Falling Angels , 2003
The wickedly funny story of three sisters' coming of age in a wildly dysfunctional family, set against the backdrop of the 60's, free love, the Cold War, LSD and the dawn of feminism. Affectionately dubbed "Little Women on acid", this is a story about the destructive effects of secrecy and the bonds of duty between parents and their children.
From film movement.com
Director: Scott Smith
Writers: Esta Spalding, Barbara Gowdy (novel)
Role: Tom
Set in the late 60's and filmed on-location in Saskatchewan, this dark family comedy focuses on the three teenaged daughters of the Field household. Callum Keith Rennie plays Jim Field, the loud-mouthed, domineering patriarch who has intimidated his wife Mary into a catatonic state of alcoholism and depression. Norma is the oldest, most responsible daughter; she is overburdened and preoccupied by events from the past. Middle child Lou chooses the rebellious path in order to escape her father's unreasonable demands. Youngest daughter Sandy aspires to maximum femininity, engaging in an affair with an older, married man in the process.
Short Synopsis
It is 1969 and seventeen year old Lou Field and her sisters are ready for change. Tired of enduring kiddie games to humour a Dad desperate for the occasional shred of family normalcy, the Field house is a place where their Mom’s semi-catatonic state is the result of a tragic event years before they were born. But as the autumn unfolds, life is about to take a turn. This is the year that Lou and her sisters are torn between the lure of the world outside and the claustrophobic world of the Field house that can no longer contain the girls’ restless adolescence. A story of a calamitous family trying to function, Falling Angels is a story populated by beautiful youthful rebels and ill-equipped parents coping with the draw of a world in turmoil beyond the boundaries of home and a manicured lawn.
Long Synopsis
Treading the fine line between adolescence and adulthood, the Field sisters have all but declared war on their domineering father. Though Jim Field (Genie and Gemini winner Callum Keith Rennie) runs the family house like a military camp, it’s the three teenaged daughters who really run the show and baby-sit their fragile mother Mary, (Two-time Oscar® nominee Miranda Richardson) as she quietly sits on the couch and quells her anxiety with whiskey. 2 3 It’s 1969 and beneath suburbia’s veneer of manicured lawns and rows of bungalows, the world faces explosive social change. Feisty and stubborn Lou (Katherine Isabelle – Insomnia, Ginger Snaps) recalls a traumatizing nuclear test run in the family bomb shelter years earlier where she and her sister uncover what they believe to be the truth behind a long-standing family secret, which has dramatically affected their lives. Lou misdirects her anger toward her tyrannical father and escapes with her rebel American boyfriend (Kett Turton); chic and naïve Sandy (Kristin Adams) perfects her feminine ways and seeks the affection of an older man with plenty of surprises to offer (Mark McKinney – Kids in the Hall, Saturday Night Live) while Norma (newcomer Monté Gagné), hampered by her own emerging sexuality tries to keep the peace and seeks her own refuge by putting the finishing touches on the rec room. The girls’ quest for independence is compounded by their love for their fragile bird of a mother and their simmering mistrust of their father, while all are oblivious to the real effect of the family secret and to the signs of Mary’s deterioration. Still, the Field sisters manage their experiments in living outside the home with some surprising results. A delicate balancing act of humour and tragedy, Falling Angels is a richly woven character-study of family dynamic and missed opportunity. Falling Angels turns most tellingly on the lynch pin of Lou Field’s teen-aged rage and her confused demand for justice.
Festivals:
Official Selection Toronto Int'l Film Festival
Official Selection Vancouver Int'l Film Festival
Official Selection SXSW Film Festival
Official Selection Karlovy Vary Int'l Film Festival
Official Selection Palm Springs Int'l Film Festival
REVIEWS:
Falling Angels, based on the novel by Barbara Gowdy, is one of the most effective family dramas to emerge in a good long while. Set at the end of the 1960s, the film follows the Field family through their trials and tribulations over a particularly tumultuous couple of months. Mother Mary (Miranda Richardson) spends the majority of her day lying on the couch, hopped up on pills to deal with her depression - while dad Jim (Callum Keith Rennie) uses his military background to run his household. Their three daughters have problems of their own: Lou (Katherine Isabelle) is a rebellious sort who's just begun a relationship with a draft dodger from the States; Sandy (Kirsten Adams) has also started seeing someone, a sleazy shoe salesman (played a little too convincingly by Mark McKinney), and honestly hopes to settle down with him; Norma (Monte Gagne) is the outcast of the family, with her extremely low self-confidence and fixation on their dead brother. Not surprisingly, Falling Angels doesn't contain much in the way of plot - that's par for the course with movies of this type - but the characters are so compelling here that it's barely noticeable until the very end (which goes on a bit longer than it should). Director Scott Smith has a keen eye for '60s details (the film feels authentic, from the Volkswagen minibus that Lou's boyfriend drives to the old-school TV commercials that can occasionally be glimpsed), and he's assembled a pitch-perfect cast. Rennie surely must've been tempted to channel Robert Duvall's tough-as-nails Great Santini character, but he manages to turn Jim into a far more complex figure. His good intentions rarely wind up the way he hopes (a routine Scrabble game turns into an awkward spelling battle between Jim and Lou), mostly because he refuses to see things from his wife or daughters' point of view. The only weak link is Miranda Richardson's Mary; the character isn't developed to the extent where we understand her indolence. Jim's behavior would indicate that Mary's been forced to withdraw completely from the world, but the screenplay never really allows us to get under her skin. Still, that's a minor complaint for a film that's otherwise surprisingly moving and emotional.
--Unknown/ Reel Film Reviews - Review
Successfully adapting Canadian author Barbara Gowdy's 1990 novel, "Falling Angels" is a dysfunctional-family tale that confirms soph helmer Scott Smith ("Rollercoaster") as a keen observer of character drama, particularly in the realm of teenage turmoil. Set in late-1960s Toronto suburbia, pic deftly balances elements of pathos, humor and the grotesque while maintaining a low-key tenor. That artful restraint might actually hinder theatrical exposure, as selling points are not obvious or easily encapsulated. However, topliner Miranda Richardson's presence should help, in tandem with good reviews and better word-of-mouth wherever feature gains a foothold. Ancillary prospects, particularly in broadcast, should be brisk. Esta Spalding's expert screenplay compresses some story elements, but otherwise remains true to the book in both plot and tone. It's 1969, but the counterculture hasn't yet reached the protags' tidy 'burb -- a fact that especially irks Lou (Katherine Isabelle), most outwardly disgruntled among the Field family's three nearly adult daughters. She's openly sarcastic and hostile toward dad Jim (Callum Keith Rennie), whom she blames for all their woes.
It's not an unreasonable accusation. While he maintains the extroverted, back-slapping manner suitable to his job as a used-car salesman, Jim runs the household like a drill sergeant, and his frequent explosions of temper suggest deeper instability. Resulting tense climate has already taken a severe toll on mom Mary (Richardson), a onetime dancer who's long since checked out -- she sits on the living room couch, watching TV and drinking cocktails.
Relegated to being both housekeepers and caregivers, the daughters each find their own ways of coping. Private chain-smoker Lou has vague fantasies of rebellion, which find a seemingly perfect mentor in the form of self-styled hippie Tom (Kett Turton), a fellow student newly arrived from the States. Pretty-in-pink blonde Sandy (Kristin Adams) is eager to use traditional feminine charm toward any possible escape. She lunges at the first man to come along, married would-be swinger Reg (Mark McKinney).
Wallflowerish Norma (Monte Gagne) is the lone daddy's-girl. She also carries a torch for the dark secret everyone else would prefer to keep buried: The girls once had an infant brother who was either accidentally or intentionally dropped from Niagara Falls.
As story builds from one small event to another, the clan's uneasy insularity unravels. Things climax during one long night of intercut activities: Lou and Tom do LSD in the backyard bomb shelter; drunken Jim gives Norma a wee-hours driving lesson; Sandy, meeting her lover in a cheap motel, is informed his twin brother (McKinney again) wants to join the "party;" and a briefly neglected mom climbs onto the roof, bringing things full circle to the funeral sequence that starts pic.
Interspersed are glimpses of the event that did most to damage them all. Ten years earlier, Jim had forced the family into that bomb shelter for two weeks' "practice" dominated by both parents' alcohol consumption.
Grim as much of content is, atmosphere is often mordantly comic, even during the most appalling incidents. Smith handles complex, troubling agenda here with quiet skill, while an exemplary cast maintains sympathy without pushing for sentiment.
Richardson's glazed, M.I.A. mother reps a nice change of pace from her usual, more brittle screen characters. Smith ably manages to offset Jim's ogre-ish behavior with a hapless pathos -- as does McKinney, in a more caricatured role.
But pic belongs primarily to the young female thesps, who are excellent. While at first glance it appears that classic "smart one" Lou will be major focus here, there's satisfaction in the way that story eventually
--Dennis Harvey/ Variety - Review (September 17, 2003)
From the Press Kit about Kett's character (complete Press Kit) :
Kett Turton as Tom
When Kett Turton arrived in Saskatchewan to film Falling Ange ls, he was a stranger in a strange land, and he took advantage of that displacement to connect with his character. “Being in Regina for a while before the movie started was actually good research for me,” says Turton. “Tom is a foreigner trying to find his feet in new surroundings, and for me, coming from Vancouver to a small town like that, and not really having anyone I could talk to, and not knowing anyone, gave me a feel for that. It’s all about trying to feel your way and learning to be comfortable with your surroundings, and to relate to people in the town.” Turton stepped into the role further by watching documentaries about the 1960’s and reading books and poetry, which wasn’t much of a stretch for the fan of beat poets Ginsberg and Kerouac. “I think Tom and I are incredibly similar,” he says. “Tom is an actor, because he’s forced to develop a new identity in these new surroundings, from bits and pieces of his old identity. And I’ve become like him, because you come away from every character you play with a new piece of the puzzle, and through the character you end up focusing on parts of yourself that you normally wouldn’t get to.” After starring in the award-winning feature Rollercoaster, for which he received a Leo Award nomination, Turton jumped at the chance to work with director Scott Smith again. Born in Portland, Oregon and raised in Vancouver, where he started acting in local theatre at the age of 4, Turton also starred in the independent feature Gypsy 83, and the television movies Homeroom, Secret Cutting, Deadlocked with David Caruso and Charles Dutton, and Our Guys: Outrage at Glen Ridge starring Ally Sheedy and Eric Stoltz. He is a familiar face on television, with guest starring roles on series’ including Millennium, The X-Files, Dark Angel and Smallville. Turton also landed a lead role in the WB series Dead Last.
The poem Tom reads in the movie:
THE SECOND COMING by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
