Heartbeat

Justine faints when she tries to play her music in front of an audience. She has a stale relationship with Ben until he leaves her. Her best friend Lorna has a new baby. She is lonely and then she meets Ruby.

I've seen writer/director Andrea Dorfman's "Love That Boy". This is a marked improvement in filmmaking in the ten years in between. On the other hand, the story meanders worst. The meet-cute with Ruby is great but it should come earlier. That relationship should be given more time and effort. It felt like it was given short shrift. Is this gay-cinema or not? Like Justine, this movie needs to simply dive in.

It pains me to write this because I really am an Andrea Dorfman fan. I loved her two early features Parsley Days and Love that Boy and was desperately awaiting a third film for years, so my anticipation could not have been higher and I could not have been more willing to fall in love with this movie.

I don't know if the intervening years have hardened me or if this movie just really is that bad, but Heartbeat, to my eyes, is almost unbearably twee. Despite some interesting moments it contains a lead character who acts in a way no reasonable person should act and yet somehow comes away always thinking she's in the right.

Justine (Tanya Davis), works an unfulfilling office job, has mostly abandoned her creative impulses and is still having casual sex with her ex-boyfriend. After witnessing the birth of her friend's child she asks her ex if he wants to have a kid with her. He is understandably completely terrified and insists they break things off for good, retreating to an isolated cabin where he can work on his art and be away from Justine. Justine is depressed and listless but she soon notices Ruby (Stephanie Clattenburg), a girl who practices drums after hours in the local music store. Justine, whose last experiences performing on stage led to collapse, is drawn to Ruby and her low- key performing and the two soon start making music together as well as developing a budding romance.

The overall story for this is fine, but the script is frankly terrible. It has all sorts of unsubtle, unnuanced judgments about the people who work office jobs (like I know it's soul crushing, but the tedium of the workplace has been covered with so much more nuance and poignancy in shows like The Office, or movies like The Clockwatchers). Justine is grieving the loss of her relationship but the fact that she drops a bomb on her ex of wanting to be pregnant and expects him to be happy is bizarre. And Tanya Davis is a career musician not an actress and it unfortunately shows in every shot.

There is still strength and beauty in the directing (which contains some animation). Even after this total dud I hope Dorfman makes another movie, but do yourself a favour and watch her other films instead which are much more creatively interesting and nuanced.

Bad movie, classify it under "Canadian" and "Boring", bad acting and intrusive animation.

It took a lot of work to be able to watch this movie because I live in the US but eventually I figured it out and I'm so glad I did. I watched it for Tanya Davis because I'm a huge fan of her music and poetry. Unsurprisingly, one of my favorite things was how they used the music. There are also these lovely little animations that happen sometimes (usually when one of her songs is playing) that I thought were perfect. I'm not saying it is flawless but I loved it so much it's still a 10/10 for me. There are several moments (and lines) in this movie that just made me squeal with happiness because it's so freaking adorable. Everything is so understated and subtle, can't wait to try to check out the rest of Andrea Dorfman's stuff. So glad this movie exists.

Also, Eulogy for You and Me is one of the best songs ever.