Cinema Canada (Nov 1976)

nald Pleasence. This confusion of accents is not merely a_ superficial flaw, but expresses the central falseness of the movie. These people have nothing to do with each other, and nothing to do with Alberta. Ethan and George (Will Darrow McMillan and Ian McMillan) steal the show — George with his stubby-nosed cuteness, and Ethan with a strongly felt and affecting performance as Jesse’s faithful daughter and sweetheart. Yes, truly. For all his gutsy determination in winning the boys’ prize at the stampede and fighting to save the ranch, Ethan’s tearfully loving fidelity to a wayward father puts him in the place of Cordelia and Florence Dombey. He imparts a greater sincerity to all the scenes in which he appears, and creates the moving power of the final moments of Shirley’s return home. The spectacle of reconciliation works its magic once again. Robert Fothergill The Far Shore Director Joyce Wieland d. Joyce Wieland, sc: Bryan Barney from an original script by Joyce Wieland, ph. Richard Leiterman, ed. George Appelby, Brian French, Judy Steed, Joyce Wieland, sd. ed. Marcel Potier, Rod Haykin, Mel Lovell m. Douglas Pringle, l.p. Celine Lomez, Lawrence Benedict, Frank Moore, Sean McCann, Cosette Lee, Don le Gros, Leo Leyden, Murray Westgate, Charlotte Blunt, Susan Petrie, Aviva Gerson, David Bolt, Colette Sharp, Dianne Lawrence, Jill Galer, Janet Doherty, Rachel Barney, Keith Craig, special appearance: Jean Carignan, exec. p. Pierre Lamy, p. Judy Steed, p. man Marilyn Stonehouse, Louise Ranger, p.c. The Far Shore Inc., 1975 col. 35 m.m. dist. Astral, running time 1 hour 37 minutes. Until her heroine dove into a northern Ontario lake, fully clothed in billowing chiffon and Sunbonnet Sue chapeau, Joyce Wieland had an intriguing love drama going for her in The Far Shore. The lady in the lake struck out for the far shore and her artist lover and made it, but the movie sank just about then with no hope for rescue because director Wieland decided to change forces in mid-stream. Instead of continuing a tense, uneasy suspense in the story of a woman reaching out for freedom from a domineering, insensitive husband, The Far Shore suddenly turned into a farce. It became a silent movie comedy with a chase scene that Mack Sennett — as a Canadian — could have been proud of, but which Ms Wieland should not be unless she really intended it to be funny. I don’t think she did. It just turned out that way as husband and friend in one canoe chased wife and her lover 30 / Cinema Canada in another, dodging and backtracking through scenic Canadian countryside to the accompaniment of finger-tripping piano straight out of nickelodeon beginnings. I was ready to believe this to be the most embarrassing sequence in a film from which better things were anticipated due to its advance reputation. But then came an even more shattering scene, one from which I wanted to hide, even in the darkness of the Vox Theatre in Cannes. Ahead of me sat two German critics whose laughter at everything I was trying to take seriously had annoyed me immensely. But now I found their reaction was contagious as Ms. Wieland threw nonobligatory sex into The Far Shore in the most far-fetched coupling ever dreamed up for the screen. Celine Lomez and Frank Moore, their blood boiling hot after months of Joyce Wieland | repressed love for each other, finally release their feelings in the icy waters of that familiar lake. Off come the longjohns and the petticoats while she and he tread water. The love-making is prolonged and passionate and the bluer they turn in the water, the more frantic the action, until, like a couple of exhausted fish, they climax and everything is over but the laughter. It was at this point I decided Ms. Wieland really did have a sense of humor. But she did not have an artist’s vision of the cinematic canvas she was attempting to cover with realism. Although Richard Leiterman’s cinematography brings to the screen a colorful recreation of the rugged beauty of painter Tom Thompson — about whom The Far Shore is supposedly concerned — Ms. Wieland’s direction is romantically uncertain. She also has cast in black and white. The heroine’s husband is obvious from the start, a snob and a bore, a businessman who buys what he needs and needs nothing he can’t buy. So there’s never any doubt that there’ll be trouble when his Debussy-playing wife and poetic hermit Tom find themselves on the same wavelength. Yet there is no real struggle. The conflict is basic and simplistic, not even imaginative. Even so Ms. Wieland delivers a beautiful picture whose flaws show up only when one gets too close. The most attractive image in The Far Shore is Miss Lomez, whose dark sensuous features are reminiscent of both Genevieve Bujold and Carole Laure. If The Far Shore does nothing else, it brings to the screen another Canadian actress whose talent still has to be measured but whose star quality already is evident. Les Wedman