The TIFF Film Review: Peak Everything
By Ross
“I wish I understood the world better,” he says, adding, “It became so complicated.” It’s an idea that is so true and so deeply ingrained in this instantly magnetic new film, “Peak Everything“, from writer-director Anne Émond (“Our Loved Ones“). It opens on Adam — played with raw precision and startling warmth by the handsome, yet troubled Patrick Hivon (“L’ange Gardien“), sitting in his small, uncluttered apartment, muttering about the end of civilization while trying to set up a therapeutic lamp. Equal parts caring prophet and emotional philosopher, he’s also a strong man in quiet freefall. There’s a deep sadness inside of him, “like a rock,” but also, something strangely alive to the absurdities of modern despair. When he accidentally calls what he believes to be a crisis line, only to reach an endearing customer service rep named Tina (Piper Perabo), the film finds its strange and luminous center. And we can’t look away.
As someone drawn to stories of people who find meaning in quiet, complicated despair, I found Émond’s latest film an exciting, revelatory experience. He expertly crafts the connection between Adam and Tina as something both accidental and completely inevitable — a misdial that becomes a lifeline and a chance for rebirth. Their exchanges, first awkward but sweet, soon grow into a curious intimacy, charged with humor, honesty, and an unspoken recognition that both are searching for meaning in a collapsing world. Hivon’s performance is heartfelt and astonishing: he embodies a man whose despair has depth, not flatness — someone who can rage against the futility of things one moment, then notice the warmth in a stranger’s voice the next. Perabo (Off-Broadway’s Reasons to Be Pretty) matches him beautifully in Émond’s tone management, grounding the film with an understated empathy that feels both earned and disarming.
As a portrait of depression, “Peak Everything” sidesteps cliché. Its stunning sensibility understands that hopelessness and engagement can coexist — that one can mourn the state of the world and still fall in love with it a little. Émond’s script balances existential dread with comic tenderness, making space for the contradictions that define contemporary life: we recycle, we doomscroll, we flirt, we fear extinction, and we still keep talking. The film never preaches. Instead, it observes, and in those observations, we feel both the ache and the absurdity of being human right now.
“Is this the End?” Peak Everything asks, feeling less like a love story than a quiet act of mutual salvation. Two voices on opposite ends of a line listen just long enough to remember what connection feels like. It’s funny, smart, and strangely comforting, even as it stares directly at the end of all things. Émond’s direction finds grace in the off-center, humor in despair, and meaning in the flicker of light — artificial or otherwise — that lets us see one another again.
