Revolution, Toronto style

>>Pothead radicals and Godard
stylings collide in Monkey Warfare

by MARK SLUTSKY

The alleys and backyards of Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood are seething with discontent in Monkey Warfare, a new film by director Reginald Harkema. Well, maybe not seething, but there’s the whiff of revolution in the air, the kind you might associate with recycled junk, used bicycles and anti-SUV propaganda.

Don McKellar (wearing a droopy mustache) and Tracy Wright play Dan and Linda, a pair of ex-revolutionaries living in a rundown house full of scavenged antiques and curios that the two sell on the Internet. Inveterate potheads, the two freak out when their dealer is busted (though it kind of strains credulity that two heavy weed-smokers in their 30s wouldn’t have any idea where else to score).

Enter Susan (Nadia Litz), a youngish, cute redhead who happens to be the local supplier for a group of B.C. organic weed farmers. Bringing a little light into the lives of our glum-chum protagonists, she’s soon learning about revolution and rock ’n’ roll from McKellar, and getting some radical ideas of her own.

Harkema makes no bones about his Jean-Luc Godard fandom, from the title of his first film (A Girl Is a Girl) to his production company (Masculine-Feminine), and Monkey Warfare owes a big honking debt to the guy and the French New Wave in general. We’re talking jump cuttery, titles and song lyrics that flash on the screen, mini-lectures on the Baader-Meinhof gang, playful sloganeering—it’s basically Cancon faux-dard. While there’s nothing wrong with giving props to the New Wave, it comes across as a little forced, and probably a little too proud of its soundtrack (which is admittedly pretty good, featuring acts like the Make-Up, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Leonard Cohen, Refused and even Sun Ra).

The movie’s Parkdale setting will definitely be familiar to anyone who’s spent any time there, and it does get that grubby Toronto neighbourhood feeling down cold. But while McKellar and Litz definitely have some nice chemistry, the movie feels a little too disjointed, and not always intentionally; characters like the smug yuppies Wright works for come across as lazily drawn caricatures. This grainy, low-budget feature’s ambitions and intentions are definitely admirable, but they don’t quite add up to a solid movie.

Monkey Warefare opens this Friday, April 13

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