Fate on film

>> An ensemble of characters meet their end in The Life Before This

by MATTHEW HAYS

Apparently inspired by a Globe and Mail headline, The Life Before This is an ensemble film about the fate that leads a group of disparate Torontonians to their untimely ends. Now that you're completely put off, rest assured that The Life Before This is actually an intriguing and ambitious work, even if all of it doesn't quite come off.

The film opens with an act of violence. A shootout in a Toronto cafe leaves various people dead and dripping with blood. The film then rewinds to 24 hours previous, when we see a number of different perspectives of those who ended up on the cafe floor.

With episodic, ensemble work like this, unevenness is a given. There are the lacklustre characters and their situations, and then there are some remarkable scenes. Screenwriter Semi Chellas has concocted some unusual scenarios: Sarah Polley plays a young woman moving in with her boyfriend (she's guilt-ridden after killing a bat who's loose in the pad). Stephen Rea plays an exterminator, who, while examining some roaches under a sink, explains his daughter's tragic death to a client. Emily Hampshire is a messed-up young aspiring actress, desperate to escape the confines of her established mother's professional reputation. Catherine O'Hara, best known for her roles on SCTV, plays a frustrated single gal who gets set up on a date.

The Life Before This feels much like an effort to evoke the brilliance of one of Robert Altman's sprawling ensemble films. It even has a violent event to wrap up the day's goings-on (think assassination at Nashville's finale or earthquake to end Short Cuts).

Trouble is, the inevitable unevenness throughout Life soon becomes so pointed as to drag down the film. Rea's typically understated turn as the mourning exterminator doesn't exactly jive with Hampshire's ludicrously insecure wannabe actress. The scenes are supposed to leap all over the place, intending to illustrate the randomness of fate and all of the potential routes lives can take. The juxtaposition of these scenes work, to an extent, but the overall effect is hampered by the fact that the actors all appear as if in separate movies.

Still, it's a step up for director Jerry Ciccoritti, whose last film, Boy Meets Girl, was a true disaster (why didn't the characters in that movie get killed in the conclusion?). The Life Before This isn't brilliant overall, but there are certainly flashes of brilliance within it.

The Life Before This opens Friday, December 3