I Shout Love. . - Short Takes - movie review

TAKE ONE, May, 2002 by Tom McSorley

2001, 37m, prodTangled Productions, p Meredith Caplan, d/sc Sarah Polley, ph Luc Montpellier, with Matthew Ferguson, Julian Richings, Kristen Thomson.

Is there anything Sarah Polley can't do? In addition to her ever--expanding, aver--impressive filmography as an actress, Polley is venturing outside the framelines to be a writer/director. Her second short film, I Shout Love, is a compelling, occasionally wrenching drama about the end of a relationship. About to be abandoned for another woman, Tessa (Kristen Thomson) convinces her reluctant soon--to--be--ex--boyfriend Bobby (Matthew Ferguson) to re--enact on video significant moments of their relationship. She wants to remember. He wants to leave. Nevertheless, he participates in the performance. It's a fascinating, unsettling and tender one, as Polley blurs the lines between the play--acted reconstructions of the relationship for the camera, and the actual remnants of the relationship itself. While some scenes capture this tension better than others -- especially a sequence when the two watch a hockey game -- I Shout Love is a powerful evocation of emotional distress. There is a broader political theme deliv ered via televised newscasts; however, it's awkwardly integrated and dilutes the strangeness and intensity of Tessa and Bobby's mediated farewell performance. That minor flaw aside, Polley's film is a brave and mature depiction of the histrionics of emotional desperation. It also reveals, in surprising ways, how the fear of loneliness can spawn, in our technological age, the most peculiar interpersonal rituals of remembrance.