Emile Reviews

Sensitively played but ultimately undone by its unconventional approach, this third installment in writer-director Carl Bessai's trilogy of films dealing with Canadians at an emotional crossroads (which began with 1999's Lola and continued in Lola, 2001) ends with an elderly professor returning home to confront the remnants of the family he abandoned. Scheduled to receive an honorary degree from a university in British Columbia, renowned London scientist Emile (Sir Ian McKellen) has been invited to stay at the new home of his estranged niece, Nadia (Deborah Kara Unger), and her 10-year-old daughter, Maria (Theo Crane). Nadia has just separated from her husband, Jacob, and moved from bustling Vancouver to genteel Victoria with the resentful Maria in tow. It's an uncomfortable homecoming all around: Emile left the Saskatchewan family farm 40 years earlier to study in England, knowing in his heart that his younger brother, Freddy (Tygh Runyan), was the real genius of the family. Instead of leaving home to become the writer Emile felt his brother was born to be, Freddy was left behind to fix tractors, work the farm and be bullied by their scornful older brother, Carl (Chris William Martin). Emile never returned to Saskatchewan, not after Carl and his wife — Nadia's parents — were killed in a car crash and certainly not to raise Nadia, whom Emile abandoned to an orphanage. As a result, Nadia spent her lonely childhood in an institution, waiting for an uncle who never came and growing into the bitter, distrustful woman who coolly greets Emile when he arrives on her doorstep. Maria, however, soon bonds with the old man and Emile and his grandniece become fast friends. Nadia proves a harder nut to crack. Rather than present Emile's emotionally complex family history as series of conventional flashbacks, Bessai reenacts episodes from Emile's memory as if they were part of the present, unfolding just over his shoulder. It's a strategy probably better suited to the stage but which, thanks to Bessai's smooth camera work, works pretty well until he takes it a step too far and bungles the film's climax. Unger, a good actress often involved in so-so projects, is exceptionally good here, but while there's no disputing that Sir Ian is more than adequate, it's hard to believe he was ever a provincial farm boy from the plains of Saskatchewan — even one who's spent his entire adulthood in jolly old England.