Parsley Days (Canada, 2000) 84 min color DIR-SCR-DOP: Andrea Dorfman. PROD: Kimberley Boyd, Marcia Connolly, Andrea Dorfman. CAST: Megan Dunlop, Michael LeBlanc, Bruce Godfree, Nobu Adilman, Lise Cormier. (a. d. pictures)
They say movies have to be watched in the context of their time, but as a ukulele-heavy YA pregnancy comedy that goes all in for quirky, in 2022 Parsley Days is barely visible through the soupy gauze of 2007’s Juno. This is an insult to Dorfman – and an indictment of Jason Reitman, who hasn’t managed a single good review since he ripped this thing off top to (almost) bottom. But I must frame my comments comparatively because that’s how I experienced it: the relentlessly clever dialogue manages to sound like it’s being spoken by actual humans; the gawky, primary-colour serenity of Dorfman’s cinematography is more impressive for its modest means; it manages to navigate some third-act emotional affect without throwing the whole tone overboard for some histrionic bullshit. The film leads with consecutive closeups of a condom and a torso on a toilet; it ends, mercifully, with the kid having the fucking abortion. In other words this woman filmmaker doesn’t cower before the human stakes of this woman character’s narrative, and somehow I doubt that’s a coincidence. (Mongrel VHS)
JC Culp
JC Culp is a collage filmmaker and the founder of Unpopular Arts, which provides media production, preservation and presentation.