Elfreida and Yolanda are two sisters who are carrying a lot of weight on their shoulders. Yoli is in her mid-thirties, separated from her husband who is pleading with her to sign the divorce papers and who lives with her teenage daughter who is going through her own angsty phase (as teenagers are wont to do). Yoli, played by Alison Pill, is a novelist whose first book was a commercial disaster, selling only 800-some odd copies. She’s stuck, as she’s trying to write a follow up, not with any specific block or from a lack of ideas but more so just the fear of putting fingers to keyboard of the immensity and weight of the subject matter in her head. Elf on the other hand is deeply depressed and suicidal. She is a world-renowned concert pianist, where people pay a lot of money to see her perform all over the world. Elf, played by Sarah Gadon, has a loving and devoted husband, who seems to be completely oblivious to her trauma as every time she tries to kill herself, he is easily lured out of the house on her command.
The sisters have a history of pain. Their father Jake, who in flashbacks is played by veteran character actor Donal Logue, is only ever seen smiling, laughing and being a pillar of his mennonite community in Winnipeg. Unfortunately, despite how people present themselves, sadness and depression can always lurk underneath, with Jake stepping in front of a train one day to end his life while his daughters were still teenagers. Elf and Yoli’s mom has always managed to carry herself with stoicism and she raised her family alone. The films main story is concerned with the latest suicide attempt of Elf. Her mother, played by Mare Winningham, finds Elf after she has slit her wrists and wrote in her suicide note that she really does not want to be found or resuscitated, Yoli flies in from Toronto to be by their sides. Elf is frustrated that she was brought back to life and hospitalized yet again, and Yoli has to deal with yet another family member trying to kill themselves, adding more stress and trauma to her life.
The film is based on a 2014 novel by Miriam Toews and is adapted and directed by Michael McGowan. Toews won a Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, meaning the source material had impressive origins and gave McGowan a good road map to work with. McGowan is a director of spotty films, he made the excellent Joshua Jackson motorcycle drama One Week, but also made the cringey Noah Ried lead Score: A Hockey Musical, about a singing hockey player. Here it seems to have helped have so much poetry and prose at his fingertips as every line is imbued with truthfulness. The film is actually quite funny for one about suicide and generational trauma. You get lines like when Elf and Yoli are arguing about the right to live or die with the sisters taking diametrically opposing views and Yoli ends the fight by saying “It seems you have enemies who love you” before they both yell “I hate you” at one another. Their mother Lottie, has the driest sense of humour, and when her car breaks down she turns to Yoli and says “It seems like there are metaphors all over the place”, is one of the best line readings in the film.
Due to the fact that the source material is so rich, the film is peppered with literary references, ones that often make you feel like Yoli, the less intelligent of the two sisters, as they go over your head and you nod along pretending to get them all. From Greek mythology, to poetry, to classic literature, it’s all packed densely into the film. So much so, that you could take a scalpel to the script to really dig deep into the minds of Toews and McGowan. The film is anchored by Pill, who surprisingly has a well of depth to her, not showcased before, even if she is always solid. Gadon works great opposite her, but Pill is the shining star of the movie. Overall it is a powerhouse of great women absolutely crushing the film, with Winningham, Mimi Kusyzk, Amybeth McNulty and others all putting in absolute work. McGowan doesn’t go for pizazz, as he lets his performers do the talking, often letting the camera stay completely static, or only giving us slow tracking shots, never making himself the star and it is better for it.
All My Puny Sorrows was seen during the 2021 Vancouver International Film Festival Thank you to the festival for the press pass.
