumours that are killing him, or a natural consequence of his senility. What is clear is that Leo was rabidly anti-war during his youth, and also very popular with the ladies. He is played by Australian heartthrob Jacob Elod in his early years, and by Richard Gere at middle and old age by .

Before his death, Leo agrees to giving a lengthy video interview, recorded by a professional film crew in what looks like a recording studio (or perhaps converted space inside his house?). He is supported by his current wife Emma (Uma Thurman), a few decades his junior. She is concerned that he may die at any minute, an inevitable tragedy foreshadowed in the film opening. Oh Canada then zigzags back and forth in time as Leo recalls his past using nothing but his fractured mind. The years and the developments are vaguely incoherent. For example, Leo claims he is 68, but a quick examination of his past reveals that he’s about 10 years older. These confusing developments are intended to mirror Leo’s collapsing mind.

Gradually the puzzle pieces begin to come together. Leo grew up in Massachusetts, married a woman called Alicia (Kristine Froseth) with whom he had one child in Virginia, met a lady called Amy (or maybe Heidi?) in New England, and finally moved to Canada in order to evade the military draft (during the heighth to the Vietnam War). This is where he became a filmmaker (strangely, we see very little about his creations), and also a university professor. This is also where he met the doting Emma.

Not even the acting skills of Richard Gere (in fact, his performance is rather lukewarm) nor Jacob Elodi’s astounding looks save the film from banality. Uma Thurman is unmemorable. The film is so unoriginal and mediocre that nobody is allowed to shine. The creative devices are lame at best, such as a heavenly light shining on characters in order to convey passing and redemption. The hyper-emo soundtrack is sickening. The very few attempts at humour do not work at all (a potentially funny scene about Leo feigning homosexuality in order to dodge conscription fails to elicit any laughter). On the positive side, at least Oh Canada sends out a clear anti-war message, reminding young people that it is both possible and necessary to stay away from the bloody conflicts concocted by their government.

There have been some extraordinary films about deceptive memory and dementia in the past few years, such as Florian Zeller’s The Father (2020) and Gaspar Noe’s Vortex (2021). There has even been a great movie about a filmmaker with dementia, made just last year: Victor Erice’s Close Your Eyes. Paul Schrader’s latest creation adds absolutely nothing new to the theme, neither from a topical nor from an artistic perspective. Oh Canada is an entirely redundant movie. Oh Paul, you really could have done a little better.

Oh Canada just premiered in the Official Competition of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival.