The Most Vancouver Movie Ever Made

There was a time when B.C. in general and Vancouver in particular desperately wanted just one movie -- good, bad or indifferent -- that reflected our own image. Twenty-six years ago, no average person could name one.

Then, in 1982, the late, great Phil Borsos made The Grey Fox, a treacly period charmer about a real-life small-time American train robber named Billy Miner who came north and was so polite Canadians adopted him as one of their own. In 1985, Sandy Wilson made My American Cousin -- a sweet, slight confection that pretty much defined the Okanagan circa 1960.

Then came the boom in foreign film production, and we pathetically obsessed over places we could recognize in otherwise very American films. In 1987, Stakeout gave us lovely old houses on Stephens Street in Kitsilano (hey, look, it's my dad's old place), while Roxanne offered Steve Martin as a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac in a particularly picturesque Nelson.

Since then, of course, the developing wealth of Canadian talent has carved time out from Hallmark movies and cable-channel serials to make an enormous number of films that represent us and belong to us. Name one. Ah yes, I thought so.

And so we come to the 2007 edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 28 to Oct. 13 (and began in the year The Grey Fox was released). The festival features four films in which Vancouver plays itself. The most anticipated is Everything's Gone Green, written by Doug Coupland. Another is Mount Pleasant, directed by Ross Weber and featuring ubiquitous local film actors Ben Ratner and Tygh Runyan.

Acts of Imagination, about Ukrainian immigrant siblings driving each other crazy in a cheap suburban apartment, and Unnatural & Accidental, based on the true story of a man who murdered destitute women by pouring alcohol down their throats, round out the group. The former finds fleeting beauty in a few scenes beside the Port Mann Bridge in November, but it's mainly dour and overwrought. The latter, yet to be screened for the media, is likely to be a special interest.

The Vancouver obsession

Everything's Gone Green, however, is the most Vancouver movie ever made. It obsesses over our appearances the way we obsess over our own.

As with pretty much all Coupland stories, the characters are ciphers. Ryan (Paul Costanzo) plays a disaffected technical writer trying to find his place in a beautiful young city defined mainly by its citizens' illusions, pretensions and opportunism. He gets a job photographing and profiling lottery winners, becomes embroiled in a money-laundering scheme, and falls for Ming (Steph Song), a movie set dresser. They're rather bland stand-ins for the audience in a story where every other character is a Vancouver caricature.

No one better identifies the particularities of Vancouver's zeitgeist than Coupland. He knows that real estate is Vancouver's only industry. That our landscape's beauty places special demands on its occupants. That, like 30-year-old Ryan, the city is in the process of deciding what it wants to be when it grows up.

Never have so many elements of our city been brought together in one movie package. Rory the steroid dealer declares "I only ate 11 grams of fat last week." Film production trucks and Halloween Martians invade a North Shore residential neighbourhood. Feng shui, "the Quebec situation," animal rights, leaky condos, Expo 86, home invasions, a beached whale -- Coupland seems to be making up for past absence with all the local references.

It can feel like a laundry list, and there are times when you wish the film were populated with more believable people. Still, many scenes linger in the mind, and in 10 or 50 or 100 years, people will watch this film to understand what life was like here way back when. God knows how the movie will play outside our city, but Vancouverites will like it well enough.

And then there's real life

Mount Pleasant offers a more naturalistic take on Vancouver's current moment. Again, wealth and the lack of it are central to the story. It's about the intertwined lives of three couples: a 16-year-old prostitute and her tool-thief boyfriend, a middle-class Mount Pleasant couple coping with fear for the health of their young daughter after she punctures herself with a discarded syringe, and a wealthy west-side family comprised of a brittle, moralizing wife and her husband, the john.

While Everything's Gone Green depends on metaphors, Mount Pleasant thrives on its characters. If you live on that side of Vancouver, you may recognize these people as your neighbours. They're certainly mine. Three doors down from me near Commercial Drive are the parents of a young girl who found a syringe in their backyard. By the SkyTrain station is the junkie prostitute who looks like she just fell down the hole -- and might yet climb out. The immaculate Point Grey homes occupied by oblivious parents and smart-but-vulnerable kids are an uncomfortable reminder of my own teens.

While the moments of recognition in Everything's Gone Green make you laugh, those in Mount Pleasant make you wince.

For Vancouverites looking for their own city's reflection on a movie screen, both films are worth seeing. Everything's Gone Green will find a home in the local canon. Mount Pleasant will likely settle for second place, along with a host of deserves-better Vancouver films like Last Wedding and Kitchen Party.

Even Everything's Gone Green may not stand much of a chance in the wider world, though. But that's okay. As a city, we spend too much time seeking the approval of others. And enough of us are sufficiently rich that we can afford to make a few movies just for ourselves.

Charles Campbell is a contributing editor to The Tyee. He also likes Double Happiness (Mina Shum, 1994), Kissed (Lynne Stopkewich, from a Barbara Gowdy script, 1996), and Hard Core Logo (Bruce McDonald, from a Michael Turner novel. He thinks Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter is the best film set in B.C., even though it is based on a book by Russell Banks originally set in upstate New York. Hey, turnabout is fair play. What British Columbia films matter to you?

For The Tyee's profile of Douglas Coupland, see Coupland's Mid-life Circus. For Dorothy Woodend's survey of other worthy film festival attractions, see Must-See Bad News and And Now the Good News.