Some films set themselves up to be sad films with over-the-top grief. All My Puny Sorrows is a very sad film where the grief feels real.
Based from the Miriam Toews novel, Michael McGowan (writer/director) portrays sisters Elfrieda (Sarah Gadon) and Yolandi (Alison Pill). Their family dynamic involves suicide. Their father Jake (Donal Logue) committed suicide.
Their mother Lottie (American actor Mare Winningham) is stoic in the face of so much death. She comes from a family where the joke was they could field 2 baseball teams. They had to bury 14 brothers and sisters. Tina (Mimi Kuzyk) is her only living sibling.
They live in a conservative Mennonite village. We see hints along the way as to how that impacted their lives. The film is filled with flashbacks, including a scene where an elder (Rick Roberts) wants Elfrieda to not leave to learn about music. She later goes on to be a concert pianist.
The intellectualism of the family is a sharp contrast to the limited world of Mennonites not wanting young women "to get ideas."
Yolandi is a novelist. She looks at her sister and wonders why she would attempt to commit suicide when her life is so much worse.
The script is filled with small moments of humour, such as Yoli criticizing her sister in the hospital after finding out her sister only mentioned Yoli 2/3 the way down in the suicide note. There is also a funny moment when Yoli quotes from a Portuguese poet and Lottie assumes the person plays for the Toronto Blue Jays.
The exchange between the sisters reflects the reality of people who have know each other intimately yet parts of adulthood aren't as well know. There is a great number of literary references, which is almost how the sisters speak to each other when they struggle with their own words.
Nora (Amybeth McNulty), daughter of Yoli, plays out teenage angst on such matters as having to give her mom the message to sign the divorce papers and how that might play out in therapy. The shielding of offspring reminded me of the French-Canadian film Les êtres chers | Our Loved Ones from Anne Émond.
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Elfrieda wants Yolandi to go to Switzerland with her where she can legally die. Yolandi doesn't want to do this, wanting her sister to stick around.
The Mennonite background, where both sisters escape, is prominent but we don't learn too many details. When Yoli runs into the mother of a childhood acquaintance (Elizabeth Saunders) who mentions London, Yoli assumes she means London, Ontario when the son actually was in London, England.
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If suicide is a trigger, you may struggle deeply with the film. Otherwise, try and see this film. Hauntingly sad but the characters feel like actual people who can hide their suffering well when needed. The acting is superlative, especially Pill and Gadon. They have a comfort with each other. The story deliberately doesn't have them touch each other until a breakthrough moment. They are close but not always physically.
This may be one of those films that makes your humble narrator read the book from which the film is based.
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All My Puny Sorrows made the TIFF Top 10 list of 2021 Canadian films. The film premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.
The film received 8 Canadian Screen Award nominations, winning for Best Editing and Best Original Score.
All My Puny Sorrows is available on demand in the United States.
video credit: YouTube/Mongrel Media
photo credit: All My Puny Sorrows
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