{This review contains potential spoilers about the movie One Week and the movie After Life. I highly recommend you watch both these films, and that you do so with finding out as little as possible about their plot and reviews, as well as not reading the following: }




I dug One Week's style of artifice just because it was so darn artistically stylish! The narrator added an extra layer of mindf%@& to an already delightful blend of intense POV and magical realism. And despite all I've just said, One Week also fancies itself a nostalgic road trip to the west with a capital W.

Ultimately One Week rises up to meet the viewer's own reflective answer to the question posed by it's title...

Speaking of which, it would make a great Foreign Double Feature with the low key, similar, yet mirrored theme, Japanese masterpiece from 1999, After Life (I can't find my own original review, but here's what Rog had to say.

The acting was awesome throughout - - every character gave just the right tone to bring the whole cast into harmony.

...and then emotionally, I found it to be pitch perfect. It is a classic tearjerker in it's way, and yet because of it's resolute faith in it's doubt, One Week ends up succeeding far beyond it's modest frames.

I'm goin' to need to see this one again a few times...

out of

So it's not just a banal Canadian tearjerker?

As I mentioned in my review:

- it is partly a tearjerker (though not in the typical way - - the tears it jerks are those of exaltation, not sympathy)
- it is a foreign movie (set on a road trip across Canada)

However, it is in no way, shape, or form a banal movie - - just the opposite in fact...

So I saw it.

I rather enjoyed it, in fact. It's undeniably schmaltzy and sappy, and grows even more so as it goes along, but I think there's enough interesting stuff going on here to make it worthwhile. Like most Canadian movies, it has to resort to formal tricks to stay fresh, but I thought it mostly worked. And the acting and writing and all that stuff is mostly pretty solid.

It's hopelessly Canadian, though, and sometimes gives into its worth instincts regarding Canadiana (the Stanley Cup scene was unneeded and totally surreal in all the wrong ways). It's also a little too concerned with reinforcing how great and beautiful the country is, as if the people watching it didn't know that already.

I also rather liked the eloquent, somewhat snarky narrator, and the reveal at the end was a nice self-reflexive moment in a relatively straight-forward film like this. So the whole thing is mostly worth it, but really only for Canadians.

Plus, it has Gord Downie in it!