Meanwhile, Jonathan Goldstein’s maudlin piano-heavy score only pushes the whole endeavor toward the sentimental. (The film’s title itself is drawn from a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem.) But that goes only so far in explaining why their conversations sound not like people speaking spontaneously from the heart, but like authors savoring their own words at a book reading.Įven as Yoli is breaking down in near hysterics, the words tumbling out of her mouth sound overworked and affected, and McGowan’s unadorned direction - he favors clean lines in gray winter light, and close-ups so sharp you could count every hair on a character’s head - does little to bridge the gap between the film’s messy truths and its polished prose.

Yoli and Elf - really the whole Von Riesen family, which also includes mom Lottie (Mare Winningham) and, in flashbacks, dad Jake (Donal Logue) - are unapologetically bookish sorts, given to name-dropping Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Thomas Aquinas in casual conversation or reciting Philip Larkin poems from memory. It’s willing to hear out Elf’s darkest thoughts and Yoli’s ugliest ones, and to present both of them as human beings in pain rather than as talking points in some larger cultural discussion.īut at nearly every turn, the film’s urgent emotions are undermined by the way the characters choose to express them. Whatever one’s stances on assisted suicide or mental illness or the Canadian health care system (and the movie is bound to provoke conversations about all of the above), there’s no denying that the film’s attempts to grapple with them feel honest and earned. It’s an irreconcilable position for both sisters, and All My Puny Sorrows has no interest in pretending otherwise. Gadon tempers Elf’s fragility with surprising resolve, and she regards Yoli’s mood swings with the bittersweet remove of someone who doesn’t plan to stick around for many more of them.Īs Yoli puts it, Elf has “enemies that love ” - people working their hardest to keep Elf from what she wants most in the world, because what she wants most in the world is not to be in it anymore. Pill imbues her every line reading as Yoli with a mélange of restless emotions - her affectionate teasing carries undercurrents of desperation and anger, her furious rants a note of pleading. Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)Ĭast: Alison Pill, Sarah Gadon, Mare Winningham, Donal Logue, Amybeth McNultyĪuthor Miriam Toews has readily acknowledged that her 2014 novel was based on similar events in her own life, and her intimate understanding of the situation shows in the film’s refusal to smooth over the thorny situation it presents.

All my puny little sorrows