Sparks kinda maybe almost fly between Lewis (Dustin Parkes) and Mel (Rebecca Kohler) in No Heart Feelings.

We dug the way that Chloe showed us a Toronto of cutting, architectural cruelty, and we’re basically in love with the fact that Scott Pilgrim takes on the world against a backdrop of winter-locked, greasy Annex locales. With the latest in Toronto’s on-film appearances, No Heart Feelings, the trend of spotting the familiar carries on. With the spirit of mumblecore in their hearts, trio of directors Sarah Lazarovic (who is a former Torontoist editor), Geoff Morrison, and Ryan J. Noth sketched out scenes for their cast of non-actors to improvise, and the resulting nearly-no-budget flick deserve props for its intense believability.

It’s summer in the city, and Mel (Rebecca Kohler) has just broken up with her long-distance boyfriend (long-distance acted over the phone by Jonathan Goldstein). She and her other nearing-thirty-something friends (including her roommate, played by the National Post‘s Steve Murray) drink, talk, and just sort of hang around. A friend of a friend, Lewis (Dustin Parkes), has just moved back to Toronto after a long stint in Vancouver, and he and Mel—with a touch of chemistry and a more-obvious shared loneliness—hook up, and then navigate the territory of being maybe-interested-but-maybe-not.
For some of us, the film may display the stuff of uncanny familiarity: drinks at the Press Club, brunch at Aunties and Uncles, an Ideal cup of coffee in Kensington. In between there are aimless bike rides, slightly awkward conversations, wasted hours at work, and a vague sense that the future should already have come by now.
This realism and believability left us feeling torn. There is something incredibly appealing about seeing familiar geographic and demographic turf onscreen—an undeniable pleasure to the sheer excitement of recognizing something, seeing yourself and your world reflected in something that someone else took the time to make. It’s like being on the inside of an inside joke, and we have to admit that it feels pretty great.
The trouble with No Heart Feelings is that it succeeds at what it sets out to do: it conveys a world with accuracy. This is fiction with all the fantasy sucked dry, and as a result, watching the movie feels not unlike indulging in a creeping session on Facebook or lazily eavesdropping in a coffee shop. (In fact, about half the non-actors are people we’re pretty sure we actually have seen in coffee shops.) The resulting feeling of voyeurism is enjoyable, but it may be a rather facile way to stroke our less-than-best selves. No Heart Feelings left us wondering whether—as Toronto gets more and more used to playing itself—recognizing our world is, or should be, sufficient.
We don’t want to sound like haters: No Heart Feelings is still charming and easy to watch, and you’ll probably be glad you saw it if you do. It plays at The Royal until September 2.

Still from Capturing Reality, courtesy of the NFB.

FILM: In celebration of the National Film Board of Canada’s seventieth anniversary, Mediatheque is hosting a screening of Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary. The film, written and directed by Pepita Ferrari, explores the art of documentary filmmaking through clips and interviews with thirty-three Canadian and international directors, who discuss their craft and reflect on the topics of representation, ethics, and the “truth” in their work. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Ferrari and producer Michelle van Beusekom. Jennifer Baichwal (Act of God) and Velcrow Ripper (Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action)—both featured in the film—will also be in attendance for the post-screening discussion. NFB Mediatheque (150 John Street), 7 p.m., FREE.
ART: The “Luminato Box,” a temporary experimental gallery that is part of this year’s Luminato Festival, features the work of ten artists over ten days. Today’s installation, by local artist and former Torontoist editor and contributor Sarah Lazarovic, focuses on the festival theme of contemporary communications. Lazarovic’s piece, Older, looks at the speed and archiving of digital messages in today’s society. The installation features a collection of humourous and telling tweets from members of the Toronto Twitter community, including Mayor Miller, K’naan, and Final Fantasy. Lazarovic uses various forms of typography, including the unmistakable hand-painted lettering by Wayne Reuben of Honest Ed’s, to undigitize the messages. Sam Pollock Square at Brookfield Place (181 Bay Street), 8 a.m.–10 p.m., FREE.
FILM: Nothing says “cheap movie” night like a Tuesday night. The Drake Drive-In is keeping the tradition alive with cheap—actually, free—weekly screenings for the summer on The Sky Yard rooftop patio. Tonight’s screening is hosted by Kevin Bauch of The Thirsty Traveler, who picked his favourite summertime picture—the 1986 British cult classic, Withnail and I. The popcorn is free—too bad the sangria isn’t. The Drake Hotel (1150 Queen Street West), 9 p.m., FREE.
MUSIC: Spice up your lunch hour with “A Celebration of the World of Drumming,” which is part of The Canadian Opera Company’s free concert series. Taiko-ut the Trash, a female taiko drumming quartet, join four male percussionists for a concert featuring instruments from around the world, including panderos, gonkogui, gongs, conch shells, waterphones, and, of course, trash cans. Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts (145 Queen Street West), 12–1 p.m., FREE.

“Photo taken during production” of Chris Landreth’s The Spine courtesy of the NFB.

The Worldwide Short Film Festival has two things perpetually working against it. One, any feature-length program of short films, in any context, is almost necessarily going to be a mixed bag; there will be one or two works of sustained brilliance, two or three self-satisfied efforts that try your patience despite their limited lengths, and then a handful of other interesting but mostly unremarkable entries. Two, the WSFF—this year running June 16–21—always comes at the end of Toronto’s busy spring festival season, following Images (early April), Sprockets (mid-April), Toronto Jewish (late April), Hot Docs (early May), and Inside Out (mid-May); it’s sometimes received as an afterthought in the scheme of things.
But the WSFF programmers are acutely aware of these challenges and do their best to make the festival friendly and accessible. They know you know you’re taking a leap of faith by buying a ticket, and they do their damndest to load up the event with as many sure things as possible: the usual twin Midnight Mania programs (“Creepy” and “Freaky”), as well as the Scene Not Herd evening of music videos, the Slap ‘n’ Tickle sex-themed shorts, the Sci-Fi: “Out There” pack, and a series of Accidentally Funny vintage films, this year with the theme “Holiday in the Sun.” The truly great stuff, however, tends to find its way into the twelve competition programs of the Official Selection, which forms the bulk of the festival, showcasing new Canadian and international fiction, documentary, animated, and avant-garde shorts, grouped by (loose) theme rather than genre.

Still from Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death courtesy of the WSFF.

The highlights of the fifteenth annual festival include The Spine (showing as part of Official Selection 1), the new film by Chris Landreth, the Academy Award–winning director of Ryan, as well as Spare Change (showing in OS6), the final film by Ryan Larkin, the late subject of the aforementioned eponymous Oscar winner. On-again off-again Torontoister Sarah Lazarovic returns to the festival with the live-action fiction film The Way It Used To Be (OS3), following up on her superb animated documentary Mondo Condo, which played at WSFF two years ago. Also in OS3 are Time, which animates archival photos of a hundred years of Toronto’s history into just four minutes, and Skin, a twenty-seven-minute documentary about an Australian man making arrangements to donate his full-body tattoo to a gallery upon his death.
Few things in world cinema are better bets, however, than Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (OS1 and the Shorts for Shorties children’s program), the duo’s first new mid-length (twenty-nine-minute) movie since 1995′s Shaun-the-Sheep-introducing A Close Shave. As an animation studio, Aardman is the British Pixar, and thus each new work of theirs is to be celebrated accordingly.
Tickets are on sale now.