Film fest sneak peek

• Source: Global Times
• [11:10 June 18 2010]
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The Last Escape

The Last Escape (by Leo Pool, Canada, 2010)

At a crowded family Christmas party in Canada, a mother confesses to her daughters: "I've been my husband's wife for so long I can't do anything else." It's a poignant comment given more significance because her 75-year-old husband is suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Once the center of his family's life, a martinet, a talented musician, and a man of encyclopedic knowledge, he now dribbles at the head of the table at Christmas dinner, unable to eat without spilling his food, unable to speak without barking out near incomprehensible consonants.

The father, played with bitter acuity by Jacques Godin, is a nasty man at heart. He has been occasionally violent and is a man who, when out fishing one day, stole his son's prize catch and claimed it as his own. He is now reduced to fumbling with children's games and simple psychological tests.

But for all his physical restrictions, he retains his nastiness. His son, the actor (he calls all of his children by their occupations not their names), asks him if it is true he slept through his performance of Hamlet. The old man laughs gleefully, his smile a rictus of contempt: "You were terrible."

Later that night his son and a teenage grandson consider a mercy killing. The old man has a weak heart so they suggest feeding him the richest food and wine possible to provoke a heart attack.

While the subject of mercy killing is one of the topics that this mildly divert-ing Canadian film focuses on, it is also about family, relationships and tensions between the old and the young.

Sadly, because it is about a nasty man (though the film does suggest some possible element of redemption) and a nasty disease, the event does not really involve the audience. Indeed there is a sense that perhaps the father has gotten exactly what he deserves.

It's a shame, because that is not the way things work, and there are moments of fine ensemble acting which are diluted by simplistic writing and plot devices.