by MATTHEW
HAYS
ACTING THEIR AGE: Jodie Whittaker and Peter O'Toole
Mount Pleasant
is the
actual name of a Vancouver
neighbourhood, and that’s given some filmmakers an
opportunity to come up with an ironic title for their movie. Mount
Pleasant , you see, is anything but pleasant.
It’s a grim ’hood grappling with several of the key woes facing
Vancouverites: a large drug addict population, increasing gulf between
the rich and poor and lack of sunshine. This movie revels in all three.
Writer/director Ross
Weber has cited American Beauty
and Happiness as
inspirations, but Mount Pleasant
feels most like chilly Robert Altman leftovers. Here, the lives of
three couples intertwine, suggesting—as filmmakers are prone to do
these days—that we are all connected in some way.
A married businessman
with a troubled teenage daughter is actually himself getting blowjobs
from a teenage prostitute. The prostitute is hustling to support her
habit, and that of her boyfriend. A concerned citizen is horrified to
see the married businessman fooling around with the prostitute in his
gas-guzzling car. Concerned citizen’s wife happens to work as a drug
counsellor, and has been trying to help prostitute. And drug counsellor
herself is popping pills (oh, the irony!).
Mount Pleasant
has its merits—in particular, cinematographer A. Jonathan Benny
deserves praise for his carefully rendered compositions—but the film
soon buckles under the weight of its own heavy-handed intentions. How
can the kids be all right, it asks, when their parents are so messed
up? How can people live happy lives when they lead them dishonestly?
Aren’t real estate agents who live in
tacky mansions every bit as morally dubious as crack hos, when you get
right down to it? And really, aren’t we all just messed-up teenagers
after all?
These questions are interesting enough, I suppose, but really solid
screenwriting requires at least a bit of subtlety. Here, Mount
Pleasant commits a serious faux pas. At one
point, the messed-up teen daughter confronts her father about his
previously denied dalliances with teen prostitutes. In this scene, she
utters what is clearly intended as one of the film’s main themes,
angrily asking him what the difference is between herself
and those young hookers. Film students, take note: please don’t do this.
Mount Pleasant opens
Friday, Jan. 26
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