Nadia Elkharadly: Trigger – A Movie Review

Despite my most wholehearted wish, I am not a writer by trade.  As some of you may or may not know, I have a day job.  I work in an office, a corporate drone, so Monday mornings, especially those Mondays after particularly good/fun/relaxing/not long enough weekends are possibly the most dreaded time ever.  So when it’s a Monday like today, where I’ve taken a day off, are the most wonderful days ever.  This morning I woke up late, and got out of bed at my leisure.  I made some coffee and turned on my TV.  Flipping the channels I landed on one of the millions of movie specific stations offered and paused at a specific title.  Trigger.  I tucked into my coffee, curled up in my arm chair, and watched.  And as a result, I am now sitting down to write my first ever movie review.

What happens when the music’s over?  Can you really go back?  These are two questions asked, and maybe even answered by the film Trigger.   Starring Molly Parker and the late Tracy Wright, and directed by Bruce McDonald, this film was met with acclaim at 2010’s Toronto International Film Festival, and revisited at this year’s Open Roof film festival at the Amsterdam Brewery.

Canadian director Bruce McDonald has been and still is a fixture in the Canadian media landscape, working in both television and film, but his most memorable work happens when he blends together music and film.  Mockumentary Hard Core Logo remains McDonald’s most iconic film, and Trigger occurs in the same fuzzy realistic land of fiction that Logo existed in.  In fact, Trigger was originally written (by playwright Daniel MacIvor) as a sequel to Hard Core Logo, reuniting the tempestuous twosome Billy Talent (Callum Keith Rennie) and Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon) years after their punk band broke up.  Alas, McDonald’s original incarnation of the film never came to pass for many reasons, but one day, he had a stroke of genius.  Why not make it a film about two female musicians coming together again?  So he and MacIvor quite literally flipped the script, and Trigger was born.

To give a quick synopsis, the movie is about two former musicians, rock stars if you will.  Molly Parker, of Deadwood fame, plays Kat, lead singer and bass player of grunge era girl band Trigger, the film’s namesake.  Tracy Wright, who starred in McDonald’s first ever feature film Highway 61, and countless other films and plays around the city, plays Vic, the band’s guitarist.  Think of them as the Canadian versions of Courtney Love and Melissa Auf De Maur (and yes Auf De Maur is actually Canadian, but you know what I mean.)  Once as close as very dysfunctional sisters, these women meet again, years later, as near strangers, on the night of a tribute dedicated to “Women in Rock”, and in part to themselves and their former band.  Within the span of one night, they fight, they laugh, they cry and they even get on stage and relive their gory and glory days.  But most of all, they finally get back to that place, that space where they can finally be themselves, together, again.

This film is almost uncomfortable in its realism, and Parker and Wright knock every scene out of the park.  In the opening scene, Kat (Parker) and Vic (Wright) are meeting for the first time in years.   Ever the egomaniacal lead singer, Kat is an hour late to the upscale restaurant of her choosing, and Vic is visibly uncomfortable in her unfamiliar surroundings, and her discomfort is amplified by Kat’s pretention as she ingratiates herself with the chef via the waiter.  Can you ever go back?  A few minutes into the film, it seems nearly impossible.  The hostility intensifies until both women boil over, verbally sparring in the restaurant until the tension is diffused, and for a while after, can finally be themselves again.  This rise and fall, this boiling over then simmering down becomes the hallmark of Kat and Vic’s friendship, and the barometer for the film as a whole.  They go from barely concealed resentment to open affection, to screaming matches to crying in each other’s arms.  In that tumultuousness it’s easy to see how these two are the female versions of Joe Dick and Billy Talent.  There’s a fine line between love and hate, and that line also leads to the creation of great music, and destructive friendships.

It becomes clear that each woman deals with things in life very different, Kat choosing the more overtly glamorous path, living in LA, working as a high profile music producer, while Vic stayed in Toronto, moving in with long-time boyfriend Brian (played by Wright’s long-time partner and fellow actor Don McKellar in a funny little cameo.  She feels uncomfortable yet again when a group of teenage fans hit her with a wave of hero worship.  However it’s clear that staying in Toronto has kept Vic’s ties with her old life relatively whole, while Kat, having moved to L.A, finds herself lost among old friends, wishing desperately that they still worshipped her as they once did.  Her resentment of Vic’s ease among their old friends is palpable at times, especially in the presence of Billy Talent, with Rennie ever so briefly reprising his role, a perk of being an executive producer.  And again, the tension dissipates after yet another blow up.  The most gratifying parts of the film are where the old friends act once again, like true friends; laughing, sharing clothes, bantering easily and having those silly, almost meaningless conversations that only the best of friends can have.  You know, the ones that if anyone else were to overhear, would think you were both absolutely insane, but, when you’re with your best friend, make complete sense.

Beyond music, both Vic and Kat had, in their youth, a love of self-destruction in common.  Each of the characters are recovering addicts, Kat with alcohol and Vic with drugs, and their constant struggle is a theme that weaves itself throughout the film, sometimes on the surface and sometimes skimming just below it.  The open discussion of their common thread is never as beautiful as during Wright’s monologue about her love affair with another addict.  Wright was an extremely talented actress, probably one of our country’s best.  But the poignancy of this scene, the darkness surrounding her and the closeness of McDonald’s camera upon her face, which absolutely transfixed the audience as they hung on her every word; it became ever so clear that the world has lost a true treasure.

It was never a secret that Wright was fighting a losing battle while she worked on this film.  Production was rushed; in fact, it was shot in only nine days.  She died of cancer before it was released, and that sadness, the knowledge of the inevitable tinged many scenes that Parker and Wright shared, but honestly for the better.  The constant rebuilding and reparation of their friendship, the work they put in, is fleeting, because it has to be, not just for the characters, but for the actors as well.  The emotions play across their faces unchecked, a subtlety that many actors can never master, but that these two probably didn’t have to force at all.  And the understated yet incredibly effective “Thank you Tracy” at the end of the credits was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

From start to finish, this film is phenomenal.  The story vacillates between humour and sadness naturally, and the acting is enthralling.  Cameos abound, from Sarah Polley as a wacky stage manager to documentarian Allen Zweig as the stoner cab driver.  But one of the things I loved most about this film is that it’s set in Toronto.  I’m not just talking filmed in Toronto but “playing” Chicago or New York.  This movie is in Toronto, and the city plays its own part, a supporting character, cradling our heroines to its concrete bosom.  From walking along Queen Street West, past the Cowbell in Parkdale, to the streetcars clamouring by in transitional scenes, to the hallowed halls of the Etobicoke School of the Arts, there is no mistake our beloved home city scenery.  McDonald is proudly Canadian in his work, as he well should be, but his pride translates so well in his work.  Canada, and Toronto especially, is really cool!  The score to the film is even written by Broken Social Scene’s Brendon Canning.  Everything about the film is Canadian, from the actors, the writers, and the soundtrack.  The Great Canadian inferiority complex was completely avoided, and rightly so.

In short, I loved this film, and I highly recommend it.  If you like music, if you like women that rock, and if you like CANADA (especially Toronto), then you should watch this film.  This time, believe every word that I say.  And if you don’t, then at least watch this trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIIakWqnf3g

But you should probably watch Hard Core Logo first.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd2yjzL9Sno

And tell me when you do.

PS.  If any of you are wondering, Bruce McDonald (With Care Failure) did get his sequel for HCL, so no need to fret.

Until next time,

Xo

N

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Nadia Elkharadly is a Toronto based writer with a serious addiction to music. Corporate drone by day, renegade rocker by night, writing is her creative outlet.  Nadia writes for the Examiner (.com) on live music in Toronto and Indie Music in Canada.  She has never been in a band but plays an awesome air guitar and also the tambourine.  Check in every Tuesday for musings about music, love, life and whatever else that comes to mind.