{"id":3151,"date":"2018-02-28T13:46:26","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T13:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/02\/28\/never-steady-never-still-enters-the-pantheon-of-great-b-c-films\/"},"modified":"2018-02-28T13:46:26","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T13:46:26","slug":"never-steady-never-still-enters-the-pantheon-of-great-b-c-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/02\/28\/never-steady-never-still-enters-the-pantheon-of-great-b-c-films\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Steady, Never Still enters the pantheon of great B.C. films"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrian Mack\/ The Georgia Straight\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Starring Shirley Henderson. Rated 14A<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adapted from her own acclaimed short, Never Steady, Never Still<\/em> is a breakthrough feature debut for Vancouver-based writer-director Kathleen Hepburn. It arrives with a handful of awards from last year\u2019s Vancouver International Film Festival, a whopping eight Canadian Screen Award nominations, and a place inside TIFF\u2019s list of the Top 10 Canadian films of 2017.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s obvious why. Hepburn\u2019s film boasts mammoth confidence, inching along with often spellbinding effect at a pace that mirrors the physical impairments suffered by Judy (Okja<\/em>\u2019s Shirley Henderson), a mother in the advanced stages of Parkinson\u2019s disease. Meanwhile, 19-year-old son Jamie (Th\u00e9odore Pellerin, Les d\u00e9mons<\/em>) finds himself in the advanced stages of sexual confusion, made worse when he leaves the family\u2019s Stuart Lake home for a job in the oil patch.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one significant death waiting to happen, but the film\u2019s power derives entirely from small moments with big existential payloads, as when Jamie finds Mom struggling to clean an oven at 4 a.m., or when he has to lift the helpless Judy out of a freezing bath. It\u2019s certainly hard to remember when the luminously cold light of northern Canada was ever captured quite so well (shot by the brilliant Norm Li on 35mm), and Ben Fox\u2019s disconsolate score further embeds us inside Hepburn\u2019s superbly conjured dramatic landscape. Nicholas Campbell is yet another major asset as husband Ed.<\/p>\n

So why do I feel that Never Steady, Never Still<\/em> also tends to be a little turgid, if not suffocatingly tasteful? Furthermore, while U.K. vet Henderson lends the film no small amount of esteem, her breathy chittering in some moments is unforgivably close to ham. Especially in view of the acute realness achieved elsewhere\u2014in a beachfront cribbage game with neighbour Lenny (Arctic Air<\/em>\u2019s Lorne Cardinal), for instance\u2014or stacked beside Pellerin\u2019s painfully true encounters with a pregnant 17-year-old supermarket clerk (note-perfect Mary Galloway) and a bullying workmate (Hello Destroyer<\/em>\u2019s Jared Abrahamson, parading his lock on violent small-town boneheads).<\/p>\n

Perhaps time will change these perceptions. Like The Grey Fox<\/em>, My American Cousin<\/em>, or any other of B.C.\u2019s small handful of truly landmark films, Never Steady, Never Still<\/em> is never not<\/em> going to be here.<\/p>\n