I Am a Good Person/I Am a Bad Person

Writer/director/producer Ingrid Veninger's 'I am a good person/I am a bad person' is a very engaging film - from the first moments on screen -ironic because the lead character - Ruby, a mother and indie filmmaker - in that opening intimate scene is completely disengaged. She is so dissociated from her own feelings and from life and this simple opening act reflects this. This deep disconnect runs through the family, both in her marriage and also with her teenage son and her teenage daughter. When Ruby takes her daughter Sarah to Berlin to be her assistant for the opening of her film at a very small film festival(and that is worth watching), things slowly take a turn for the worse. Sarah is harbouring a secret of her own and there is very little real communication between mother and daughter. Both are emotionally lost in their own inner worlds and both are in a major yet unspoken transition in their lives. Both need to change. There is no easy fix. This cannot be done together. Sarah, frustrated, abandons Ruby and flies to Paris in order to comes to terms with herself away from her 'oversharing' mother. Ruby is left to wander Berlin on her own, sadly promoting her very obscure small film and meeting very interesting characters. Writer/director Veninger manages to keep the tension and ennui of both characters building to a perfect simple ending. The cinematography is also very good. The film was shot in Europe and has at times a very melancholic feel to it. The minor chords, the silences, the offbeat humour, where what is not shared is sometimes more important that what is shared or revealed. This is an intelligent film that speaks to deep, unspoken longing - to be seen, to feel love. A film which is not afraid to hold the tension of the seemingly opposite good person/bad person in all of us.

"I'm a good person/I'm a bad person" is currently playing exclusively at select festivals and is Ingrid Veninger at her comedic finest. A delightful comedy (and commentary) on the angst all mothers and daughters face about the difficulties involved when relationship roles are stretched, tested, and re-defined. A must see for anyone who has ever been embarrassed by their mother while traveling or otherwise. A poignant and honest account that speaks to the reality of a stale marriage and how it is compromised when children are involved. Funny, delightful, and intriguing; Veninger is burgeoning in her role as a Canadian on-screen satirical genius.

I don't mind low budget films, or even semi-improvised films so I'm not disqualifying the film on those elements but I did end up hating it because it was flat out bad.

The film is about a Canadian director (played by the actual director), who is going on a cross-Europe trip to promote her latest film taking her daughter (the director's actual real life daughter) with her as her paid assistant. At a certain point the daughter, embarrassed by her mother trying to cut loose, ditches her mother to go to Paris while her mother ends up in Germany, desperately trying anything to promote her film.

I read interviews afterwards trying to figure out how this mess of a film got made and apparently it came together very quickly when the director actually was promoting her film. Honestly the slap dash approach really shows in the filmmaking. Neither of the two leads are really strong enough as actresses to be interesting or to have us invest in their characters. And because I was never invested in the characters I never cared about their dilemmas or watching them as they wandered around various European cities.

Even as an experiment in low/no budget filmmaking this was a tedious chore to watch.