canadianna-70213

This film offers something that I haven't seen in a long time - an honest invitation to journey with a character who, despite his flaws, is trying to make sense of what love is. It's funny that we really don't see many films like this - in attempts to generalize and gloss over it, or wishing for a sugar sweet finish, we can use romantic comedy as a way to escape our own questions, or fantasize our own better endings. This film invites us to look at ourselves, and uses humour and pathos to get there. At times uncomfortable, at times laughable, the characters bring us up close with difficult conversations about relationship, expectation and love. As a viewer, I found it an honest film - and that honesty, as well as the performances of the actors themselves, felt like an important gift that that brings the audience into maturity and honours a film tradition that demands engagement out of a friendship, or at least a kind of kinship, with its viewer.