Anne at 13,000 Ft. can best be described as a character sketch about Anne, a daycare worker who is more interested in playing with the children than supervising them.
Anne (Deragh Campbell) is socially awkward with anyone above the age of 7. She decides to take up skydiving. Anne enjoys being above things once she tries skydiving.
Writer/director Kazik Radwanski takes an intimate look at Anne with close-up shots. The intimacy is quite intriguing when you see Anne up close with the kids. The daycare worker takes on a surprising amount of inadvertent physical contact from the kids.
Anne's love of joking around goes over well with the kids but the adults around her are confused by her sense of humour. She doesn't react well when the adults don't want to be a part of her humour.
She hates being judged, which might explain why Anne does so well with the children. They love her and thinks she is great. The adults? They tend to judge based on her behaviour.
Radwanski shows you that Anne has problems but doesn't explore what is wrong with Anne. The filmgoer can make assumptions; anxiety and authority issues leap to mind. Anne's drinking doesn't help her deal with those anxieties. If you are looking for what is wrong with Anne and is anyone trying to fix her, you are in the wrong film.
Deragh Campbell is very comfortable in this awkward persona. You feel like she personifys Anne like this is her own skin. The film may not work as well without her performance. Campbell is credited with extra dialogue, which likely came from some kind of improvisation.
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The film is so much about Anne that the other actors play such limited roles. Matt (Matt Johnson) is the earnest young man who tries to have a relationship with Anne. You feel sorry for him almost right away try his best to make things work with her. Sarah (Dorothea Paas) is her best friend who indulges Anne as much as she can.
We see Anne take a few dives with an instructor as she is working her way to her first solo dive. Perhaps the solo dive will play a factor in future growth. There is a concern that the skydiving element doesn't feed into the rest of the film. Anne enjoys skydiving but the scenes feel so different than the rest of the film.
The sense is that the freefall of diving correlates with the freefall of Anne's life.
Women don't often get to play that disturbed protagonist in films, so Anne at 13,000 Ft. is refreshing in that approach. The filmgoer might want to heal Anne, but she doesn't see herself as the problem.
Radwanski makes a smart decision to limit the film to 75 minutes. The approach of the film would have not worked as well with an extra half-hour.
Anne at 13,000 Ft. received 4 Canadian Screen Awards nominations, including Best Motion Picture and Best Actress for Campbell. The film made the 2019 TIFF Top Ten list of Canadian films.
Anne at 13,000 Ft. has had very little U.S. distribution in film festivals so far. Hope that changes in the near future.
video credit: YouTube/TIFF Trailers
photo credit: Anne at 13,000 Ft. film
