The TIFF Lowdown: The debut feature from Fredericton filmmaker Arianna Martinez is easier to experience than describe. It’s a multiverse picture without a single visual effect, unless you count the actors. Several years after their meet-cute — at a wedding, of course — Olive (Caroline Bell) and Benny (Ian Ottis Goff) are spending an entirely ordinary day at their lake house. Until, that is, things start to shift, little by little. At first it’s just an apparently misplaced package or some scrambled letters on the fridge. Then, it’s more meaningful stuff. And then, almost casually, Olive finds Benny replaced by a woman named Ada (Mallory Amirault), who can’t understand why Olive doesn’t know her. They’ve been together for years, after all. Since they met at that wedding.
Reaction: While I give a lot of credit to this small, New Brunswick filmed indie and I can tell this was a lot of work to put together, DO I KNOW YOU SOMEWHERE lightly falters as a movie and I also just don’t feel there’s much accessibility to the rest of Canadian filmmaking, despite having a pretty good performance by its lead Caroline Bell, who I think needs a better movie for her outbreak. The dialogue is punchy and fake, and feels read and unnatural at times. Martinez gets the outdoor visuals VERY right, featuring a very impressive opening sequence, but even on a technical level SOME of it works when outside, but it still has a stilted and lesser feel when indoors. This is the type of Canadian type of filmmaking that will only appeal to a very small amount of moviegoers, mostly the area around the place where this was filmed. It would work more in a smaller film festival area than TIFF, I’m afraid.
Thanks to TIFF Media for assistance with this reaction article. This is one of the many movies playing at TIFF this year. For more information, point your browser to www.tiff.net!