life with more cowbell

Saw Small Town Murder Songs on Sunday. The Canadian film, by writer/filmmaker Ed Gass-Donnelly, features an excellent cast – notably Peter Stormare, Jill Hennessy and Martha Plimpton, as well as my pal Heather Allin, and a haunting choral soundtrack by Bruce Peninsula.

There’s a lot that goes unsaid in this film – and the audience can glean much from the characters’ silences: the looks, the body language and, especially, the flashbacks into local cop Walter’s (Stormare) violent past. For instance, Allin – who plays the murdered young woman’s mother – gives an extremely moving performance with very few lines. In fact, in the identification scene at the morgue, she has no lines at all – but manages to convey a mother’s denial, disbelief and anguish at seeing her daughter as the sheet is lifted from the body on the chrome table.

Go see this movie – it’s playing at the Royal.