REVIEW
#Roxy
Stars: 4.0
Starring Jake Short, Sarah Fisher, Booboo Stewart, Pippa Mackie, Jake Smith, Patricia Zentilli, Hannah Duke, Scott Pocha, Jesse Lipscombe, Chris Aanderson, Carter Thicke, and Danny Trejo, and a supporting cast of hundreds of local extras.
Directed by Michael Kennedy
Written by Tony Binns
Rated: unrated, includes mature content and coarse language
Runtime: 105 minutes
To be released for digital download (iTunes, GooglePlay, Amazon) on Tuesday, Nov. 6, and to play on SuperChannel in December.
A very contemporary retelling of Edmond Rostand’s classic and poetic 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac is about to sweep St. Albert, just like it did when it was being made two years ago.
#Roxy, filmed here and in Edmonton, featured Bellerose High School reimagined as Bergerac High, the setting for love lost and love earned between three teens. Cyrus (Jake Short) is the modern Cyrano, a high school student with the brain of an intellectual, the hands of an expert hacker, and his heart firmly set on Roxy (Sarah Fisher). They’ve been friends for a long time but she doesn’t know his true feelings.
The problem is that, along with his brain, hands and heart, he also has a really big nose. This makes him keep his mouth shut only when it comes to matters of love. It stands in stark contrast to the self-confidence exuded by the Adonis of the story, Christian (Booboo Stewart). He’s new to the school but everyone, Roxy included, takes notice of his winning smile and long flowing hair.
The foil is perfect for Cyrus: with all of his beauty, Christian hasn’t a jot of wit to woo Roxy. That’s where the two boys come together in this story structured around electronic communications like Skype and text messaging. Using Christian’s phone, Cyrus crafts messages of heartache that Roxy can’t help but swoon to. It’s a really unique take that works well for the movie. Whereas Cyrano the great fencer had to hide in the shadows while he told Christian what to say to Roxane in the story, Cyrus only needs to scramble the signal so that Roxy can’t quite tell that it isn’t Christian speaking such beautiful words in the movie.
Such ruses couldn’t possibly last forever, though the timeless tale ends more tragically for the original fictional character than it does for our ‘probosci-lent’ protagonist in this movie.
Overall, it’s an impressive production, with Michael Kennedy’s proficient directing, Tony Binns’ fun and winning script, and the cast of younger players who all held up their ends with totally professional portrayals of their characters. And yes, it’s just as thrilling to see St. Albert on the big screen as it likely was for all of those young extras to be a part of.
“It was one of those rare situations where all of the parts came together. I was really happy with everything, which is nice. You take the right people. The script turned out really well. Our director was awesome. It all just came together really nicely,” said St. Albert native Camille Beaudoin, one of the film’s producers. “We’re really happy with it.”
The bigger story behind the big nose story
#Roxy was a co-production with Mosaic Entertainment and Spesch, a new venture to develop positive media content for a progressive young female audience.To that end, Spesch has started the Girls in Film and Television (GIFT) program, which aims to offer direct instruction and hands-on experience in filmmaking.
“It’s a fairly new endeavour but we’re going pretty fast with it,” Beaudoin said. “We really want to get it rolled out.”
Thanks to some Telus StoryHive funding earlier this year, Spesch was able to hold some pilot workshops in Edmonton and Lethbridge.
“They made really great short films and they were very inspired. We definitely accomplished what we wanted to, which was inspiring and empowering girls and hopefully getting a few of them interested in possibly joining the industry.”
The plan is to do more workshops starting in 2019 with the possibility of the participants working on a feature-length film project, too. Classes on screenwriting and acting are also in the works.
It’s all about improving female participation in the moviemaking process as a way of telling more stories about girls and women and from their own perspective, too.
“I have a seven-year-old daughter. When she sees an interesting female character in a movie we watch, she notices it. It’s crazy because my sons don’t notice when there’s a male character because there’s always male characters.”
People should visit www.girlsinfilmtv.com to learn more.
