Lately, weather around here has been a mix of hot and cold. But I wouldn’t know too much regarding weather since I barely step outside these days. But with the hot sticky weather approaching, sometimes it’s best to cool off with a movie shot in the snow to make you feel like it’s a lot cooler. Sometimes it works.
This movie takes place in one of the more colder snow-covered regions in the winter of 1979. We are introduced to our main character, Rusty Whitaker (Pennan Brae) who has made a new lifestyle for himself living in a trailer in some snowy mountains in the States where he writes poems. After he’s finished his latest written work, the poet reads it to his wife Alice, who is nothing more than a mannequin. Well, artists can be considered insane sometimes. While this movie does take place in the States despite the Canadian setting (har har), it does get more Canadian as Rusty watches hockey while drinking beer with his mannequin wife. Eventually our geeky friend decides it’s finally time to send his poems off to a publisher. On his trip to the post office, he goes to a convenience store in the mountains owned by 3 lonely women who start to develop a thing for him. One of the women named Fran (Carmen Brikendal) is a writer herself and wants to get to know him better. But Rusty has his own plastic white female and has no interest in dating the locals he hardly ever plans to socialize with. Fran with the help of her friends Babs (Vanessa Farnsworth) and Ruth (Yuvia Storm) digs up some more dirt on Rusty as they learn who he really is and where he came from. That’s when they decide to scope out Rusty and see just how he lives after a certain incident. So they drive over the mountain on their snowmobile stake him out on top of a hill for a while. Once he comes back to town for another errand, the ladies decide to confront him and Fran reads a poem while revealing his name. Once it’s apparent they know almost everything about Rusty, things start to get chaotic between him and the ladies. Chaotic as in snowball fights just like childhood.
The movie’s just a little under 50 minutes long and there isn’t much story at first, but then some of the later details revealed bring up some more interesting and strange parts to the plot. The locations while mostly consist of snowy plains and very minimal interiors with little colour still show a fair amount of depth. The characters while not many are still interesting from our wacky struggling writer to the three desperate women thriving for better lives. They say less is more, and this movie provides quite a lot for one to think about and enjoy as they look into the life of a writer who once had everything and now barely has much. It’s amazing what writing and creating does to people, myself included. Of course, it’s even more amazing how little plot can jump right now into some unexpected craziness and fun for anyone to watch.
