A far-fetched tale of ghosts and genders

FILM REVIEW Octavio Is Dead!

Movies often require suspension of disbelief from the audience. In the newest from writer/ director Sook-Yin Lee, for instance, we have to buy that Sarah Gadon can pass as a man — or at least that the other characters in the film believe it.

She plays Tyler, raised by a single mother (Rosanna Arquette) after her father left them when she was a baby. When news comes that (ahem) Octavio is dead, Tyler travels to the big city, where she’s been left an apartment in his will.

The opening scenes have the tenor of a horror movie — there’s a creepy sheet on the bus ride, scary flickering lights in the building, rattling pipes and a faucet that mysteriously turns itself on, pissing off the downstairs neighbour. But even though the ghost of Octavio (Raoul Max Trujillo) shows up, the mood actually lightens into something less spectral.

Trying to piece together something of the old man’s existence — he was a poet, philosopher, and some sort of Mexican revolutionary — Tyler cuts her hair and infiltrates a men’s club, where she meets Apostolis (Dimistris Kitsos), who was Octavio’s student, admirer and maybe more.

The thin storyline is more about feelings than details, and Tyler spends a lot of time wandering through the cluttered apartment, searching for clues in the detritus of a life. This is what will eventually give the film its sort-of culmination. It’s otherwise slim narrative pickings, but the always-reliable Gadon brings life to her character; whether in male or female guise, she’s got emotional believability and heft. ★★

Octavio Is Dead! opens June 22 in Toronto and Saskatoon; Aug. 3 in Calgary; and Aug. 10 in Vancouver.