Jess Salgueiro

  • Drifting Snow (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) As someone proudly born-and-raised in eastern Ontario, any movie billing itself in the TV Guide log-line as being set there earns a spot on my DVR. Alas, I’m not sure I’ll ever recommend Drifting Snow as a good look at my native land: Executed with an overwhelming dourness, it seems focused on pointing out how far the characters are from everything, how cold everything is, and how dull rural life can be when compared with (sigh) the all-consuming TORONTO where most of the cast and crew probably comes from. Other than a few longing references to the cities that define the boundaries of Eastern Ontario (with a side slam to Ottawa— geez, filmmakers, are you going overboard to get me to hate your movie?), there’s nothing here to distinguish Drifting Snow from being set in Generic Rural Canada, especially as the wintertime setting overwhelms any geographical distinction with a suffocating blanket of snow and cold. The script itself is no better: revolving around a chance meeting between two very different people following a car accident, Drifting Snow is one of those languid conversation-heavy dramas where characters complain about their lives and where they’re stuck — have I mentioned how much distance the Eastern Ontario tourism organizations are going to put between themselves and this film? There are, to be fair, a few good moments in the film: Tess Girard’s wintertime cinematography is cold but occasionally interesting, while such notables as Colin Mochrie and the ever-compelling Jess Salgueiro show up in minor roles. But the rest is almost deathly dull. Looking around the web, I see that most of the film’s positive reviews have commented on Drifting Snow’s emotional appropriateness during the pandemic lockdown, to which I say — never mind low-budget isolation, I want epic productions with a cast of thousands. But mostly I want a film set in Eastern Ontario that doesn’t spend its time complaining about being set in Eastern Ontario. Would that be so hard?

  • I’ll Take Your Dead (2018)

    I’ll Take Your Dead (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) I don’t often say this, but I really wish I’ll Take Your Dead would have focused more on its dramatic and thriller aspects and removed the supernatural subplots. I generally prefer movies with some imaginary components, but they have to fit, and there’s more than enough family drama and crime thriller in the film to power it to its conclusion without adding vengeful ghosts to it all. The setup is as simple as it is unusual: in an isolated farmhouse, a man with butchery skills is on the retainer of organized crime as someone who can make bodies disappear. His young teenage daughter is used to it, but the weight of his forced commitment to the local thugs is leading him to an escape plan. But before he can bolt, they dump a fresh batch of bodies on him—including a young woman who doesn’t turn out to be as dead as expected. So far so good—and once you add the absent mother (dead from leukemia years before), there’s the making of a family drama as well, as the survivor is restrained and takes on the role of a big sister to a teenager solely in need of female companionship. Alas, the young girl also sees dead people, and while the first few sightings may have been interpreted as flashes of fantasy, those ghosts take an increasingly active role in the proceedings as the situation spins out of control. By the time the ghosts are killing the thugs come to settle a score, we’re way beyond what should have been a tight intimate drama/thriller, and the way to the ending isn’t particularly uplifting either. It does make I’ll Take Your Dead disintegrate in the last stretch, though, as it muddles the story with additional elements that take away from its themes and initial intentions. Which is too bad, because otherwise the work of director Chad Archibald is pretty good—clean crisp images driving home this rural Canadian thriller, and good actors: I’ll watch Jess Salgueiro in just about anything (although she’s better with comic material à la Canadian Strain), while Ava Preston does well as the young teenager, and Aidan Devine is solid in a role meant to depend on pure strength. I’ll Take Your Dead is not a bad film, but it would have been considerably better if it had focused on something interesting.

  • Canadian Strain (2019)

    Canadian Strain (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) I don’t have any interest in weed (legal or otherwise), but I’m certainly interested in Jess Salgueiro, and her lead performance here as an unusually conscientious drug dealer put out of business by the legalization of recreational cannabis in 2018 is one of the reasons why Canadian Strain works so well. A sharp script also crams a lot of fun on a solid framework. Colin Mochrie turns up as a father who doubles as a cautionary tale, with remarkable comic performances from Naomi Snieckus, Nelu Handa and Marcia Bennett in a film with many good female roles. The film is fiercely Canadian even when it cynically tries not to be (by ironically presenting footage from old instructional videos about the RCMP or the public service, for instance), espousing the value of legality when it’s the acknowledged alternative, and dealing with government bureaucracy as the final victory (rather than blowing it up, as could be the case down south). It’s also a film that is definitely of its times, wringing laughs out of social changes and, in doing so, allowing its audience to accept those social changes as well. But more importantly, Canadian Strain is a funny, no-longer-than necessary film, worth a look—especially given how I suspect it will play for years on Canadian Cable TV. And I now definitely look forward to Salgueiro’s next movie.