Northern divas and romantic catalysts: the films of Anne Wheeler

• Published in: Take 1 (Toronto. 1992) Vol. 10; no. 36; p. 22
• Main Author: Cummins, Kathleen
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto Wyndham Wise 01.03.2002
• Subjects: History & criticism; Motion pictures; Wheeler, Anne
• ISSN: 1192-5507

Her most recent feature in release, in quick succession after Marine Life, is an urban romantic comedy Suddenly Naked that premiered at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival, was invited to Berlin in February and will be opening theatrically this spring. It again deals with themes of betrayal, self-revelation and aging. Jackie York ([Wendy Crewson]) is a career-driven novelist suffering from writer's block, general loneliness and self-loathing. Again a romantic catalyst enters, this time in the guise of Patrick (Joe Cobden), a worldly and talented 20-year-old novelist. Initially unimpressed by Patrick's "youthfulness" and lack of sophistication, Jackie is slowly drawn to him on an instinctive level, although publicly she is too embarrassed to admit she's in love with a man-boy half her age. Jackie suffers from the same malaise as [Lila] in Better than Chocolate, [Lily] in Loyalties, June in Marine Life and Daisy in Bye, Bye Blues - rage, loneliness and self-deception. Jackie uses her success and public persona, one she cultivates with her pseudo-boyfriend, Lionel (Peter Coyote), like a shield, not unlike [Josh Morgan] does in Cowboys Don't Cry. Patrick, like [Maggie] does for Lila in Better than Chocolate, introduces Jackie to a whole new world of basement apartments, cheap red wine, bad B movies and instant noodles, which initially repels her. Patrick is all low-brow, college-boy aesthetics, which contrasts with Jackie's designer, upper-middle-class lifestyle. Despite his lack of status, he, like Maggie, implicitly knows who he is. Jackie, like all of [Anne Wheeler]'s heroines, will have her moment of truth expressed through a gesture of pragmatism and stoic strength. At the film's conclusion, Wheeler chooses to subvert romantic-comedy traditions for a resolution rooted in her traditional realism. A bloodied and defeated Patrick arrives to witness Jackie's decision to publicly speak from her core sense of truth, even if that means professional humiliation. When the two lovers embrace, there is no applause from the audience of onlookers, nor is there shocked silence. Life just goes on around them, as if nothing notable or meaningful or heroic had taken place at all. Moments of truth are really personal epiphanies, and although profound for the individual, subtle gestures of self-revelation may appear as everyday acts from ordinary people. A Wilderness Station, a soon-to-be-released Anne Wheeler film based on a short story by Alice Munro, is set in the 19th-century Ontario wilderness and tells the sad tale of a young girl trapped in an abusive marriage. It's perhaps apt that this is Wheeler's next film. After a 30-year career, Wheeler has had her own struggles in the wilderness, albeit the untamed frontier of the Canadian film and television industry. Canadian landscape metaphors aside, after many films, dramatic shorts, documentaries, features, television movies, as well as episodic television (Da Vinci's Inquest, Cold Squad), Wheeler has witnessed and participated in the evolution of a Canadian cinematic presence on the international scene. She has been awarded six honorary doctorates, the Order of Canada, and many filmmaking awards. However, perhaps Wheeler's most important contribution to Canadian narrative cinema is her sheer will and tenacity in bringing authentic Canadian women's stories to the big screen. Wheeler has accomplished this consistently in her films, and she has done so with a social conscience. You might argue that Wheeler is our Jane Campion, Penny Marshall or Marleen Goriss; and at times a mixture of all three a la Canadian style.