This Beautiful City

Avoiding traditional balance, arcing and climactic build up, the ironically titled This Beautiful City jumps right into suicide attempts, crazed junkies screwing in alleyways and over-the-top arguing matches without letting up or pausing to let the audience absorb and reflect on the nature of what they’re seeing. Performances from Booth, Poole and Cave are nothing short of impressive, uniformly conveying pain, frustration and disappointment with a raw complexity rarely seen on film. However, a lack of directorial perspective keeps all of these emotions at a far and uninviting distance. The "we’re all connected” plot weaves between well-to-do but miserable couple Carol and Harry (Caroline Cave and Noam Jenkins), who struggle to connect after her "accidental” attempted suicide, and the junkies who live beneath them, both figuratively and literally, Pretty and Johnny (Kristin Booth and Aaron Poole). Connecting these worlds, in many ways, is an emotionally damaged detective named Peter (Stuart Hughes). While the notion of interconnectivity between varying class systems within an area of continuing gentrification is a relatively interesting, if overdone, premise, an overly coincidental and convenient denouement does little justice in communicating it effectively. The potential is there but simply not acted upon, regardless of how many filters and cameras are used to film gritty sex scenes. The DVD release includes deleted scenes with commentary from director Gass-Donnelly, as well as commentary on the feature itself. He tells many interesting and revealing stories of what lengths these actors went to in order to inhabit their characters, along with some amusing realities about shooting in Toronto on a limited budget. These stories range from shocking (Aaron Poole lost 35 pounds and had a front tooth removed for the role) to funny (Kristin Booth had difficulty peeing on camera and is no longer a vegetarian due to some "in character” meat eating). This commentary might actually be quite beneficial for other first time filmmakers looking to shoot a film on a budget.