The recipe, tested many times, has become almost cliché: the film opens with the arrival of a teenager from a foreign country at a new school, in the middle of a class session. When his teacher introduces him to the students, they give him a cruel look, like a mixture of aversion and curiosity. We guess that integration will not be easy.
However, from this first scene of Before I Change My Mind (Before I change my mind), Alberta filmmaker Trevor Anderson attempts an evocative staging that establishes the original proposition of the film. Its protagonist, Robin, is non-binary, and her gender identity is never really revealed. Robin therefore arrives in his physical education class, where girls and boys are separated, by sitting between the two groups, which symbolizes both his non-conformity and the exclusion that this is about to cause him.
Especially since in rural Alberta in the 1980s, where Anderson sets the story, the schoolchildren seem particularly cruel. Especially Carter, the school bully, with whom Robin falls in love. So, to impress Carter and his classmates, Robin commits all kinds of little misdeeds, buying beer on the sly during a school trip or in turn intimidating another student. Beyond a story of quest for identity, Before I Change My Mind then becomes an astonishing fable about the desperate actions we sometimes take to be accepted by a group.
” Rite of passage “
Trevor Anderson states in a text he signed for the CBC website that the idea for this first feature film came to him after Telefilm Canada had refused a proposal for a more experimental project: “I lowered my defenses and I I began working on that eternal rite of passage for beginning filmmakers: the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film. »
However, we are getting tired of initiatory stories, as they abound in independent Quebec and Canadian cinema. At least the distinctly Alberta flavor of this one, which includes a visit to the West Edmonton Mall and archival TV clips about tar sands development, gives it a refreshing authenticity and some comical dialogue.
Its absurd humor is also largely indebted to the performance of Matthew Rankin, a darling of Canadian cinema both in front of and behind the camera. Here he plays Robin’s single father, an expatriate from the United States for work. And his socially inept nerd character has a knack for finding himself in awkward situations with his co-workers — said situations acting out comic relief (comic relief) effective, providing a counterbalance to the more trying scenes where Robin appears.
Kitsch and impressionism
Vaughan Murrae also proves himself very apt in the role of the non-binary protagonist, having even received an acting prize from an independent jury at the Locarno festival, where the film had its world premiere in 2022. Other actors , clearly unprofessional, however, pale in comparison.
The staging also struggles to support the credibility of the story. If Anderson brilliantly assumes his kitsch side with a dazzling artistic direction which pays a beautiful homage to the colors of the 1980s, certain impressionist scenes, supposed to evoke the moods of the characters, turn out to be more clumsy than anything else.
But it is perhaps precisely this kitsch, extravagant and adolescent side which gives the charm of Before I Change My Mind. As is its mosaic of colorful characters, reflecting a multiplicity of expressions of gender identity. We only wish that Trevor Anderson, known for his caustic queer short films, had opted for a more daring “rite of passage”, reflecting his known talent.