I'm Yours

Ideologically speaking, Leonard Farlinger's entry into the Canadian road movie canon, I'm Yours, extends a few key assertions of the hippie variety. Chiefly, the central quest of desiccated NYC investment banker Robert (Rossif Sutherland) is that of personal awareness and identity within the confines of concrete jungle value dynamics. Displeased with the cage he'd once been fond of, he steals a shitload of money from his employer (yep, just like Marion Crane) and jumps into his vortex of a future, knowing full well that this act alone severs ties from everything he knows and resents. Enter effervescent free spirit Daphne (Karine Vanasse), whose identity and agenda remain a mystery for some time, and the second hippie assertion comes into play: that of free love. Depicted as wild, passionate fun, their seeming one-night stand leads to lifechanging consequences when she blackmails him to pose as her fiancé for her parents in North Bay, only the usual pregnancy scare or STD allegorical implications are eschewed for the wide open expanses of northern Ontario as representative of freedom from urban drudgery. And in case the slightly patronizing notion that enlightenment comes from driving up north didn't seal the deal, amidst the broad discussions of identity and current self as an amalgamation of past signifiers is a pointed story about the occasional flock of geese being mistaken for a nuclear attack by NORAD. Get it: live today as if it's your last because even the migration patterns of a bird could inadvertently end the world. And ,yes, this is all the idealistic preening of someone within the confines of privilege and urban arts sanctimony, but the core tale of unexpected love as impetus for tackling past demons and present malaise is quite touching, especially as presented by Sutherland and Vanasse, who have a natural chemistry. Moreover, there's the visual aesthetic, wherein wide-open expanses are juxtaposed against intense close-ups to find intimacy in uninterrupted, quiet spaces. This is discussed in the brief black & white "Making of" supplement, as is the nature of shooting for three weeks in North Bay. With limited city life, the cast and crew developed the sort of connection and bond atypical of Toronto productions.