A PERFECT STORM OF COINCIDENCE
Grieving widow at a remote cottage has disturbing encounters with men
OCTOBER GALE
Starring: Patricia Clarkson, Scott Speedman, Tim Roth Directed by: Ruba Nadda
Running time: 91 minutes
Like the weather on a northern Ontario lake, the mood of October Gale takes a sudden and unexpected turn in the early going. In the film’s opening minutes, we watch as Helen ( Patricia Clarkson) heads to the family cottage, alone for the first time since the recent death of her husband, played by Callum Keith Rennie in soft- focus flashbacks.
Writer- director Ruba Nadda lets the camera play over the wilderness scenery as Helen gingerly explores her husband’s absence in a place where they spent so much happy time together. In what feels like a metaphor made nautical, her boat dies out on the lake and needs to be towed for repairs.
But that turns out to be merely a piece of the plot’s perfect storm of coincidence. Soon a storm is lashing the little island on which the cottage sits, and Helen has no radio, cellphone or adequate transportation when a tiny boat runs ashore carrying a man ( Scott Speedman) with a bullet in his shoulder.
When he can speak, he introduces himself as William and explains that his craft is “borrowed” and his wound the result of “an accident.” This is the kind of explanation that needs fleshing out, and Helen soon learns that the guy who put the bullet in William ( Tim Roth, playing a very chatty villain) intends to find him and finish the job.
There’s not much else happening in this competent but straightforward Canadian drama. Clarkson is eminently watchable as the emotionally wounded but resolute Helen, and Speedman injects enough vulnerability into his character that we truly care about what happens to him, even if others in the film seem to feel he deserves it. Their strong performances carry the viewer over any narrative bald patches to a sudden and yet satisfying conclusion.