February 3, 2006

By Peter Howell

The tree story illustrates the knotty problem of reconciling grand granola intentions with human nature.

As recounted in A Simple Curve, B.C. writer/director Aubrey Nealon's wonderfully observed first feature, it's the moment where aging hippie carpenter Jim (Michael Hogan) and his 1960s bong buddy Matthew (Matt Craven) are trading memories about a camping trip and an errant cedar.

The tree was cut and supposed to fall away from the tepee shared by Jim, Matthew and the woman who would become the mother of Caleb (Joan of Arcadia's Kris Lemche), the wide-eyed listener to this campfire tale. Instead the tree followed the direction that too much Bud — and bud — can lead to.

Matthew tells the anecdote with great hilarity. An annoyed Jim, however, recalls the incident as the moment when his erstwhile fellow dreamer Matt, both of them American draft dodgers, gave up on their Utopian plan to settle amongst the mountains, waters and forests of B.C.'s majestic Slocan Valley.

Jim stayed in the region, marrying Caleb's mom and raising his son to be as good a woodworker as he is. Matthew went off to the big city to make his fortune in business as an ecotourism entrepreneur.

When Matthew returns to the valley one day, flying his own seaplane, it's at a momentous time for Jim and Caleb. The mother is dead and the business is floundering due to Jim's perfectionism and cranky refusal to compromise for commercial gain. Caleb can't figure out how to get through to this father, who acts as if flower power never wilted.

Caleb is just 27, although he's old beyond his years. He refers to himself as "nearly 30." He respects his father's determination to maintain standards of craftsmanship, but he also realizes that people can't afford $600 for a superb chair when other local carpenters are willing to make an adequate one for half the price.

"It's a chair!" a frustrated Caleb tells his father.

"It's a choice!" Jim shoots back.

When Matthew offers a chance for the duo to earn some real money, making chairs for his planned new fishing lodge, Caleb jumps at the chance. But can he admit to Jim that he's accepted a helping hand from Matthew?

Tangling the tofu are the arrival of two latter-day hippies (Kett Turton and Sarah Lind) who can't see the forest for the trees, and the romantic intentions of a single mom (Pascale Hutton) who thinks Caleb needs some unknotting of his own.

As richly written and directed as it is photographed and acted, A Simple Curve is anything but a facile look at the father-son relationship or the end of the hippie dream. It is rooted in Nealon's own back-to-the-earth upbringing, and the conversations and issues in the script are in his experiences.

It never stoops to conquer, or resorts to cheap laughs, although it has an abundance of gentle humour. A Simple Curve possesses wisdom that is rare for film these days, let alone a debut.