Loyalties

I saw this film 17 years ago, when it first came out, at the Toronto Film Festival, and yet many parts of it are as clearly etched in my mind as if I had seen it yesterday. It deals with a very contentious issue in a sensitive manner, building with a slow and understated momentum to a harrowing climax. Tantoo Cardinal's performance in particular is exceptional. Highly recommended.

I specifically remember first hearing about this film in a magazine's review article back in 1986. I found it interesting about how two women from totally different backgrounds and different countries, manage to maintain a solid friendship over the hurtles and misunderstandings that something like that may bring.

I later rented the VHS tape as soon as I spotted it in the video store way back then, just to see for myself how much the potent subject matter lived up to its reputation. It didn't disappoint.

The setting takes place in the hamlet of Lac la Biche in Northern Alberta, Canada. There's Roseanne, an indigenous woman who has a few kids and lives with her mother. She has a troubled relationship with her boyfriend which can lead to physical altercations at times.

Then there's Lily Sutton, an upper crust British lady who's husband is a doctor and who has four kids of her own. They're newcomers to Lac la Biche and try and start fitting in with the locals and their remote surroundings . Lily has trouble looking after the young ones while her husband works and that's where Roseanne steps in. She's hired to be the nanny and housekeeper to the Suttons and there's an immediate connection between the two women and with Lily's children as well.

A friendship ultimately brews up between the two with Roseanne growing to confide in Lily about her troubled relationship with her boyfriend and later tries to do the same for Lily after noticing her own marriage isn't as good as it seems. That's where the trouble starts. A dark secret is there among the Suttons and one that's treated with great sensitivity by Lily herself and her oldest child.

A clash eventually erupts between the two women and ends with Roseanne quitting her job in anger. A reconciliation eventually happens followed by an unforgettable climactic scene that exposes the Sutton's dirty secret and brings to light why the Suttons left England in the first place.

I don't want to expose anymore of what develops, but the bond between Roseanne and Lily is the major element to this pleasing, but sometimes troubled story. My favorite scene between the two is when they're picking berries together in the bush. The cinematography was terrific with the way the bush branches kind of framed each of them as they talked. It was a very beautiful setting.

Their totally different backgrounds involving culture and money is evident when Lily is visiting and compliments Roseanne on what a nice house she had. Roseanne takes that to mean the "happy poor" and points that out to her. That brought tension but Roseanne openly admits that she "says too much" sometimes.

Tantoo Cardinal and Susan Wooldridge give excellent performances as the two leads and so does Kenneth Welsh as Dr. Sutton and Tom Jackson as Eddy Cardinal. I was impressed on my first viewing of this film via VHS and still equally impressed after watching it again recently. There are heartwarming moments as well as major conflicts, but overall, well done.

I can't agree with Mr Maltin that this splendid movie is either "predictable", or defined by the hiring of a half-Indian woman.

Astute as I am, I had no idea who was going to prove loyal (or not) to what, or whom, until the proper time - at the climax of the always interesting yarn...from the various synopses studied beforehand, I anticipated that there would be some kind of family "secret" exposed by the interaction with the h-I woman, and her family, and this proved to be the case, but not, I maintain, necessarily because of the association between the two families, English, and semi-Native...for me, the "secret" as such, would have outed, eventually, under any circumstances, it being so much a character trait e.g.if one or more in the characters in the movie had been predatory by nature, sooner or later, someone is going to be preyed upon.

The s-N family does play a large part in the movie, and it is very heartwarming to see how these rough and ready Canadians, get along with their oh-so-proper English counterparts. As a rock-ribbed old right-winger myself, I was struck by how I identified with those characters in the movie, of a different race from mine...I have the usual WASP prejudices and reservations about those who look different from me and mine, but if they act, and sound like real Canadians, or Brits, then I become most comfortable with them...they're really "one of us, after all"...go figure. All the characters in this film rang true, as real Canadians, or proper English.

Neither did the film beat one over the head with the "secret". when finally revealed...nobody gave speeches, or delivered lectures on the subject...it was all very subtly put over -it was all DEPICTED for the viewer to interpret...the most significant phrase for me, at the climax was an outraged "What kind of woman are you...?"

I found the film riveting from start to finish...I spent many years working, and living in small Canadian towns like the one depicted, and can vouch for the environment suggested by the sets, costumes, behaviour, and dialogue - it especially reminded me of the Ladner region of the Fraser Delta, as it was thirty-some years ago.

I am very proud of this Canadian-made film - it was a credit to all taking part, in front of, and behind the camera. Well done, indeed, folks!

Adjusting to life in an isolated Canadian village proves challenging for the wife and kids of the new doctor in town in this acclaimed drama from 'Better Than Chocolate' director Anne Wheeler. The film is mostly told from the wife's point of view and while some of her struggles to fit in (at social gatherings, local pubs, walking the street and being stared at) is fairly routine, the whole film is underscored with an unsettling sense of something sinister in the air. The circumstances that led to the family moving are, after all, highly mysterious and it is made clear early on that there is some dark secret that is common knowledge back in England where they came from; "everyone knows" the couple's son morosely comments, and the way the doctor changes topic as soon as someone mentions his hometown suggests something shocking in their past. Without revealing too much, everything culminates in an emotionally charged climactic few minutes in which the wife has to decide where her loyalties lie. Susan Woodridge is not terribly appealing in the role, but Kenneth Walsh makes the most of his character's intriguing checkered past. He always seems so friendly and charismatic but with a hint of something not quite right about him too. Tantoo Cardinal also does well as a native Albertan who bonds with Woodridge after they discover that their marriages are almost equally rocky.

I'm amazed how well I remember this film, nearly 20 years after the only time I saw it. It paints a compelling picture of an outsider family's relationship with the small town in which it's arrived. The relationship has both overt and covert elements, and at the beginning of the film the viewer is let in on the secret of which the townspeople are unaware. I think that's part of what made this film so captivating for me: there was no whodunit aspect to distract me, so I was able to get fully immersed in the complexities of the developing relationships.

This is no Hollywood good-guys-vs.-bad-guys movie. There are shades of grey, and difficult tradeoffs.

I highly recommend this film. It's a shame that it doesn't seem to have received exposure outside Canada, as its themes are universal.