Eighteen (2004/I)

Director:

Richard Bell

Writer:

Richard Bell (written by)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

A street kid. A soldier. A present that repeats the past.

Plot:

Pip is a street kid who's meeting life head-on in the big city. On his eighteenth birthday he receives...

Plot Keywords:

Religion | Gay Interest | Male Prostitute | Independent Film | Number In Title

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Paul Anthony	...	Pip
Brendan Fletcher	...	Jason Anders
Clarence Sponagle	...	Clark
Mark Hildreth	...	Macauley
Carly Pope	...	Jenny
David Beazely	...	Jeff
Thea Gill	...	Hannah
Alan Cumming	...	Father Chris
Ian McKellen	...	Jason Anders (voice)
Serge Houde	...	Earl
Adrien Dorval	...	Don (as P. Adrien Dorval)
Gabrielle Rose	...	Wendy
Paul Dzenkiw	...	Daniel
Ryan McDonell	...	Derek
Kevan Ohtsji	...	Roger

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Canada:14A (Ontario)

Filming Locations:

New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada

Company:

Producers on Davie

Movie Connections:

References The Wizard of Oz (1939)

OK but not great

It's nice to see a film from Canada with a Canadian focus. We Yanks tend to be a bit parochial in that if it ain't American, it can't be much good-- after all, we invented movies and hey, where's Hollywood anyway? This little film which gives us several peeks into Canadian middle class which isn't much of a departure from what some American Indie would have made about marginalized people, e.g., street people, hustling gay men, etc. The story line which begins confusedly and pops back and forth from flashbacks to back-story, then fuses the two in a very confounding manner to bring the viewer back to the present and then a quick cut to the future at the end. This is a morality tale of redemption, suffering and quasi-resurrection, melded into a young man's odyssey seeking virtue in an amoral world. The acting is generally weak: Pip the main character is completely unconvincing as an innocent youth wandering lost because of self-loathing and self-betrayal. He comes off as a spoiled brat who loathes anything smacking of responsibility more than he abominates his own self-perceived and self-condemned failings; Paul Anthony neither looks nor acts 18 in this role. His counterpart in the back story, Brandan Fletcher is quite convincing of the 18 year old Jason, caught in the throes of WW1, helping a dying comrade and having to kill or be killed. Indeed, the contrast is notable and highlights Anthony's not too attempts at misplaced and miscounted youth. Carly Pope is charming as the girl-friend albeit her love interest in a young spoiled homeless kid does not come across very well. David Beazley and Clarence Sponagle are fine in their roles of young gay men attempting a relationship and Serge Houde as Pip's hypocritical beast of a father and the ever brilliant Alan Cummings as the gay Priest gives the story the necessary added texture of complexity, duplicity and ambiguity. All in all, a decent film that could have admittedly better but then too, it could have been disastrously worse.