Early Friday afternoon I found myself at the Lord Nelson for a conversation between the excellent Laura Simpson of Side Door and artist, filmmaker, musician, and actor Sook-Yin Lee, who is here to discuss Paying For It, her adaptation of ex-boyfriend and best friend Chester Brown’s autobiographic novel, which I saw a couple weeks back. It was a terrific chat, with Lee talking about how she leaned into the themes of the book — the conversation around decriminalizing consensual sex work — while changing some important aspects, such as making the key relationship in the film between her lightly fictionalized character and Chester. She kindly answered my question about her work on Close To You, the Elliot Page film, which seems to share locations with Paying For It — she confirmed both films were shot in her house in Toronto. She also called Page a longtime, loyal friend.
Paying For It screens at the Atlantic International Film Festival on Saturday at 4:30pm. (Check out the full schedule here.)
Friday evening I saw Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, which is his first step into horror since Unsane. Soderbergh is one of Hollywood’s most restless and prolific filmmakers with a real talent for genre. Consider the range of these films, his most recent: Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Kimi, No Sudden Move, and Let Them All Talk. Where I struggle a little with him is when he gets too formal — at times he seems more interest in the technical, conceptual side of his movies than the story or characters, even when he collaborates with a more than capable screenwriter, David Koepp.
Presence is a single setting movie: The Payne family moves into a lovely Edwardian home — parents (Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) and teens Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). Right off the top the camera is prowling, intrusive, observing with a wide angle similar to the one Soderbergh used occasionally in No Sudden Move. It doesn’t take long to piece together this is a ghost story and we’re witnessing the family from the ghost’s perspective — a little like Beetlejuice without the laughs.
This is a clever conceit, and if you can get over the distorted lens and the swooping handheld — not my favourite — it’s plenty engaging. Chloe swiftly becomes the heart of the story as she’s struggling to adjust to the death of a close friend, and is the only one in the family who’s sensitive to the ghostly presence. What emerges is the various family members’ issues — Mom is in some legal trouble, Dad knows about it but doesn’t want to be implicated and is thinking about leaving, Tyler is an asshole who only wants to be popular and has no compassion for her sister’s problems, and Chloe’s just sad, missing her friend. As the ghost makes their presence known to the whole family, it draws battle lines — Chloe and her father get closer as Chloe gets friendly with a boy from her school. This while the ghost’s motivations are oblique and uncertain.
Anyone expecting a modern Poltergeist beyond this family’s personal tragedy will be disappointed. The notes of horror are here, but the ghost is hardly vindictive and the conclusion is a bit of a letdown. Soderbergh’s concept has a lot of promise, too bad the follow through is a bit… ephemeral.
