We Forgot to Break Up chronicles the up-and-down journey of a homegrown rock band whose members are constantly on the verge of tearing each other to pieces.Jordan Kennington/Supplied
- We Forgot to Break Up
- Directed by Karen Knox
- Written by Noel S. Baker, Pat Mills and Zoe Whittall, based on the novel Heidegger Stairwell by Kayt Burgess
- Starring Lane Webber, June Laporte and Daniel Gravelle
- Classification N/A; 94 minutes
- Screens March 15 at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, March 16 at the Carlton in Toronto, March 19 at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver
In the proud and sweaty Canadian film tradition of Roadkill, Hardcore Logo and (sorta) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the new drama We Forgot to Break Up chronicles the up-and-down journey of a homegrown rock band whose members are constantly on the verge of tearing each other to pieces. But while director Karen Knox’s new film aspires to join its cinematic predecessors in a kind of greatest-hits album of hard-rocking Canadiana, its final mix feels more like a collection of solid, but not quite chart-topping, singles.
The movie gets bonus points (tracks?) for fully and immediately embracing a queer identity without being narratively or thematically clumsy about it. The fact that the young wannabe rock star Evan (a confident and compelling Lane Webber) at the centre of the story is a trans man is simply taken as a matter-of-fact reality from the get-go.
That approach presumably leaves more time for the film to explore Evan’s relationship with his bandmates in a group called the New Normals, including keyboardist Isis (June Laporte), drummer Angus (Jordan Dawson), bassist Coco (Hallea Jones) and guitarist Lugh (Daniel Gravelle). And yet, the ostensibly complex interplay between the characters never fully develops, with the screenplay substituting empty bickering for the messier, more interesting conversations that the filmmakers think that they are engaging in.
This surface-level sense of tension proves especially frustrating after the band moves from their small Ontario town to Toronto in the early aughts, with the energy and anxiety of the big city exacerbating the group’s fraught dynamics. Evan is talented but stubborn, his romance with Isis complicated by a selfish dalliance with Lugh, who himself is resentful that everyone – including the band’s other on-and-off couple, Angus and Coco – seem more interested in screwing around (literally and metaphorically) than making music. Passions run high, yet the film never exactly figures out how to illustrate or sell that fiery lust for life.
Knox is more at home recreating the grimy energy of being young in Toronto at the turn of the century, and how easy thrills come when you can disappear into a city’s nightscape. The soundtrack is also killer – especially the original music created by Torquil Campbell of Stars, who likely knows a thing or two about the complicated emotional arithmetic of being in a buzzy band.
Based on the novel Heidegger Stairwell by Kayt Burgess – which was already adapted into a 2017 short film by Chandler Levack (I Like Movies) via an entirely different structure and aesthetic – the script for this new iteration feels at once ambitious and shaggy, which is an accurate enough reflection of the New Normals. Yet given that Noel S. Baker, one of the film’s three credited screenwriters, also wrote 1996’s Hard Core Logo, you’d be forgiven for expecting just as many layered characters as kicky choruses.
Ultimately, We Forgot to Break Up’s broken social scene offers a lot of hum, but not enough rattle.
