Where are they now? That is the question at the centre of Canadian drama The Madones, written and directed by Barrie Dunn of Trailer Park Boys fame in his feature directorial debut. It's small-town drama writ large, with a heavy hand guiding it along.
The film follows the titular one-hit wonder sister act, who have since fallen on hard times. Decades after their initial success, lead singer and widow Rose (Lucy Decoutere) is dealing with schizophrenia, much to the chagrin of her sister Stella (Tara Doyle) and son Mo (T. Thomason). A tense situation verges on nuclear in the wake of eldest sister Gladys's (Lenore Zann) absence and the return of Stella's scheming, criminal ex-boyfriend Adonis (Mark A. Owen) to their Atlantic Canadian hamlet.
The Madones exists in a broody, arthouse space where colour has little value (there is none) and people still smoke inside. Less-than-deftly blending family drama and snapshots of quiet municipal life, even the modest ambitions of the movie often fail to pass muster. The opening sequence of archival footage of a fundraising concert years prior immediately betrays the film's desperation to assert itself dramatically and sentimentally.
The script here is beyond lean — bordering on scrawny. Sparse and saccharine dialogue is spaced out in between numerous moody montages scored with original music. Before the film even namedrops Jack Kerouac, the spirit of the beatniks is easily discerned, most prominently as Mo spends all his time smoking reefer (it takes him "backstage in his own head," man) and peddling his pitiful tunes outside local shops and restaurants as a full-time busker. But The Madones never seems to corral all of its inspirations into something congruent; music and poetry are the window dressings for a story with nowhere better to be than wherever it's at.
Too many pivotal scenes trudge along without much insight into character psychology, save for Rose's vocal inner demons. It seems a disservice to portray a disease as complex as schizophrenia with ADR whispers and blank stares. Her condition is interchangeable with any number of ailments, ultimately serving not as an illumination of the illness, but one of many potential burdens over which her loved ones suffer.
Dunn's familiarity with small-town squalor from his days in Sunnyvale are a small boon for the film's authenticity; The Madones's most tender moments are the ones on the way to larger dramatic checkpoints. It's tempting to buy into these refreshingly stark scenes, but too often is this comfortable space for Dunn forfeited in lieu of melodrama and tonally confounding comedy segments. Occasionally inspired direction shows Dunn to be better behind the viewfinder than with the pen — and, sure, many frames here could be paintings. But the impressive composition is never in service of the storytelling, which is so desperately in need of bolstering.
Wine aunt and third Madone Gladys shows up late in the second act, acting like an extra rambunctious Golden Girl with little to do; her presence is wholly inconsequential. The film's B-plot results in an anticlimax that should demote it a letter grade, and the hasty resolution of the film's jumbled through lines will leave you colder than a Nova Scotian winter.
As much as it tries to play the part, it's hard to pinpoint any distinctively cinematic qualities of this film. All the characters feel disparate, separate stories aimlessly converging in a shared space. In the absence of genuine emotional connection, what's left to jam with? The Madones is a troubled troubadour with no direction home and nothing to say.