52 Films by Women Vol 8. 25. With Love and a Major Organ (Director: Kim Albright)

 

Pictured: Anabel (Anna Maguire, centre) on her morning commute in a scene from the romantic comedy, 'With Love and a Major Organ', adapted from her own play by Julia Lederer and directed by Kim Albright. Still courtesy of Filmoption International. 

Some terrific comedians have hailed from Canada, so why are there no great Canadian comedy films? I have some theories. First, unspoken accommodation. English speaking Canadians can’t ignore their French speaking counterparts and vice versa, but in their storytelling, they can’t acknowledge the other. Rather, they keep to their side of the fence. Second, there is no Canadian dream. Who wakes up wanting to be moderate? Third, Catholic guilt. Canadians can’t aspire to greatness in their own country, because that would be wrong. Their flag, featuring a Maple Leaf, struggles to be inoffensive. Though taking the side of a leaf for a moment, you separated me from my tree; how could you? Fourth, they choose national sports suited to their climate that aren’t played widely. If you have to be at your best wearing padded clothing, then there’s no hope for you. Fifth, Canadian winters aren’t funny. You have to be practical. The Canadian sense of humour is dry, but you feel the pressure to be raucous rising underneath. Canadians need America to release the valve and above all to have an excuse to wear fewer sweaters. In their own country, Canadians don’t go to the beach, they head for the forest. Yet they never talk about having a ‘pine-ready bod’.

Great comedies take no hostages. They go for the jugular. Whether it is Life of Brian, Duck Soup or Four Weddings and a Funeral, you need to not simply point out absurdity, but double underline it and add some explanation points. Why do you think it’s called Airplane!? David Cronenberg made a film about mechanical sex called Crash with no such punctuation. I believe this caused irreparable harm to its box office. You can’t be alarmist if you have to pause and say it again in another language. You have to have the courage of your convictions. Remember Schtonk!  There have been Canadian films about the end of the world, but even when greeted with the Apocalypse, Canucks still need to do their homework. ‘Mom, we’ve got to go. There’s a river of lava heading for our house.’ ‘Of course. Did you take out the trash?’

This brings me (finally) to With Love and a Major Organ, a Canadian absurdist comedy that not only does not travel but struggles to get out of the garage. It takes the notion of stealing another person’s heart literally, though turning a colloquialism into a narrative has never really passed the pitch meeting test. Working from a script by Julia Lederer, producer Madeleine Davis and director Kim Albright have crafted a film that wears the influence of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman – as opposed to the major organ of its title - on its sleeve but lacks sufficient wardrobe. It doesn’t have a ‘pine ready bod’.

One can’t describe the film as an auteur work, but that’s not a bad thing since great comedies tend to be the result of collaboration. You enter into a competition to make the other person laugh and pretty much everyone ends up on the floor with no pages written wondering where all the chairs have gone. However, some comedy films suffer from being agreed by committee. At a certain point, you have to trust the idea and run with it. ‘We talked about tone a lot,’ Davis confided at a Q and A session, although much of the discussions were conducted over Zoom, an environment not conducive to reading body language. Tone is something the film gets wrong. It is really important in comedy to get the first laugh right. Then audiences settle in and chuckle some more. Otherwise, you sit there wondering, ‘did I take out the trash?’

Early in With Love and a Major Organ a jogger, Anabel (Anna Maguire) pauses to discover a man standing at the edge of a precipice ripping out his own heart and discarding it. At least he wasn’t feeding the wildlife. That’s actually how the film should have begun. However, there is voiceover. Anabel talks about her mother, something about the heart being a ball of string unravelled and entangling those who come into contact with it. We see Anabel discovering a woollen thread, following it to a cabin where we see a woven artwork, large, spectacular but pointless. What’s it doing there? How does it relate to its environment? How am I supposed to feel when I look at it? Then there’s the title sequence, featuring blood spattered objects – scissors, Russian nesting dolls, and teacups. This sets us up for a serial killer movie. However – and this is never good for a comedy – you have to move past it to get into the narrative. There is some good satire here, itching to get out.

Discarding the misleading titles and the overworked metaphor of the red thread that binds and chokes (other interpretations are available) the film settles into familiar relationship comedy mode. Anabel is lonely, but she doesn’t have the mobile phone application – Life Zapp – to sort herself out. In this all too familiar world, young people are invited to rely on artificial intelligence to get through their day, letting the algorithm choose the perfect lover or emotional response and to remind them of their obligations. This film made me wonder. What if there was an app that made people ordinarily rejected by the opposite sex more appealing by getting them to work on their deficiencies? Heartbreak is caused by judgement. Attraction minus experience equals rejection. However, if individuals could learn from experience, take remedial action – assessed, of course – then get back into the dating field, they could have a better chance of finding love. However, rejection is also caused by incompatibility, so you really want to know whether you are over 50% compatible with the person you are talking to, assuming they have provided reliable data. You can call me a convert to new technology, though I haven’t replaced my mobile phone in five years.

Anabel wants to meet people in the real world, even if it means sitting on a bench yards away from George George (Hamza Haq), a man whose singular lack of imagination comes from his parents, who named him after his surname. The last character who had that affliction was Humbert Humbert from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Middle-aged Humbert was drawn to a pre-pubescent adolescent and married her mother to be in her proximity. So, Mr & Mrs George, if you want to help your children with their life choices, be better read. George never reads the day’s paper, placing it in a drawer until the next day. He reads yesterday’s paper, knowing that the world has survived the portents of doom inherent in its headlines. This is one of those gags better done in Roxanne, when Steve Martin’s Cyrano de Bergerac character buys a newspaper, shrieks at a headline, then puts another coin in the newspaper vending machine to put it back. The old ones are the best. Anabel waves to George. George responds by walking over and asking, ‘do I know you?’ Waving, he points out, implies familiarity. ‘No,’ replies Anabel, but she wants to talk. For two people to connect, loneliness should not be the only thing they have in common. There should be something else, like Wordle. However, in this film, loneliness has to do. In movies, it is often enough. You isolate two people in your narrative, make them proximate and allow the audience to will them together. It works. In which world would Molly Ringwald settle for Jon Cryer? It only doesn’t work when you surround them with options.

Anabel is an artist whose emotional turmoil is reflected in her canvases, messy but chaotic, overcrowded, showing a lack of prioritisation. This made me wonder. What if instead of interviewing candidates, you invited them to draw a picture right in front of you. Regardless of the quality, you can learn a lot about their process. You’d know if they were a self-starter, how they interpret the brief, whether they are focused on detail, can get a message across. You can’t lie when you show what you can do. This assumes that people are taught how to draw in the same way they are taught how to speak.

Anabel works for a virtual insurance company, although the filmmakers don’t define her job, which is a shame, since good comedy is precise, not slapdash. From what we are shown, she is first line support on claims, though she always begins her calls with a pithy slogan, designed to attract new customers not claimants. In other words, writer-producer-director, try again. Anabel is cheerful and has an English accent. Watching Anna Maguire, I kept thinking of Daisy Ridley in Sometimes I Think About Dying, another film about a lonely, dysfunctional young woman at a desk job who lives close to trees. Maguire is a charismatic British-Canadian writer-director of multiple shorts as well as an actress and here does a terrific job in a losing cause. Anabel is right to be sceptical about wellness centres, such as the one (‘The Small House of Big Feels’) her colleague and best friend, Casey (Donna Benedicto) frequents, ones with rooms from journal writing, dance halls and the like. The satire here is spot on.

Nevertheless, no film can ever really recover from the line, ‘I saw a man pull his own heart out’, even if the heart is represented by a vase with a pulsating light inside. With Love and a Major Organ demonstrates this. Anabel is in therapy, but her therapist is deserting her for a career as a barista – another nice, satiric touch. Anabel really wants to connect with George and records her feelings onto a cassette which she then leaves in a padded envelope for George to spot. George joins his mother (Veena Sood) for their weekly ‘Mother – Son’ dinners, entered on the calendar as ‘Mother-Son dinners’, the only entry - all the other squares are blank. (Good gag.) ‘How was your day?’ George asks his mother. ‘Fine,’ she replies. ‘How was your day?’ she asks. ‘Fine,’ George replies. George describes his job as pointing, clicking and scrolling. Another neat gag has George’s supervisor describe the company in this same way. ‘Where do you see yourself in the future?’ George is asked. George’s answer surprises him, listing all the things he wants to do that are not employment related. ‘I want to read books – fiction,’ he declares, as if fiction were a genre in itself. His speech is a comic highlight. Indeed, it should be used for audition tapes.

George’s response to the cassette is to ask his mother to borrow her cassette recorder, because, who does analogue? His reply to Anabel is succinct: ‘I can’t.’

Pictured: George (Hamza Haq) changes his image in a scene from the Canadian romantic comedy, 'With Love and a Major Organ', adapted by Julia Lederer from her stage play and directed by Kim Albright. Still courtesy of Filmoption International

Anabel’s mother has deserted her too, ignoring her pleas to go for a weekend trip to the cabin. Anabel’s response is to tear her own heart and leave it in a cooler box for George to discover. This makes her surprisingly efficient at work. For his part, George takes out his own heart, and replaces it with Anabel’s. Then he starts to rebel.

One gag that doesn’t work has George’s mother taking crockery (while wearing a safety mask) and throwing it against a wall. I can’t bear to watch objects being needlessly broken, whether in the cause of therapy or in the service of a Hollywood blockbuster.

One gag that does has Anabel’s boss invite Anabel to her office and address her while walking on a treadmill, the sound of her steps echoing a heartbeat. An on-point effect.

Anabel develops a talent for competency but when she removes the clutter from her life, including a picture of her and Casey, it is too much. An off-camera gag has a passerby complain about being hit by an object. By this time, Anabel is afflicted by tragedy. Her heartlessness prepares her for it, even accommodating a funeral junkie who enjoys crying uncontrollable and, one suspects, cake.

For all the gags that hit, including Anabel catering Casey’s bachelorette party with Cheetos, there are plenty that don’t. The quirkiness is wearisome. Although it took some time for me to nod off, thanks to the energy of the cast which almost got me through it.

With Love and a Major Organ is an ‘if only’ film. If only the filmmakers had trusted that the gags not related to the absurdist premise were enough. Women, you don’t need Spike Jonze or Charlie Kaufman. Cheetos will suffice. I’ll take multiple bowls of the same potato snack over sub-body horror. At this point, I cannot say whether the film shows promise. However, the cast sell it. You can enjoy the performances, set design, sound effects editing and more.

Reviewed at München Film Festival, Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film, München, Wednesday 3^rd July 2024, 21:30 screening