The Bay of Love and Sorrows (2002)

 

Director: Tim Southam

Screenplay: Tim Southam

Based on a novel by David Adams Richards

Cast: Peter Outerbridge as Everette Hatch; Jonathan Scarfe as Michael Skid; Joanne Kelly as Madonna Eveline Brassaurd; Christopher Jacot as Robert Allan 'Silver' Brassaurd; Elaine Cassidy as Carrie Matchett; Zachary Bennett as Tom Donnerel; Torquil Campbell as Vincent Donnerel; Rhonda McLean as Dora Matchett; Marshall Button as Emmett Matchett

Ephemeral Waves

 

Everyone has those films they do not finish, preferring not to spend the time to sit through them even if there is no truly negative emotion, only a disinterest. Openly admitting that I am autistic even when it comes to my hobbies, let alone the learning disability itself, I have forced my way through almost all films I have seen and can say, up until this review, only three were never finished. Two are now left unfinished, and it is neither that they were bad, but literally I stopped them within ten minutes feeling a complete lack of interest. I have marked these (once) three with 0% entirely as I could not comment on them, not with a true reason for having so because I gave up on them and did not give them a proper number rating. They are a curious trio – one is an obscure British horror film Daddy’s Girl (2006) (a.k.a. Cravings), one is a maligned Kevin Smith film with Bruce Willis, the cop comedy Cop Out (2010), and this which is arguably the most curious, an obscure drama adapting a David Adams Richards novel. More for completionist sake, I thought why not watch these films, especially as for The Bay of Love and Sorrows, the experience was with worth.

Drama is an area of cinema I neglect even as a huge cineaste for the classics of cinema, if only because, if you stick to finding the legendary titles of the cinematic medium, Hollywood and World Cinema, and those obscurer titles from fascinating auteurs, “drama” is such a nebulous genre which is so vast you will barely cover it. The ultimate irony too is that, whilst genres like horror and erotic/pornographic movies have been the ones dismissed, whilst dramas are those usually gaining the awards and praise, dramas as “high art” are not always getting the prestige restorations. Even the obscurest and maligned in technical quality in those genres dismissed to the gutter have gained more support in bringing them to life in the modern era whilst so many dramas, even potentially great ones, are lost to knowledge. Drama as a genre is also just a questionable in what it intends to do, in how they can be about grief and bleakness for the sake of exploitation human emotions, in melodrama or worse for just those awards each year from critics.

The Bay… is thankfully not this type of film, merely one lost to the annuals, to be found (as once I did) in a DVD case in a second hand store, not even a DVD second hand store but a local corner who specialized in second hand game console equipment and burnable DVDs by the bus station. In a very British tradition of stores in small towns and villages which have a lot of old DVDs, some whose DVDs are faded from being in the sun for too long, the old titles from Hollywood in the 2000s are still there to this day as they can be found in car boot sales at the seaside, but also the old releases from companies like Hollywood Films long gone can be found. In this case it was an even obscurer company long gone with the presumption this would always have been second hand and never once been printed new, now existing unknown to many like the back alleys now in streaming sites.

The Bay… is set in farmland "Americana", the exact location of where the story is set that needs to be looked at more carefully as there is one detail that never comes up explicitly, that this novel and the film are explicitly set in New Brunswick, is shot in New Brunswick, and The Bay of Love and Sorrows is a Canadian production, a friendly reminder that this iconography of “Americana” needs to factor in the entire continent also having the many countries of South America and Canada. With one of the first scenes involving Madonna (Joanne Kelly) and her younger brother Silver (Christopher Jacot) being caught in illegal fishing, all this evokes Southern Gothic down south, but ironically this is  a view of Canada that is far from a stereotype of them, nor has any of the snow covered and cold scenery usually ascribed to their films. In this, as well as being glad I finally saw The Bay…, it is also a pointed reminder that Canadian cinema is not something, truthfully, as widely made available I would have thought it been. The irony in this is that the director-writer of this, Tim Southam, even when he transitioned to directing episodes of US television shows later in his career was not leaving far from home – shows like Bates Motel (2013–2017) or The Good Doctor (2017-) among those he has worked as an episode director on are shot in Canada.

There is a former criminal named Everett (Peter Outerbridge), out of jail, in this tale alongside Michael (Jonathan Scarfe) the well off son of a judge with all the privilege behind him, Madonna and her younger brother Michael, Madonna trying to get her tech savvy brother in technical collage as she does menial jobs, Tom the young farmer (Zachary Bennett) happy to inherit his farm life and never leave town, and the potential farmer’s wife who is wary of this named Carrie (Elaine Cassidy). Carrie is the figure who stands out beyond the film as Cassidy, ironically getting back into the subject for this review, found herself years after as the lead of Harper’s Island (2009), an ambitious one season horror show which still works as a cancelled production as, intending to be a different story each season like American Horror Story, it is a slasher movie expanded with melodrama and character developed over a television season.

Michael, recounting how he has been to Nepal, talks of a communal life, and Everett suggests having a literal jar they collect their money together in. This will be with sinister intentions, and it will spiral down into a lot of tragedy from a literal glass jar of change, such as Everett having his eye on Madonna against her desires. I am far less interested in terms of a drama whether this is a good one or not. The scale of quality in terms of how film reviews usually cover this, the need to reinvent the wheel, feels pointless, and with this, one with a clear modest budget yet not that low, is interesting as a genre film about this spiral down which will cut people down. In mind to how this review began, it was more rewarding to actually watch the film after such a long time as one of the few titles which I never completed, one which was compelling in this story, a drama with crime edges emphasizing that dialogue as much as event is what will push things along.

There are greater points to consider, which should not be ignored. With Tommy, for example, there is a figure that will never venture out of rural New Brunswick, his possible future wife Carrie disinterested in this and seduced by Michael, emphasizing his crimes, a timeless one, of his status making him an outsider who looks down on the community even unintentionally. Class conflict exists in just his character, something to be found as he is working on a photography project in the locals that, whilst meant to be empathetic, comes off with what he has gotten into with a man cruelly scrutinizing the rural folk like ants under a magnifying glass. There is also a potent factor, whilst religion is never explicitly tackled, and adaptations can lose their author's intents fully, that the source writer David Adams Richards comes to his books, through his career, as a Catholic who explicitly deals with themes like sin¹, something to at least consider in mind to the ways these characters end up damning themselves by accident, if just to escape from their lives to a semblance of happiness. Rather than caring whether I will remember the film in a year’s time, I was happier to let it go alone with interest, filtering these background contexts to the plot where this gets into the obviously doomed decision where, Everett having taking the money and invested it into a drug deal, the moment anyone suggests helping is sealing their fates.

This story will get intense – someone, in a haze of drugs and panic, bludgeons one of the few “innocents” of the cast, who just wanted to leave the town, to death with a rock to hide the eventually failed drug trade. Honestly, the only thing here which seems pointlessly over-the-top, and it is neither the actor’s fault, is that there is a character with a learning disability, like a Lennie from Of Mice and Men without the supernormal strength, who is broad if never more than a potential victim of the others’ crimes. Beyond this, the experience of finally watching The Bay of Love and Sorrows was worthwhile, a stint in a genre not normally tackled, a tangent into Canadian cinema that was only realized afterwards but was felt with great worth, and with that sense that, when my earlier self lack a complete patience for this, it was felt with reward to actually experience the film without any biases going into it.

 

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1) Canadian author hides message of hope in bleak landscape, written by Mike Mastromatteo for Catholic Register and published on December 4th 2016.