![]() #Wild wonderful off grid series#The young star has a limited resume she will soon be seen in the Freevee series High School as well as Amazon’s upcoming Daisy Jones & the Six miniseries. He also looks remarkably like the real Grandpa Dick, whose face we glimpse in some end-credit Polaroids.Īs strong as Gadon and Caryle are here, North of Normal’s standout performance belongs to Amanda Fix. Carlyle is, as expected, a delightful force of nature. ![]() Michelle is a role of great complexity, and Gadon makes the character’s failings heartbreakingly believable. Gadon has deserved a role in a film like Normal for years now after often been the best thing about weak movies (like last year’s TIFF entry, All My Puny Sorrows). The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Sarah Gadon and Robert Carlyle. Perhaps it should have been shared, as it adds a fascinating dimension to a conclusion that feels startlingly abrupt. Surprisingly, this information is not provided as a postscript. A quick search of Pearson’s background shows that once the events of the film concluded she had a fabulous career as a model she even authored a second memoir about her adult life. And while North of Normal deserves praise for its subtlety, the film’s wrap-up feels dramatically lacking. While there are a few flashbacks along the way, the majority of the film is spent with teenage Cea, a sharply intelligent girl who is far more mature than every adult in her orbit, especially her mother and her mother’s (married) new boyfriend (James D’Arcy).Īs the film nears its conclusion there are a few missteps, including a violent (albeit warranted) turn in the final half-hour that feels disruptive and also a bit too easy. Typically for Cea, though, nothing goes according to plan. Hope arrives in the form of a modeling contest, with the winner off to Paris. ![]() She struggles to make friends and must come to grips with having a loving but immature mother (and her mother’s latest boyfriend). Cea is now a teenager played by Amanda Fix, and she has spent the last six years in a very different world. As the trio drives off, a quick cut takes us from the idyllic wilderness to grim, gray 1986 Ontario. The latter finds herself increasingly at odds with her father, and ready to hit the road with Cea and Cea’s father. She is close to her Grandpa Dick and her grandmother, and perhaps already a bit more wise than her mother, Michelle (Sarah Gadon). One of the youngest folks there is Cea (played as a child by River Price-Maenpaa). It is also, though, a place that “ain’t made for the faint of heart.” These opening moments are beautifully handled by Stone, who establishes a real sense of time and place. It is a life, Dick explains to some of their fellow denizens, spent “off the grid.” Its pleasures are many for Dick, this involves constant tent-hopping. As explained via voiceover, Grandpa Dick (wonderfully played by Begbie himself, Robert Carlyle) “put his family into a VW van and drove north,” strong in the belief that the wilderness would solve his family’s problems. North of Normal begins in 1979, dropping us directly into a commune-ish existence in northern Canada. Sounds like we could be approaching sitcom territory, doesn’t it? Bravo to Stone, then, for never allowing the story to stray off course. It is based on Cea Sunrise Person’s memoir of growing up in the Yukon with an aimless teenage mother, a free-spirited grandfather, and an assorted cast of hippie hangers-on. Premiering at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, director Carly Stone’s second feature is a wise, warm, appropriately wounded winner. Happily, it embraces subtlety rather than over-the-top histrionics, resulting in a study of teenage wildlife that resonates strongly. ![]() North of Normal is an affecting drama about the life-altering impact of a youth in the wild. ![]()
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