(Canada, 95 min.)
Dir. Sean Garrity, Writ. Jonas Chernick
Starring: Jonas Chernick, Joey King, Kevin
Pollak, Emily Hampshire, Clé Bennett
Aurora (Joey King) can’t see her father. Jonah (Jonas
Chernick) can’t see his daughter. Aurora experiences a rare form of
degeneration in her young blinkers that erodes her eyesight. Jonah, on the
other hand, fails to see Aurora through a veil of wilful blindness. (Less rare
an affliction.) What the two lack in vision they come to share in perspective
as Borealis takes the father and
daughter on a considerately affecting road trip. The reward at the end of their
journey is a remarkable sight.
One can't have Aurora without the borealis, though, and the
script by Chernick uses a fine bit of wordplay to complete the young woman, or
at least her father's vision of her, as Jonah decides to forget about his debt
and make good by taking Aurora to see the northern lights. He holds on to a
memory of the aurora borealis as the finest sight of his life, which he shared
with his late wife on their honeymoon and he wants his daughter to witness this
majestic image before her eyes fail.
Chernick reunites with My Awkward Sexual Adventure director Sean Garrity, along with Emily Hampshire,
his co-star from the Canuck comedy, who gives a notable supporting turn as
Kyla, Jonah's considerate but no-nonsense girlfriend. The team shows the range
of their versatility after the raunchy rom com, while Garrity’s hand at
family-oriented cinema shows a hand at dramatic sophistication after last
year’s fun and fluffy After the Ball.
The film offers strong, dynamic characters with an engaging and accessible
screenplay that builds its personalities and themes together as Jonah and
Aurora make the journey to Churchill, Manitoba to see the borealis. DP Samy Inayeh artfully harnesses sun beams and lens flare to evoke the final threads of light that Aurora sees--and the inspiring warmth that Jonah envisions with his trip to Churchill.
The film uses the road movie’s image of progress to chart
the relationship between the father and his daughter, and it’s definitely a
bumpy ride as each traveller reconciles his or her ideals with misleading
mirages that prevent him or her from taking a straight path. Aurora clings to
the false hope of aid from a mysterious stranger with amazing weed, while Jonah
keeps playing the short game and putting his relationship with Aurora on the
line as he pushes his luck with Tubby. Tubby, meanwhile, offers Borealis a few detours as the film
intercuts his pursuit of Jonah along with his affluent strongman Brick (Clé
Bennett) and Aurora’s pet dog in tow as collateral.
Pollack’s presence affords Borealis some significance as the film draws upon his persona from
films like The Usual Suspects and Casino to offer a comically unhinged
gangster. The film finds a few tonal inconsistencies as Tubby and Bennett
antagonise Jonah with deadpan cartoonish violence, but as their presence
threatens to destabilise the bond that Jonah creates with Aurora, the ruptures
often work to the film’s advantage as they provide gaps that Jonah needs to
bridge in order to protect his daughter. As Aurora, King gives an eye-opener of
a performance as a young woman grappling with revelations that are cruelly mature
for someone her age to bear. Her completely natural performance draws the
viewer into Aurora’s innocence and naïveté, thus making one feel as protective
of her as Jonah should be while seeing Aurora’s vulnerability as products of
her father’s failings as a parent. Jonah isn't going to win father of the year
and his motivation seems somewhat escapist given the looming gambling debt, but
Chernick capably sells his protagonist as a fallible man who doesn’t know how
to be a father. He's been too scared to bet, yet he has a good heart to
compensate for future hands. In poker terms, he's going all in and the borealis
is his river card: it’s the turn of fate between a win and a loss.
Like a rounder having a firm sense of the game at hand and
the players at the table, though, Borealis
surprises with its final images along the family’s journey. In an ironic, yet
poignant, vision, Borealis rejects
closure and gives audiences a bittersweet finale that feels authentically
satisfying. It throws the audience a wild card and lands a winner.
It opens in Ottawa at
The Mayfair on May 27.
