Cole

The latest effort from prolific Canadian filmmaker Carl Bessai, Cole, set within British Columbia’s tiny town of Lytton, follows Richard de Klerk’s Cole Chambers as he attempts to transcend his dead-end existence by enrolling in a short-story class at a nearby college. While Cole impresses his teacher and falls for a pretty fellow student (Kandyse McClure’s Serafina), his sister (Sonja Bennett’s Maybelline) finds herself trapped within an increasingly perilous situation after her husband (Chad Willett’s Bobby) becomes more and more abusive. Bessai admittedly offers up an evocative portrait of the tiny community within which the central characters reside, and there’s little doubt that the movie has been infused with some seriously impressive visuals ad performances. But, as becomes progressively clear, there’s virtually nothing here we haven’t seen countless times before in other, better movies of this ilk (ie as hard as he tries, Bessai is simply unable to bring anything new or exciting to the table). The inclusion of several almost eye-rollingly simplistic elements within the screenplay (eg Willett’s comically obnoxious white-trash character seems to have emerged directly from a taping of The Jerry Springer Show) effectively ensures that the viewer is never quite able to make an emotional connection with anything on screen, and it’s ultimately impossible to envision Cole having much appeal beyond the film festival circuit.

** out of ****