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The film was written and directed by Gary Burns, the clever Calgarian and edgy auteur who gave us The Suburbanators (1995) and Kitchen Party (1997).
Among its many awards, Burns' new film won as the best Canadian feature film at the Toronto filmfest in September, beating out bigger name productions from major directors including Denys Arcand, Robert Lepage and Denis Villeneuve.
Waydowntown is by no means a perfect film, but its boasts a huge charm factor and smacks of originality, factors which helped propel it to its awards. The film is also as well acted as it is written and directed by the rapidly developing Burns.
The premise seems refreshingly wacky, yet believable. We meet a group of four twentysomething office workers in downtown Calgary about four weeks into an outlandish bet.
Each has pledged a month's salary on a wager. The goal is to see who can stay indoors the longest.
The idea is feasible. They all live and work in the city's downtown core. Many of the buildings are connected by tunnels and corridors and malls (and Burns shot it on location in downtown Calgary). So, like people in many cold weather North American cities, they really can sleep, eat and work without venturing outside. But can their minds take it?
By the time we're introduced to Tom (Fabrizio Filippo, the movie's heartthrob and intellectual catalyst), Sandra (Marya Delver), Randy (Tobias Godson) and Curt (Gordon Currie), they're all wound up and ready to explode. It's one thing to be able to stay indoors, it's quite another to have to do it. Their emotions are near breaking point. And each has unique problems, from Tom's self-doubt to Curt's ego-driven libido.
It doesn't help that some of their co-workers are nuts. Tom's office mate is a suicidal drone (Don McKellar gives an hilariously droll performance) who potentially could upset the winner-takes-all bet. And a mall security guard (scene stealer James McBurney) will complicate everything, as will assorted women targeted for sex by the horny men.
The pace is breakneck, like a '30s screwball comedy. Yet the human insights are contemporary, especially because the film is built around Filippo's tour-de-force performance as a flawed anti-hero whose thoughts we hear in narration.
Bitter laughs jump out of near-tragic situations. There are serious themes about urban alienation and human indifference layered under the quirky plot twists. At the same time, the movie is fun and funny. Waydowntown is way upbeat.
(This film is rated AA)