Cold Comfort

A Winter Tale
Written by Michele Lonsdale-Smith and Frances Solomon
Directed by Frances Solomon

I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't seen any of Frances Anne Solomon's films before this. From the assured, unsentimental vision that's on show in her newest film, A Winter Tale, I've certainly been missing out.

It is one of the cruel realities of Trinidad and Tobago's history with motion pictures that there is no archive of the works of local films and the availability of such productions hinges almost entirely on who has a copy and is willing to share it.

Last year's Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival offered a beat up old VHS copy of Bim, arguably one of the most valuable films in our short history of movies produced locally.
If we ever get around to the kind of viewing library that would have locally related films of value on call, then A Winter Tale should be on the roster.

The film isn't really local, though the links back to the Caribbean are strong generally and are more specifically delineated through Solomon and Dennis "Sprangalang" Hall.
This is a tale of the diaspora, of black people from warm countries drawn to the small huddles striving to reproduce the warmth of home that some travellers cultivate.
In A Winter Tale, the nexus is the Caribbean restaurant of Miss G (a riveting Leonie Forbes) a nook that has the patina of spicy meat pies and bubbling callalloo.

One evening, gunshots bring a tragic halt to an evening of liming and tragedy begins to pull casual friendships apart.
As Gene (Peter Williams) tries to pull the group back together to talk through the experience, ugly truths about the reality of the social dynamic that allows these men to hang out, play cards and have some drinks begin to surface.
It's a taut human drama, well seen and evenly paced. Solomon and her co-writer Michele Lonsdale-Smith decline numerous opportunities to place the blame on an uncaring Canadian society and keeps the focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the third world hustle in a metropolis.

The brisk cutaways to city streets and passers-by as they glide past the principal characters place their personal drama on a much larger stage, a fast moving, vaguely menacing blur of a city, too large and all embracing to fit into the frame of a camera so relentlessly focused on the intimate details of this story.
Solomon does something quite remarkable with this film, keeping the human drama intriguing and mysterious all the way through to the final few minutes.

There are a few missed tones along the way, a confrontation between Miss G and her estranged son Ian (Peter Bailey) collapses into some melodramatic weeping that seems miles away from the unresolved conflict both characters had been nursing for two years.
And the final fate of the ruthless bad guy, his cruel nature unmasked in the last quarter of the film is really just Hollywood justice. In the real world that Solomon has crafted a riveting simulacrum of, he would just move on, his search for profit continuing in some other section of the city.

Tags: Movies