movie review - Looking for Leonard
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a film about a collection of thirty-somethings drifting through lonely lives in Montreal.
The female lead is in a lousy relationship with an slob who robs convenience stores for a living. She has grown weary of the world of petty armed robbery, but feels at this point that it would be pointless to leave because she'd just wind up as miserable somewhere else.
The lead male is a Czech programmer who turns up in Montreal for a job, only to find that the employer seems to have vanished.
When they meet, they wind up killing a guy. With the robber boyfriend starts to smell a rat, and the Czech's face on the front page of the papers, the tension starts to mount.
The script in this film is the strong point. The characters are well "realized" and the dialogue - what there is of it - works. The major characters are locked into non-communicative relationships for a variety of reasons. One of the minor characters (a panhandler) provides a counterpoint to that minimal interaction between the main characters through expressive and lively interaction with the Czech - his friend and fellow squatter.
Despite the rich writing, the cinematography and the sets are quite pared-down, perhaps chosen to highlight the pointless lives the characters are leading. Overall, the visuals give a sense of urban isolation - in fact the murder barely seems to change anything in the relationship between the characters and the outside world. They just keep puttering around in first gear with little more consequence than the Czech's moving from his semi-furnished dump into a squat.
I enjoyed this film.
Recommended.