The more the marry-er
Rom-com-themed documentary chronicles filmmaker’s quest to meet the right woman
Like many male moviegoers of a certain age, I have a complicated viewer-filmmaker relationship with Woody Allen. It has taken me almost 40 years to move from unabashed hero worship through awkward respect and finally into a kind of caveat-laced “I like his work, but ...”
With Steve Markle, I made it through all those stages in 73 minutes.
Markle is the Toronto writer, director and star of Shoot to Marry, a romantic-comedy-documentary he filmed over several years following a proposal to his girlfriend, and her yes-thatturned-into-a-no.
Smarting and a little angry, the filmmaker turned his camera on himself, his happy, 50-years-married parents, his therapist, a professional matchmaker — and Colleen.
She’s the first of many, many women he interviews on what starts out as a quest for self-discovery and quickly devolves into a search for dates. Very few of his subjects get more than a brief minute or two of screen time. Colleen cops to a preoccupation with poo, and Markle concludes: “I don’t mind her obsession with feces; I just like a woman with longer hair.”
And so it’s on to Kate the artist, Lisa his Grade 3 crush (now married), Lauren the heart-transplant recipient, Erin the blogger,
Heidi Lee (a literal mad hatter), etc., etc. Markle contacts these interesting women under the pretext of making a documentary about interesting women, which is true as far as it goes. But he’s clearly not mentioning that he’s also on a romantic quest, at least on the initial call. And he frets: “Is it unethical, using a doc to meet women?”
Well, yes it is. And yet the filmmaker is so self-deprecating that it takes much of the creepy sting out of his endeavour. Also, in his best moments, he’s Woody Allen funny. (Early, funny Woody Allen!) He visits a sex club but balks when confronted with an orgy in progress, noting: “I’m not good at multitasking.”
The result has connected with viewers. Shoot to Marry was named breakout feature audience award winner at the Slamdance festival, where it premièred in January. More recently, the online Canadian Film Festival gave it the best feature prize.
I’m a little more torn. And I’m not a fan of the font he’s used for all the onscreen titles; what is that, Cooper Black? It looks like someone’s drop-down menu got stuck and they decided to just live with the result. Which, come to think of it, is the kind of simile Markle himself might use to describe marriage.
And speaking of romantic metaphors, the filmmaker’s peripatetic quest at one point intersects with the bizarre Toronto landmark that is Russell “Cashman” Oliver, owner of Oliver Jewellery. Markle is looking to sell his platinum engagement ring, and talks about how his Christmas-day proposal didn’t sit well with his girlfriend. Russell says he himself proposed on Valentine’s Day, well aware that he was doubling up on romantic gift and engagement ring, then adding that he later sold the ring when the Cashman needed some cash.
“There’s no such thing as the right woman,” Oliver concludes. “She was the rightest as opposed to the wrongest. They’re all wrong.” It’s the kind of remark that says more about the speaker than it does the subject of his philosophy.