Pedestrian structure mars Unless adaptation
★ ★ out of 5 Starring: Hannah Gross, Catherine Keener, Matt Craven Director: Alan Gilsenan Duration: 90 minutes The critic can be at a loss when a movie takes on a book she or he hasn’t read. But the best adaptations stand on their own. Unless, adapted by director Alan Gilsenan from Carol Shields’ novel, doesn’t stand alone so much as it slowly slides to the ground.
The story is simple. In the opening scene, we meet Reta and Tom (Catherine Keener, Matt Craven) and their three school-age daughters: Christine, Natalie and Norah. They seem like a happy family, but all that changes in a strange ellipsis, when the action jumps ahead to “19 days later.”
Norah is now living on the streets of Toronto — specifically, in front of the giant, gaudy retailer Honest Ed’s — holding a handlettered piece of cardboard that reads: Goodness. We don’t know what happened during that oddly specific period of time, and neither do her parents. Her boyfriend at university says she just went out one day and never came back.
Gilsenan keeps the focus on Reta, as she struggles to understand why her daughter has dropped out of society. Keener is perfectly cast; her voice, a beautiful squeaky trill, sounds like it’s one piece of bad news away from breaking down completely.
She’s got much more to deal with in this role. Norah, played by Hannah Gross (Paul’s daughter), is stubbornly unresponsive when the family visits her street corner. About the only time she shows emotion is when Reta tries to physically coerce her to leave; that doesn’t go well. (It’s also the truest-ringing scene in the film; of course you would try to drag your homeless child back home.)
Reta tries to get on with her life as a translator and writer, but a prying journalist (Downton Abbey’s Brendan Coyle) starts asking questions, and her new editor (Benjamin Ayres) won’t let her get a word in edgewise. There’s an interesting subtext here about how women’s voices aren’t heard, but it’s introduced bluntly and then barely developed.
The mystery of Norah’s behaviour is revealed, suddenly and thoroughly, in the final act, leading this viewer to wonder why no one in the movie hadn’t had an inkling of what had happened. And while Unless manages a sustained elegiac tone, much of that doesn’t flow from the movie itself.
Honest Ed’s is to be shuttered at the end of this year; this could well be its cinematic swan song. But that’s not enough of a reason to indulge the movie’s mostly pedestrian structure.