Don McKellar directed this film, which means a certain degree of quirkiness and unpredictability. The two main actors who get virtually equal lead time are Tanaya Beatty (as Annie) and Brandon Oakes (as Will), though they almost never are on screen together. She leaves her Northern Ontario Cree village to find out what has happened to her missing twin sister Suzanne in Toronto. Her uncle Will stays home and copes with a variety of events including threats from young drug-dealing thugs who think he knows more than he does. In both places there is always an undercurrent of potential violence (as expected, whites against First Peoples) but which only occasionally erupts. Beatty (who's a strikingly beautiful combination of a First Nations mother and Indian father) plays Annie as a down-to-earth, rough-edged young woman who gradually gets drawn deeper into the fashion photography world (with an undercurrent of drugs) that her twin was involved with but has mysteriously disappeared. What happened? The slow-burn nature of the mystery makes it almost irrelevant as to whether it finds any resolution.
On the other side of the line, there's no doubt about how the plotline with Will unfolds and why. His part of the movie lets us see more of the Cree life and quite a mixture of characters, settings, rituals, and experiences that to me might have been the most interesting part of this film. There are other familiar First Nations actors in the cast too, like Graham Greene (who's great in the Toronto sequence as a down-and-out street dweller with a rough sense of humor), Tantoo Cardinal, and Tina Keeper. Nice cast and bound to raise sympathy for the native lived experience.
All this aside, the scene-to-scene flow is kind of uneven, almost choppy in places. I don't know why, because it leaves a somewhat disjointed effect on the whole thing. Nevertheless, the resolution is satisfying (certain characters get what they've earned, either good or bad) and by and large it's quite watchable.
On the other side of the line, there's no doubt about how the plotline with Will unfolds and why. His part of the movie lets us see more of the Cree life and quite a mixture of characters, settings, rituals, and experiences that to me might have been the most interesting part of this film. There are other familiar First Nations actors in the cast too, like Graham Greene (who's great in the Toronto sequence as a down-and-out street dweller with a rough sense of humor), Tantoo Cardinal, and Tina Keeper. Nice cast and bound to raise sympathy for the native lived experience.
All this aside, the scene-to-scene flow is kind of uneven, almost choppy in places. I don't know why, because it leaves a somewhat disjointed effect on the whole thing. Nevertheless, the resolution is satisfying (certain characters get what they've earned, either good or bad) and by and large it's quite watchable.
