Foreverland
(Canada, 93 min.)
Dir. Maxwell McGuire, Writ. Shawn Riopelle & Maxwell
McGuire
Starring: Max Thieriot, Laurence Leboeuf, Demián Bichir,
Sarah Wayne Callie, Douglas O’Keefe, Thomas Dekker, Juliette Lewis.
So many dramas tell of characters fighting cancer or living
with AIDS. Some films show people who must deal with erectile dysfunction. Seinfeld even devoted a whole episode to
gonorrhea. Some diseases are just catchier than others are.
One of the less sexy maladies of the movies is cystic fibrosis.
Foreverland makes a noble effort to
curb the neglect for this difficult disorder by drawing attention to the
conditions with which one must live if one suffers from it. It’s a personal
effort for director/co-writer Maxwell McGuire, who suffers from cystic fibrosis
himself. McGuire’s lifelong battle with c.f. – a terminal disease for which
persons affected average a lifespan of less than forty years – rings throughout
this touching story of a young man struggling to find a positive outlook on his
bleak prognosis.
Max Thieriot (Chloe)
stars a Will Rankin, a young man with cystic fibrosis who has just reached his
twenty-first birthday. Will has accepted his fate and has a morbid habit of
shopping for coffins to see which one is the best fit for the after-life. His
visits with the local undertaker take an obvious cue from Six Feet Under, but like the HBO show, Foreverland uses the topic of death to teach the audience about
life.
Will’s birthday is an important milestone for the film’s
introduction. One of Will’s close friends and co-combatants of c.f. has
recently passed away at the age of 21. That friend, Bobby (Thomas Dekker),
leaves as his final request to Will that he travel to a small church in Del
Sol, Mexico where he will then scatter his ashes at fountain that is rumoured
to have the power to heal. Will hesitates because his coughs are getting worse
and any trip away from Vancouver could bring death; however, another trip to
the hospital calls Will’s attention to all life’s unfulfilled wishes.
Will then sets forth with his parents’ blessing and a
vintage Mustang as a birthday gift. Will is joined by his late friend’s sister,
Hannah (Laurence Leboeuf), who gives a necessary sparkle to Will’s dreary
attitude. The two friends make an Elizabethtown-y
road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway all the way to the heart of Baja,
Mexico. The beautiful scenery and eclectic soundtrack move the film along during
the slow detours of the trip, since much of the exposition and first act serve to
highlight the symptoms, infections, monitoring, and maintaining of cystic
fibrosis. What’s lost in character development is made up in detail of the disease.
The film gains an edge, though, when it lands in Los Angeles
around the midway point. In LA, Will makes an emergency stop and visits his
aunt. Aunt Vicky is a strange, awful woman whose harsh words give Will an
important perspective on how to view his condition not as a debility, but as a
motivation to pursue a happy life, even if it’s short lived. Aunt Vicky is
played by Juliette Lewis and the actress handles the acerbic scene with a
delicate skill.
Once Will and Hannah finally make it to Mexico, Foreverland introduces another colourful
character, but one with a much different effect on Will and Hannah. That man is
Salvador, the man who works at Del Sol where Will plans to scatter Bobby’s
ashes. Recent Oscar-nominee Demián Bichir plays Salvador – a fun, scruffy man –
and his performance gives the film the right tone for which it’s been searching
for most of the film: light-hearted, but sympathetic. There might be a whiff of exoticism in way that Foreverland contrasts rainy scene in British Columbia with the happy Corona drinking fiesta in Del Sol, but the final act offers much warmth and poignancy, most of which comes through Bichir's performance. Foreverland presumably received a stronger release due to the
recent success of Bichir’s work in A Better
Life, and that’s fair since fans who see the film out of interest for his
work likely won’t be disappointed.
The attention drawn by names such as those of Bichir and
Lewis should ultimately help Foreverland
achieve its objective. The drama rises mostly in the moments in which Will and
Hannah encounter the colourful characters, and the scenes in LA and Mexico turn
Foreverland into something more than
a sweet little road movie. The developing love story between Will and Hannah is
a cute, if predictable subplot, but it’s the scenes in which Will is forced to
confront his condition that best illuminate the plight of people living with
cystic fibrosis. Even if the drama itself rarely moves beyond the realm the
sentimental message movie, Foreverland
makes a fair, objective plea for public awareness and support, and audiences
should consider it a success for that very reason.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Foreverland screened in Ottawa at the Bytowne.
*Photos courtesy eOne Films.
