One film I liked a lot at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival was Kuessipan, the story of two young women growing up in a Quebec Innu community. It’s a deep look at female friendship and the hard questions of leaving a community or staying there; about racism and colonialism and the bright joys of being alive. 

A mixed list, but Kuessipan explores the sorrows of life while also shining with moments of happiness and light. That’s rare, especially in a first film or novel, when so often the rigors of making art mean creators go all one-note—and it’s usually a dark note, minor key, so that however insightful the work, it’s also pretty depressing.

When I first started to teach creative writing, Raymond Carver was a revered writer in universities, with his spare tales of people living battered lives. Students tried to imitate him, often middle-class students who knew very little about the lives of people they were writing about. That doesn’t mean some of them didn’t succeed. 

But I remember one student who wrote a story set in a trailer park. As I read it, I suspected he had maybe driven past a trailer park once or twice, possibly as research, and meanwhile inhaled a lot of Raymond Carver. The characters’ lives were awful in every respect. I don’t remember most of the details, but let’s say Mom was a crack addict and Dad drank and beat her, there was mould in the trailer walls and Auntie could only find a soul-destroying job as a greeter at Walmart while at the climax Junior (who initially showed a glint of promise) got himself killed by wrecking his car. Something like that. 

What I remember very clearly is the family cat, which was scabby and yowled miserably. 

Even the damn cat was scabby.

That’s when I began to think about relentlessness as a problem in art, especially young art. Creators can portray people who are leading disadvantaged lives as never cracking a smile (except ironically) or enjoying a cup of coffee or a beautiful sky, much less having real friends. When maybe life isn’t like that. 

I know people who live in trailers and some of them are having a hard time, but most of them love their coffee (although a few prefer tea). A woman I know who works as a greeter at Walmart enjoys her job—she’s chatty—and someone who is dead now but was bitter and twisted always had cats she took brilliant care of, brushing them and hand-feeding them treats. Sometimes she made them wear pink bows on their heads, it’s true, and overall she treated them better than she treated her daughter. And the damn cats weren’t scabby.

People have been saying for a while now, Don’t write about what you don’t know. Of course, if it’s not your world, you can research it, take the time to try to enter it and talk to friends who live there—although I know a lot of Indigenous filmmakers and writers of colour are getting pretty tired of white folks wanting help on their Indigenous- or POC-related projects rather than asking if the Indigenous/POC artists could use a hand on whatever they’re doing themselves. (The answer might be no thanks.)

Yet, given that, I also see a lot of relentlessness in art that comes from within communities, including many films at TIFF over the years. 

It’s easier to write a script or a novel that’s tonally consistent than one with joy and sorrow intercut, especially given the story line most of these projects follow. In a coming-of-age story, the protagonist arcs from a fairly innocent beginning through challenges that go from bad to worse to dire, until in the end, the sadder-but-wiser protagonist takes a small step forward. (Or maybe dies off-screen in a sudden cut to black, which I’ve seen a lot lately.) 

The hero’s quest or journey, as per the cliché. 

And to portray this—since, after all, the hero is having a hard time—many screenwriters write a script where the hero never stops to enjoy that cup of coffee but just keeps sliding down, down, down. The writers are worried about breaking the mood with moments of joy (or don’t know how to write them) while many directors employ a consistently greyed-out colour palette to emphasize how bad things are. As if we haven’t noticed. 

In Canada, there’s an added problem coming from the way movies get financed. The funding cycle means many indies have to be shot in the fall and winter when the world indeed goes all leafless and cloudy, at least unless you work at finding bursts of colour. 

So Kuessipan comes as a relief—and maybe as a lesson in how to portray the vastness of life.

The film opens on two lights wavering toward us. They turn in space, and suddenly illuminate a pair of beautiful young faces. Two young girls are laughing while wearing headlamps on a road at night, and director Myriam Verreault holds on the faces of Mikuan and Shaniss before cutting to scenes of Mikuan’s family fishing. It’s a happy gathering, small silver fish pulled from the water. Then there’s a campfire, and the two girls are singing badly along to some music, and a brother berates them the way brothers do, and they throw fish at each other, and Mikuan’s parents and grandma laugh.

Cut to home, when Mikuan asks her mother if Shaniss can stay to dinner. The mother refuses a little abruptly, which adds a question to the happy mood—and is important tonally, pre-figuring a switch. Soon we’re with Mikuan in her bed at night when Shaniss throws pebbles at her window. Mikuan climbs out to join her friend, and we anticipate childish rebellion. Instead, they creep past three drunk men on the steps of a house and climb in the back window, where Mikuan helps Shaniss lift her dead-drunk mother onto the bed.

In ten minutes or so, the film has shown us a kaleidoscope of life. Then we jump forward to Mikuan and Shaniss in their late teens, one from a stable family and one from the reverse, when they make the choices that will determine the courses of their lives. (Also when Mikuan’s hockey-mad brother delivers with utter puppy-dog sincerity what might be my favorite line in the festival: “I’ve always dreamed of playing for Baie-Comeau.”) 

The film is based on the poetic autobiographical novel of the same name by Naomi Fontaine. (It translates as For You.) A member of the Innu nation, Fontaine also co-wrote the script with director Verreault, whom as far as I can tell isn’t Indigenous herself, although I may be mistaken. However, Verreault shot the film on the reserve with mostly non-professional actors, and I would imagine they contributed their own take on their characters, which were, of course, created by someone they knew.

I wish other emerging filmmakers and writers would watch this film—to enjoy it, but also to learn from it.

Not just emerging. Any second, I’m going to re-open a script I’m rewriting and make sure my protagonist enjoys sufficient coffee and spends enough time tickling her son. Wide shots are good. Skies. Hockey.

Maybe not hockey in this one. (Although my beer leagues are starting up again for the winter.)

Meanwhile, Kuessipan deserves a wide audience, more than just filmmakers. The best art says, This Is What It’s Like, whatever it is.

And that’s what this film shows us.

Lesley Krueger’s latest novel is Mad Richard.