Ed Oxenbould

(On Cable TV, March 2022) If I go soft on The Exchange despite its limitations, keep in mind that some of the film was filmed a few tens of kilometres from here, in Nepean, south Ottawa and other areas in Eastern Ontario. Not that it’s much to boast about in a film that begins with the 1980s protagonist bemoaning having to live in the middle of nowhere, struggling badly with the Canadian winter and his lack of friends in a town that doesn’t know what to do with his pretentious intellectualism. (Wait, is this inspired by my true story?)  He thinks he’s about to make things better for himself by volunteering to host a French exchange student, but instead of getting a highly cultured Godard character, he gets an Arab-ethnic oversexed extrovert from the Parisian suburbs. The clash of sensibility is what drives much of this straightforward Canadian comedy: the small-town, smart-protagonist tropes are all quite familiar, and the film’s extra helping of humiliation comedy reinforces the impression of having seen much of it elsewhere. But it still has a few quirks—Avan Jogia is quite good as the Frenchman upsetting an entire village, Jayli Wolf is very cute as the romantic interest and Ed Oxenbould gradually becomes more sympathetic as the nerdy protagonist. The limits of the film’s budget become increasingly obvious as the film approaches its larger-scale climax and the contrivances of the script do it no favours, but The Exchange still goes out on a relatively high note, making sure that no one is too disappointed by the result. Francophones will get a few more jokes that aren’t translated.