Ryan Kwanten plays Mr. Right Kind of Wrong in offbeat rom-com.
One of the cutest scenes in a romantic comedy is the one in 1993’s Benny and Joon, when Johnny Depp’s character sits at the counter of a retro diner, jabs two forks into a couple of demi-baguettes and, with the aid of a boppy soundtrack, proceeds to make them dance like little feet.
The creative force behind that film, Jeremiah Chechik, went on to specialize in television, guest-directing episodes of everything from Gossip Girl to Burn Notice to Hart of Dixie. Now, he’s returning to the happy-go-lucky world of rom-coms with The Right Kind of Wrong, a quirky story about a relentlessly positive dishwasher who falls in love with a bride on her wedding day.
“I love banishing cynicism from my world,” he says, with a huge grin on his face, explaining why the script — based on the 1989 book Sex and Sunsets by Tim Sandlin — appealed to him. “I feel a real connection with people who struggle for love against overwhelming odds, and I also feel that unless you make a choice for optimism and possibility, you can’t do anything. You’re in a safe, opinionated place, but it doesn’t allow you to appreciate all the things around you.”
Chechik’s unabashed e ndorsement of this sunshine-and-rainbows approach to storytelling is refreshing, although some viewers will undoubtedly find it too saccharine — especially because he opted to hire cinematographer Luc Montpellier to capture the setting of Banff, Alta., in the same ultrasaturated hues he created for Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz. It makes every scene look as though it’s transpiring in front of a tourism poster, like it’s too vibrant to be real.
“It elevates the point of the film, though,” Chechik says. “The idea of beauty in the world, grace in the environment, that infuses the story with a sense of hope, even if the actors aren’t paying attention to it.”
The actors, however, were most definitely paying attention. They say the environment was so beautiful, even before Montpellier tweaked the colours, that it couldn’t help but play a starring role.
“I was there and I thought those vistas were fake,” says Ryan Kwanten, the 36-year-old True Blood star who plays lovestruck goofball Leo. “It makes sense, though, because it lends the movie a fairy tale quality, where it could almost be any place at any time.”
Kwanten makes the point, too, that while Chechik may have gone heavy on the optimism, there’s still a very unpredictable aspect of the script — it’s not your usual tale of a girl looking for love in all the wrong places and a hapless boy who charms his way into her heart. The girl in question is actually a self-assured woman who is rightly offended by Leo’s advances, while Leo himself is flat-out deluded.
“The story kept taking 180-degree turns right when I was expecting it to adhere to conventions of how the genre should go,” Kwanten says. “I also liked that my character didn’t really have an arc, he didn’t really grow as a person. He takes his friend’s advice in the end, but he’s not your typical, lovable rogue — he’s actually pretty selfish, pretty narrow-minded in his pursuits.”
Sara Canning, who plays the object of Leo’s affections, agrees, adding that her character offers a unique and unexpectedly feminist take on classic rom-com heroines: “She doesn’t just fall in love with Leo, it’s more that he makes her realize all these things about herself and that’s what she appreciates. I like the idea of these men in her life not being the deciding factor, it’s more about what’s right for her.” In this way, then, The Right Kind of Wrong is cheerful, but deceptively so, with a current of something stronger under its surface. Yes, it’s ruthlessly optimistic and stars two very attractive people and a landscape that looks as if it were painted by Disney cartoonists — not to mention a pair of fluffy white cats named Snow and Balls, who deserve far more screen time — but it’s also reminiscent of Benny and Joon in the way it uses all this to highlight the parts of life that aren’t so squeaky clean.
Chechik, however, resists drawing comparisons.
“I didn’t make the movie in order to rekindle something from the Benny and Joon era; we’ve moved on,” he says. “But I do have that same sense of hope I had back then, certainly when it comes to love and impossibilities. You have to think that way in order to survive.”