"There's this idea that only films set in New York, Chicago or Paris will play," says Young Werther director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço. "I get it, people are used to it — but also, do we need yet another talky romance that is set in cities we've seen so many times before?"
It's the classic Toronto film industry fallacy: thousands of productions make the city their filming destination, but only a fraction of them will actually use Toronto as Toronto. Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing has long been the quick-draw answer when trying to recall movies filmed and set in Toronto, with Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz and Michael Dowse's The F Word as more recent examples.
Finally, our fair city can add another notch to the Toronto-as-Toronto belt in Young Werther (starring homegrown talent Alison Pill and Patrick J. Adams), an adaptation of the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774 by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. In a series of letters, we witness a young man's extreme reaction to unrequited star-crossed love. Lourenço's adaptation, Young Werther, unravels these letters and the heavy emotions of Werther (played by Douglas Booth) inside Toronto's local haunts and onto its streets.
"It was really exciting to be able to [film Young Werther] in Toronto and call it Toronto, and not shy away — no painting out any of our street signage, or making sure you don't see the CN Tower in the background," Lourenço tells Exclaim! over Zoom.
He continues, "Werther's voice is so intense and passionate, and it just feels like he's made a bit of a fairy tale out of it all. I wanted a bit of that quality to come through in the representation of the city."
Lourenço was born in Antigonish, NS, and spent his early years in Halifax before moving to Edmonton and then Vancouver Island for high school, followed by Montreal for university — more than most Canadians, Lourenço has truly lived and experienced this country from coast to coast.
He moved to Toronto after university in the hopes of starting a band and getting a writing job. Lourenço found success on both fronts, working for the Toronto Star, CBC and MuchMusic, and forming a band, Spitfires & Mayflowers. Exclaim! reviewed their 2006 debut album, Triumph, commending the band for keeping "the music fresh and the listener guessing right through to the end."
"There used to be 10 or 12 venues that you could go to any given night, and you'd just be seeing bands that you loved, or you were in a band, and you were playing with bands that you loved," Lourenço recalls fondly. "The early 2000s to the early 2010s, that was really my social scene and it felt very comforting."
This phase in Lourenço's life, and by extension this era of the city, is the Toronto in which the filmmaker wanted his Werther to experience the joys and pains of love. The carefree 20-something years that almost feel like a fever dream in retrospect — a time when young people are the most open and vulnerable with their hearts.
"When I think back on my favourite experiences in the city, it's all through that haze of nostalgia," Lourenço explains. "Your brain filters out every negative experience. For every awful intersection I've waited at for two hours, or every horrible winter storm that I've survived, all those kind of melt away and I'm left with these highlights of what the city is and my favourite moments with friends or family."
Lourenço acknowledges, though, that Toronto "isn't a monolith," and this rose-tinted experience isn't reflective of everyone's reality in the city. But for Werther, a softer, sweeter Toronto is exactly what his forlorn heart requires, and what Lourenço offers his characters.
"In Werther, I wanted [Toronto] to feel alive and timeless," the filmmaker offers. "Have a thing that exists in a weird, liminal space that's not-Toronto-but-Toronto. Something that feels special."
Lourenço's love for Toronto is infectious, and through Young Werther, he celebrates the city with his optimism over the potential of how this city can make us feel, hope and wonder.