REVIEW: Honey Bee [2019]

You’ll like the horses then. It would be easy to dismiss Rama Rau‘s first non-documentary feature Honey Bee as another melodramatically grim look at the consequences of sex trafficking in North America because it does utilize a lot of narrative convenience as far as driving the plot towards its endgame. Doing so, however, would discount the reason why Bonnie Fairweather and Kathleen Hepburn‘s script works this way and why the resulting message is more important than the journey to get there. The whole point of portraying young Natalie’s (Julia Sarah…

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REVIEW: Never Steady, Never Still [2018]

I’m full of memories. I’m full of hope. I’m full of regrets. With a riveting central performance by Shirley Henderson as a woman dealing with advanced Parkinson’s, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking Kathleen Hepburn‘s Never Steady, Never Still (adapted from her short of the same name) was simply about the tragedy of the disease. A different version of this story would probably go that route because it’s the “flashier” path towards recognition. The Vancouver native, however, decides to go further by delving beneath the surface by exposing the hardships…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Benjamin [2015]

“She lived her life without pain. At least there’s that.” Very few things are more dramatically impossible to fathom than losing a child, but Sherren Lee‘s Benjamin goes one step further to make it so. Written by Kathleen Hepburn, the story centers on a lesbian couple—both of who are pregnant. Sophie (Kimberly Laferriere) carries their little girl while Dell’s (Joanne Boland) boy is promised to their best friends, Teddy (Jean-Michel Le Gal) and Cal (Jimi Shlag). Everything moves forward perfectly until pain suddenly runs through Sophie to ensure nothing can…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Never Steady, Never Still [2015]

“Let’s imagine smacking them in their faces with our voices” A lot can happen over a very short period of time. We leave home to start new lives and things come our way that either allow the rebirth to flourish or stop it in its tracks. Sometimes we return to take care of family. Sometimes it’s for a lost love. Other reasons stem from being out of options. Kathleen Hepburn‘s Never Steady, Never Still deals with each of these examples converging on a small Canadian town as one boy’s homecoming…

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