TORONTO – The last time Jacob Tierney, Jay Baruchel and Emily Hampshire collaborated, the result was the crowd-pleasing, award-winning festival favourite, “The Trotsky.”
That trio has reunited for the new film “Good Neighbours,” but they’re also taking pains to point out that the black-as-night thriller has virtually nothing in common with their last movie.
“‘The Trotsky’ goes down real smooth,” Baruchel said in an interview during September’s Toronto International Film Festival.
“It’s an easy movie to like. It was a bit of a movement (at TIFF) because it was the most populist Canadian movie in a long time. It was funny, quick, the music’s awesome and it looks great. It’s hard to hate that movie.
“This one’s more like Buckley’s mixture, the cough syrup. We make you eat your vegetables this time.”
Yes, “Good Neighbours,” opening Friday in limited release, is a radical departure from the “The Trotsky” – and that was kind of the point.
Tierney, who wrote and directed both films, penned “Trotsky” when he was a teenager in Montreal, whereas the new film is “way more me now,” he says.
Based on a book by Quebecois novelist Chrystine Brouillet, “Good Neighbours” is set in Montreal amid the tension and unrest of the 1995 Quebec referendum.
A serial killer is on the loose, and three residents of a time-worn apartment building – played by Baruchel, Hampshire and Toronto-raised actor Scott Speedman – begin casting a suspicious eye about for possible culprits. While that summary barely scratches the surface, it’s tough to reveal much more about the twisty thriller without spoiling any of its surprises.
Tierney said he was drawn to making a film about that particular time, in part, because it seemed like a job that no one else wanted.
“I’m a Quebecer, and we make movies with a lot of nostalgia in them, and I loved the idea of setting a movie in a time that nobody wants to remember,” Tierney said.
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“Ain’t nobody making movies about ’95. No fun to be had. So I was like: ‘Me!'”
It helps that it was a particularly memorable time for him and Baruchel, fiercely proud Montrealers who grew up anglophone in the Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighbourhood.
As Tierney remembers it, his beloved ‘hood felt as though it was on the verge of falling apart.
“It was like a ghost town by ’95, every third store was open, everything else was boarded up,” he recalled. “It was a real disaster zone. And most of us could not really imagine it recovering.”
He went to great lengths to ensure that “Good Neighbours” had a similarly spare feel.
Most of the film’s street scenes are terrifyingly isolated, whether on the city’s dreary, snow-covered streets or in the faded little Chinese restaurant where Hampshire’s character works. To achieve that effect, Tierney insisted on employing as few extras as possible. He says he even went so far as to have one pesky extra digitally edited out during post-production.
He wrote the film with each of his three leads partially in mind, and he wanted to push them out of their comfort zones.
Speedman was cast against type as an evasive, wheelchair-bound cynic whose hazy motivations are firmly submerged under a shell of sarcasm.
“When you know Scott as a person, you know how funny he is, and he’s a biting, sharp wit, you know?” Tierney said. “He plays these earthy nice guys…. He’s not a nice guy in this movie.”
“But that’s what Scott can do, he can totally get away with it.”
A bearded Baruchel, meanwhile, begins the movie in a familiar form: as a charmingly awkward, well-meaning man-child. But Tierney also wanted his close friend to showcase a different side.
“You watch this guy become complicated and weird and by the middle of the movie, not a particularly trustworthy character,” he said.
“What I wanted to provide Jay with was the opportunity to take his persona that he has onscreen, and kind of grow it up, and make it an adult.”
Tierney perhaps saved the juiciest role for Hampshire. The 29-year-old Montreal actress – and Gemini Award winner – portrays a solitary, inscrutable individual who seems less interested in the love triangle developing around her than in frolicking with her beloved cats.
As with all characters in the film, Hampshire’s waitress isn’t particularly sympathetic, and Tierney praised her uncompromising performance – which also required a fair bit of graphic nudity.
“She is like gung ho, man,” Tierney said of the actress. “What’s amazing about Emily is that she is the least vain actor I can think of. She’s game. She can do anything…. She wants to do what feels real. She’s the one who talked me into that giant nude scene.”
“Beyond the fact that she is one of the most complicated and engaging actors of her generation, I think she’s the cat’s pyjamas. I think all three of them are, but I think what Emily does with Louise is remarkable, truly remarkable.”
And yet, neither Tierney nor Baruchel were particularly confident that anyone would actually like their film.
Beyond the insistent dread it conjures, “Good Neighbours” also features scenes of violence and sex so graphic that Baruchel banned his mom, Robyne, from accompanying him to the screening at the Toronto festival (he instead scored her a copy of the DVD, explaining: “I have no problem with her watching it at some point, but just not beside me.”)
So Tierney braced himself for a critical beatdown or audience backlash during the festival, but it never came.
“I thought we were going to get our hat handed to us,” he said. “I’m thrilled. I’m absolutely thrilled that people are enjoying it. Because I know it’s the kind of movie I’d enjoy.”
“He and I are both blown away that people are digging this one,” Baruchel added. “There’s been so much goodwill and people have been saying they really dig the flick.
“It’s meant the world to us.”
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