It has been five years since a film by longtime Vancouver auteur Bruce Sweeney has unspooled on local screens. The west coast writer-director has brought nearly the entire cast of 2018’s Kingsway back for a decidedly darker entry in the man’s oeuvre, She Talks to Strangers.
Forty-something Leslie (Camille Sullian) leads a solitary existence with her faithful pooch John. Solitary at least until her wayward husband Keith (Jeff Gladstone) returns from a six-year absence and promptly makes himself an unwelcome guest in her basement, allegedly lying low from creditors. Using a mix of stubbornness and threats to keep himself ensconced, Keith soon concocts a scheme to claim half the value of Leslie’s Mt. Pleasant house for himself.
Finding herself short on legal options, having never officially separated from Keith, Leslie soon finds her hand forced by his dog-napping of John. The ransom plot goes awry when John bolts for the nearby woods and *SPOILER* makes some enemies with the local wildlife. Consumed by grief and rage, Leslie finds herself taking unthinkable revenge. With the cards stacked against her, she relies on her estranged mother Staci (ever-reliable Gabrielle Rose) to help extricate her from the ruins of this real estate caper-gone-sour while deflecting the growing suspicions of Keith’s girlfriend Aran (Agam Darshi).
Taking its title from what I assume is an original song sung by Keith at the story’s mid-point, She Talks to Strangers takes a motley crew of seriously flawed characters and chucks them in the blender (some more than others). Leslie has metaphorically swept her relationship with Keith under the rug without properly ending things and allowed it to fester into a mold that could upend her life. Her estrangement from her mother has left the latter frustrated and more amenable to Keith’s real-estate swindle assuming she gets her own slice of the scam. Snap decisions are made and plans are improvised while Keith’s corpse slowly decomposes in the deep freeze.
It’s all interesting character study to be sure, but much of the film’s script seems to be paved with rather gaping plot holes. Whether it’s the cops failing to intervene in a clearly dangerous domestic situation (Keith drugs and binds Leslie at one point) to door locks apparently not existing in this universe (Keith has no trouble entering Leslie or Staci’s homes while they’re out), the film stretches credibility a tad too far and shifts tone even further.
For all the script’s puzzling curveballs, the Bruce Sweeney repertory players are more than game. Camille Sullivan proves once again to be a Leo-worthy lead (and should be an Oscar one, dammit!) while Gabrielle Rose steals the show as her frustrated mother and probably the only boomer in Vancouver not sitting on a gold mine of real estate bought in the 70s.
Strangers strikes me as one of those indie films that may have functioned better as a one-act fringe play than a feature film. The characters are fascinating to watch even if no one really learns anything or changes in any meaningful way. Cinematic equivalent of that restaurant your friend drags you to that certainly tastes interesting, but is unlikely to merit a return visit.
6/10
She Talks to Strangers screens virtually as a part of the Whistler Film Festival until Dec 17