'Oh, Canada' reunites Richard Gere with 'Gigolo' director

Forty-five years after Paul Schrader immortalized Richard Gere as an “American gigolo,” he has once again cast him as a pretty run-of-the-mill American scoundrel. “Oh, Canada,” a stiff, cerebral eulogy, traces the confessions of a dying man named Leonard Fife (Gere), a Montreal-based documentary filmmaker who agreed to let his former students record his final moments.

Schrader adapted the screenplay from the 2021 novel “Foregone” by two-time Pulitzer nominee Russell Banks, and in both the book and the screenplay, the filmmaking team: spouses Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diane (Victoria Hill), and his assistant Sloan. (Penelope Mitchell) – they seek to praise their former teacher as a pacifist activist who chose exile in Canada instead of combat in Vietnam. But Leonard is tired of acting like a martyr, especially in front of his exhausted wife, Emma (Uma Thurman), and takes the opportunity to turn the camera into a confessional. From there, Schrader and his cinematographer Andrew Wonder present the worst things Leonard claims to have done as forced flashbacks. The triteness leaves us unsure to what extent his passionate purge is true.

Schrader attempts to channel Banks' lyricism through a narrator, Cornel (Zach Shaffer), Leonard's abandoned son, but since the boy is largely off-screen, the conceit becomes confusing. The director and author were friends before the latter's death in 2023, and Schrader promised to give his version the title Banks wanted but couldn't have. Like a slow-burning magic trick, the Great White North comes to represent the idea of ​​a border that cannot be crossed twice. The ancient Greeks might have called the film “Oh, River Styx.”

On the page, reality and self-deception merge into a delicious soup of memories. Here, the confusion is visual: Leonard sometimes floats into the past looking like Gere, who dresses the character without a hint of self-protection while the lens gapes at his raw skin. More often, Leonard conjures up an idealized version of himself as an educated but adrift ladies' man played by Jacob Elordi. It takes chutzpah to cast an actor who towers over Gere by more than half a foot, and then double down by shooting Elordi to make him look even taller. In one scene, his head practically pokes through the rafters of a gym.

Banks wrote of “a hologram named Fife, Leonard Fife, a remembered version of the man as remembered by the man himself.” So sure, being Jacob Elordi is the cherry on top of his hallucination. Leonard's daydreams are less surreal and more unsettling, so the film feels a little caught off guard when it puts Thurman in a double role whipped by a distracting scary wig, or makes us endure contrived conversations between Leonard and his previous wife, Alicia (Kristine Froseth), a pregnant girlfriend who looks and talks like a gorgeous doll. “We will be the perfect family,” he smiles.

I'll give Schrader the benefit of the doubt that his dialogue is stilted by design, even though female characters are particularly prone to mistakes. (Thurman has to deliver this five-word poem: “Test results. Cancer. What kind?”) But it's still irritating to sit back, and once we start questioning everything we see, does young Leonard In fact Order a bran muffin at an ice cream parlor? – It becomes more difficult to give our trust when the film wants to become emotional. There's a particularly strange moment where Malcolm, a character old enough to have gray hair, can't believe Leonard's claim that people once smoked on airplanes. By my calculations, that was legal until Malcolm turned 22? I was most convinced by a moment in which Imperioli, bless him, puts the Canadian accent to the test. He's caught sneaking into the bathroom in the middle of a confession and apologizes with, “I'm sorry.”boot that.”

One of Leonard's sins turns out to be that he is a snob who mocks Malcolm and Diane by calling them “Mr. and Mrs. Ken Burns of Canada.” (“We won an Oscar,” Diane mutters in defense). Otherwise, the family disaster Leonard caused is unconscionable, but sadly not all that uncommon, and not all that shocking with the gentle acoustic guitar score that continually apologizes on his behalf. However, Leonard behaves as if he is burdened by a fifteen-foot center, convinced that his past will shock Emma. She knows how much this filming session hurts him, but his wife knows him better than she suspects. Leonard just wants to admit that he's a coward who never loved anyone, he says with a shrug. The gap between his guilt and her indifferent reaction is filled with his own suffering; He is so consumed by shame that he does not even ask for forgiveness. However, when Emma leaves the room to check her phone, he is offended. How dare you not remember him exactly how he wants you to?

Leonard shares elements of Banks' own life: the multiple marriages, the childhood dreams of fleeing to Cuba. You can't help but notice that Gere's rugged haircut and silver neck beard also make him look an awful lot like Schrader, especially when Leonard remembers his own movies and wonders if an image can make someone immortal.

Schrader must know the answer to that. His films and scripts are integrated into our culture, into our daily conversations, like mortar. (Is there anyone reading this who hasn't joked, “Are you talking to me?”) And like Leonard, Schrader wants to shape how he is remembered, even though we, the audience, will always have the last word. To me, he is Hollywood's irascible philosopher, a truth-teller whose truths should also be taken with a grain of salt. I hope you keep your camera rolling.