OH, CANADA

May 18, 2024

oh canada, richard gere, urma thurman, jacob elordi, paul schrader

Words by JANE CROWTHER


After Quintin Dupieux and Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic essays on their relationships with art, Paul Schrader offers his own at Cannes this week. Dedicated to the late author Russell Banks, Schrader explores mortality, legacy and fraudulence in art as he tracks an irascible dying documentary-maker, Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) giving a deathbed career interview to two of his former students (Michael Imperioli and Victoria Hill). A fated artist who has spent his career being lauded for his anti-Vietnam war stance when he fled to Canada as a young man, and his liberal, game-changing documentaries, Leonard demands his wife, Emma (Uma Thurman) be his witness to his last confession. Riddled with cancer and befuddled by Fentanyl, Leonard recalls the true story of his rise to success – one that may be more self serving than selfless.

Leonard is played in flashback by Jacob Elordi who, though a more rangy version of Gere, manages to embody his recognisable strut and his cadence. A studious young man heading for a teaching job in Vermont in 1968, he’s married, father to a toddler (with another on the way) and offered the opportunity of being a CEO with his father-in-law’s business. Given a week to decide as the shadow of Vietnam looms, Leonard takes off to New England with a banker’s cheque to buy a house and put down roots for his family. His odyssey takes a different turn…

Using multiple narratives (Gere and Elordi alternate as Leonard in flashbacks, Leonard and his grown son narrate), B&W and colour, mixed ratios and Thurman in a duel role – she plays Emma and also the hippy wife of a painter in 1968 who pleasures Leonard in a farmhouse – Schrader’s film is a jigsaw puzzle that requires patient assembly by viewers. Is the jumbled and ultimately meaningless last interview of the great Leonard Fife the last firing synapses of a dying, confused man conflating reality and fiction? Or is the film merely a hollow mess? 

While Gere eschews any charm to play Fife as a self-obsessed deserter (politically and romantically), the film belongs to Elordi. Continuing to show his range and savvy choices, the Euphoria and Priscilla star puts flesh on the bones of seemingly callow youth, giving Leonard the humanity he denies himself in the retelling. In Elordi’s hands, Leonard is, if not necessarily commendable, understandable. Schrader lenses him beautifully and he’s missed whenever he’s not on screen.


Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi is screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Release date TBC

TRENDING

Imogen Poots, Jim Belushi, Kristen Stewart, The Chronology of Water, Thora Birch

THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER

No bodily fluid is left untouched in Kristen Stewart’s raw, unflinching poem to wetness, adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir…

Gareth Edwards, Jonathan Bailey, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Mahershala Ali, Scarlett Johansson

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH

In Gareth Edwards’ reboot of the JP franchise, set after Dominion but without any of the same characters, dinosaurs are old news.

BUY

You may also like…

Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marin County Civic Center, Space Odyssey

THE WRIGHT STUFF

Photographs by MARK READ Words by JANE CROWTHER If you drive north from San Francisco on the 101, the impressive engineering feat of the Golden Gate Bridge is a postcard view that wows. But further north, nestling among the rolling countryside and a carpet of trees, lies another architectural feast for the eyes – one that

sophie wilde, babygirl

SOPHIE WILDE & HARRIS DICKINSON

DISPATCH: SOPHIE WILDE & HARRIS DICKINSON BABYGIRLWords by JANE CROWTHERPhotographs by GREG WILLIAMS As she looks out of Venice’s Grand Canal wearing a 16Arlington dress teamed with Church brogues, actor Sophie Wilde contemplates her ‘surreal’ 13 months which started with the release of Australian horror hit Talk To Me in July 2023 and culminated with her attending

charley rowan mccain, maxxxine, mia goth, simon prast, ti west

MAXXXINE

‘In this business,’ reads the opening quote by Bette Davis, ‘until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.’