(Canada, 94 min.)
Dir. Sean Garrity, Writ. Bill Fugler, Sean Garrity
Starring: Michelle Giroux, Judah Katz, Jonas Chernick, Tatiana
Maslany, Jake Epstein, Kristian Bruun, Catherine Disher.
Oh, the bored middle-aged suburban house wife. No other
woman, save perhaps the hooker with a heart of gold, enjoys so much pliability.
She’s a versatile trope, but also one who’s open to trying new things to
re-ignite the spark that’s slowly fading away. Nicole’s life, for example,
looks fifty shades of grey as lensed by the cold, almost clinical
cinematography in Sean Garrity’s slow-boil thriller Blood Pressure. Played by a spectacular Michelle Giroux, who makes
a surprising feature film debut, Nicole is a forty-year old mother living in
the GTA who works as a pharmacist and dreams of escape. Somewhere warm, Mexico
say, will get her heart racing again.
The letter evokes the same kind of jocular persuasiveness
that leads to a globetrotting nightmare in Will Ferguson’s recent Giller Prize
winning novel 419. Perhaps friendly
communication is a new trend in Canadian culture. Like the email received by
Mr. Henry Curtis in 419, Nicole’s
love-letter sounds like an answer to all her problems. When she reciprocates
the note’s instructions, a chain of letters ensue and lead her on a trip more
thrilling than any family vacation in Oaxaca could ever be.
Garrity superimposes the letters onscreen and evokes the
sensation Nicole feels when she opens the envelope and unfolds the paper. The
text appears sparingly, subtly at first—you’ll nearly miss the first draft—and
then becomes assimilated into the energy of the film more forcefully as
Nicole’s passion becomes fuelled and eventually engulfed by the notes from the
anonymous stranger. Garrity incorporates the onscreen text rather well, as it
appears as a complement to the passion it instills in Nicole while Giroux reads
the letters aloud in an affectionate, tender voice.
Unlike the distracting subtitles of, say, Home Again, the visual text in Blood Pressure suggests the warmth and
sense of connection one receives from personable communications that actually
read like communication. Whereas the texts Nicole sends back and forth with her
daughter Kat (Tatiana Maslany) are quick communiqués made simply for the sake
of relaying a message, the letters from the anonymous sender allow for
closeness. Their part of a relationship, while Kat’s constant texting takes
away from the bond she has with her mother and vice-versa. The letters
themselves are frank compositions. Honest, fully worded, clearly articulated
messages—written on paper and pen, no less—seem like novelties from a bygone
time.
Blood Pressure
feels like an old-school product itself as the papers lead Nicole down a dark
trail. This thriller builds slowly and creates a psychology for its protagonist
that will be used against her in the surprising turn of its final act. As
Nicole pushes herself to new limits to meet the writer’s demands, Blood Pressure compose a provocative
message about the lengths to which people might go in order to escape the
suffocating monotony of our impersonal communities. Garrity sets the drama in a
world that captures the disconnected sprawl of Toronto, with DP Ben Licty
offering some striking shots of Toronto’s smoggy cityscape and its spider-web-like
expressways and busy streets.
Garrity (whose My
Awkward Sexual Adventure made last year’s Canada’s Top Ten) delivers a clever
thriller that relies on character and a strong sense of place. Nicole’s urge to
escape plays out smartly thanks to Giroux as she takes Nicole on a remarkable
arc, transforming her from a sullen, impassive defeatist to a woman empowered
by life yet trapped in an all-consuming verve of passion and escapism. Giroux
is joined by a cast of worthy co-stars, especially Maslany as her daughter, but
this could easily have been a one-woman show.
Blood Pressure is
a slow, methodically paced thriller that leads not to action, but to intriguing
consequences. The morale question it raises about one’s desire for escapism are
potent, especially when one must leave the darkness of the theatre and, sigh,
return to reality.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Blood Pressure is currently playing in Toronto at the Carlton.
It plays in Ottawa at The ByTowne beginning May 31.
It plays in Ottawa at The ByTowne beginning May 31.