(Canada, 91 min.)
Dir. Peter Wellington, Writ. Jeremy Boxen
Starring: Tyler Labine, Malin Ackerman, Daniel Petronijevic,
Lucy Punch.
 |
| Tyler Labine and Malin Akerman star in Cottage Country |
Ah, the cottage. It’s where life is nice and pretty for
forty-eight hours of the week: the loons sing and the waves ripple, and the
cottage provides enough R&R to recharge weary city folk for the week that
lies ahead. Todd (Tyler Labine) is like many Canucks who hate their job and
live for the weekend just so they can escape to the cottage. The upcoming
weekend looks to be an extra special getaway, as Todd plans to propose to his
girlfriend Cammie (Malin Ackerman) on the island at the cottage, where the
loons and colourful leaves will help the diamond ring shimmer in the cottage
country sunset. There’s just one unexpected hitch, however, to Todd and
Cammie’s perfect weekend: they have to say “Until death do us part” before they
can say “I do”.
Todd’s obnoxious/deadbeat brother Salinger (Daniel
Petronijevic) crashes the engagement party when he forgoes Todd’s precise
system of booking the cottage over the Internet and moseys on up to the Muskoka
lake house unannounced. If Salinger clashes with Todd, then his Eurotrash
girlfriend Masha (Lucy Punch) doesn’t jive at all with the prim and proper
Cammie. It doesn’t help, either, that Tweedledee and Tweedledum intrude upon
the chalet while Cammie’s giving Todd a special weekend getaway blowjob.
Todd and Cammie, irked by Salinger and Masha spoiling their
perfect weekend, do the logical thing to the reclaim the peace and quiet: they
kill them.
Cottage country would be twice as peaceful if vacationers
could simply bludgeon with an axe all the obnoxious loonies and urbanites who
take the weekend to hoot and holler at the beavers, drink some suds, and vanish
the next day. Cottage Country has a
trifle of blood-spattered, mean-spirited humour, then, as it shows the proud
couple-to-be butcher their kin in an effort to get back to basics. One has to
admire the chutzpah of the happy couple in this black comedy.
Writer Jeremy Boxton has a lot of fun with the tried and
tested formula of the cabin in the woods, as Cottage Country enjoys a little splat-n-chuckle mayhem with the
escapism of cottage country living. There’s nothing uniquely Canadian about
running away to the cottage, but there is something about the woodsy freedom
that speaks to a quintessential cliché of Canuck contentment. To see Todd and Cammie
transform, for example, from high-strung yuppies to raincoat-wearing outdoorsy
types recalls many a city-dweller who changes mindsets with the flick of a
mental switch as soon as he or she gets a whiff of that pine-scented country air.
Cottages make people do crazy things.
It shouldn’t surprise viewers that this tongue-in-cheek
farce on Canadiana comes from Hobo with a
Shotgun producer Frank Siracusa. Cottage
Country has an air of a Saturday matinee vacation comedy thanks to the
bright and rustic cinematography by Luc Montpelier (Take This Waltz, The Right
Kind of Wrong), but the descent into bloody mayhem comes fast and quick as
the uptight yuppies take control of their tranquil weekend getaway. Labine and
Ackerman have a lot of fun playing a zany cross between Red Green and the
Macbeths, for their straight-laced eccentricity as the pair of city squares
sells the gory lampoon of this national pastime. On the other hand, the quick
and dirty hack job of Salinger and Masha sees Lucy Punch exit the film far too
early, for her hilarious performance as the sleazy floozy with a riotously unplaceable
accent is easily the highlight of the film. (The girlfriend who looks like a
prostitute is also a rare, but not uncommon, sight amongst idyll cottage living…)
Cottage Country suffers when Punch’s
saucy presence exits the picture, but Masha’s garbled speeches about making the
perfect Caesar and the European sex trade are outrageous enough to keep the gas
going for a few minutes after she is chopped and dropped in the lake.
The Loony Tunes
violence then gets a hit of Rhymes for
Young Ghouls as the ghosts come back to haunt Todd. The decaying made-up Salinger,
who awkwardly looks a lot like a rotting version of Heath Ledger from The Dark Knight, gives Cottage Country something strange and
unusual as the film adds an icky bit of body horror to the Barney’s Version-ish cottage-weekend-gone-awry shtick. The bodies
pile up as Todd and Cammie do the horror movie thing and kill more people to
keep their plan in check. (The obsessively organized Cammie is a fan of “the
plan”.)
Like the intruders on Todd and Cammie’s weekend, though, the fun of Cottage Country overstays its welcome a
little too much. After the zaniness of its beginning, the film begins to feel a
little hungover as it chugs along in its choppy final act. The tone of this
black comedy becomes a little wobbly when a roster of secondary characters
appear and aggravate the polite, perfect couple (and, in turn, us) with
unrelenting questions about the disappearance of Salinger and Masha. The final
frenzy of Cottage Country flies so
far into outrageous mayhem, though, that it’s bound to leave cinephilic
cottagers sharing a chuckle that the whole macabre affair was justifiable
homicide.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Cottage Country screens in Ottawa at the Rainbow until Thursday,
Nov. 14.
