TWO LOVERS AND A BEAR
Two people look for healing
Two Lovers and a Bear is everything you expect of Canadian cinema. To begin with, it’s cold, having been filmed in Ottawa’s underground Diefenbunker, Timmins, Ont. ,(for the bear scenes), and Iqaluit, a city of 6,700 on Baffin Island, just south of the Arctic Circle.
It’s also an arresting portrait of life in the Far North, a magnificent but desolate landscape where the answer to “How did he die?” can be as simple as: “He got lost.” Also where the local cop, lacking options, bribes a suicidal man to stick around for a two-four of beer. Oh, and it features the unmistakable baritone of Gordon Pinsent as the voice of a talking polar bear.
The suicidal man (also one of the lovers of the title), is Roman, played by Dane DeHaan. Like the other lover, Lucy (Tatiana Maslany), he’s come to Iqaluit from points south, chased by demons from his past. And like her, he’s in the process of discovering that you can’t really run from the things you take with you.
Two Lovers was written and directed by Kim Nguyen, the Montreal-born director whose 2012 drama Rebelle (War Witch), was Oscar-nominated for best foreign film. This one doesn’t have quite the same emotional punch. In fact, its most powerful moments are purely visual: northern lights dancing across the sky, time-lapse footage that makes the icy landscape seem to breathe, and an abandoned military outpost from the Cold War.
The imagery is in aid of a simple but affecting premise: Can two wounded, possibly doomed souls find enough solace in each other’s presence that they can heal? Or will their fractures merely multiply, like two cracked icebergs colliding in frigid waters? Two Lovers and a Bear offers one possible answer, with just enough plot to steer clear of the dread “arthouse” label.
It also contains a hilarious joke that begins: “Two lovers and a bear walk into a bar ...”