"Look Both Ways" is surrounded by death. A train derails in a small Australian town, another train runs over a man walking his dog by the tracks, a greeting card illustrator, Meryl (Justine Clarke) has just returned from her father's funeral and a photojournalist, Nick (William McInnes) has just been diagnosed with testicular cancer and is obsessing about his own mortality.
But that's not to say the film is particularly morbid. In many ways, it's a romantic comedy as it charts the accelerated relationship of Meryl and Nick. (The entire film takes place over the course of one weekend.)
The two meet when Meryl witnesses the man get killed by the train. Nick and his reporter buddy, Andy (Anthony Hayes) have shown up to cover the story for their paper. She and Nick begin chatting each other up and it's clear they're attracted to one another from the start.
Clarke and McInnes have great chemistry on screen. Writer/director Sarah Watt also gives them wonderful nervous banter and awkwardness to play out. Nick and Meryl seem made for each other, especially since they both have a preoccupation with death.
Watt further connects them through this fixation with vivid imagery, which also adds to their characters. Since Nick shoots photographs for a living, his thoughts on death are expressed through still images of cancer and other diseases. One montage shows quick cuts of photographs of web pages on testicular cancer, cells and Nick doing everything he could have possibly done to make him sick, from smoking cigarettes to stuffing his face with donuts.
Meryl, being an artist, sees death through hand-painted animation. These beautiful, fluid sequences were created by Watt herself. They show various external forces acting upon Meryl. In one sequence, a train derails from a bridge and lands on top of her. In another, she's ripped to shreds by a shark. Her anxieties are literally crushing her to death, at least in her imagination.
Their obsessions fuel their desire for each other. In sort of a death marriage, while she and Nick are having sex, her animated fantasy shows her dying of AIDS. It's both death by disease and external forces. But Nick hasn't told Meryl he's actually ill, and he feels guilty for getting involved in a relationship in his current condition.
Their story has some great moments, but it takes some time to get going. It wastes time with needless scenes, such as when Meryl's friend comes to visit her. They talk. they go swimming and then she disappears for the rest of the film. Also, many of the subplots hamper the narrative's progression. Scenes with the dead man's girlfriend and the train driver with his family, appear mainly as part of montage sequences with an indie Aussie rock song behind it. The confrontation between the two could have been powerful, but since neither of have any real scenes, their meeting seems pointless and merely detracts from the main storyline.
Andy's subplot, on the other hand, works well. His belief that most accidental deaths are actually suicides spurs him to write articles and columns about how the man may have jumped in front of the train. Meryl admits in her interview with him she never actually saw the man trip on the tracks, she just assumed he did. But although his life is affected by this accident, what makes his storyline work, is that it's not dominated by it. Being an outsider to the accident, his story doesn't have to exist purely as a symbolic comment on grief and death. He has his own life to live. He has to juggle his girlfriend's pregnancy, his two kids from a previous marriage and even other writing assignments, such as having to review a performance of "Macbeth" where the overacting lead wears a tartan and Tam O'Shanter.
And everything about his life, frustrates him to no end. Part of what's appealing about Andy is watching Hayes pissy righteous indignation in the role. At one point, he blows up at a convenience store clerk because the price of the paper has gone up and he's five cents short. When the clerk won't let him pay the difference later, Andy goes on about how he's what wrong with the world and then he pops a bag of chips before he storms out. It's just fun to watch.
Meryl, Nick and Andy are engaging, I just wish Watt didn't try to overextend herself and try to focus on others as well, because the story suffers for it.
"Look Both Ways" is screening at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Discovery program. It has its final showing at the Varsity at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 17.
