BY KATE JOHNSTON & SHAUNA MACDONALD
Directors of “Tru Love”
for Lesbian.com
“There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen.
“Tru Love” was shot in the winter of 2013 in downtown Toronto and on Toronto Island. The air is different in winter, everything appears to slow down and the light itself takes on a whole new quality. It defines the environment. Days are shorter. Starker. Exposed. Crystalized.
The film opens with an extreme close up of water rushing in slow motion, ice cracking and breaking up, tiny triangles of ice flying into the air — all beautifully shot by cinematographer Maya Bankovic. It’s as if the ice is dancing. This footage was taken on the first ferry from Toronto harbor, en route to Toronto Island. It is elemental, poetic and a recurring motif, during key transitions throughout the film. The score by Patric Caird is haunting, underscoring a romantic beauty, a yearning and loneliness.
The triangles of ice, of tension — Tru (friend), Alice (mother) and Suzanne (daughter), are three women, each quietly frozen in their lives. They are all yearning separately; estranged in their own way from themselves or each other, each needing to break free from constraint, to be ‘cracked open’ in their hearts, in their lives.
As the story opens and progresses, an unexpected attraction builds between Tru and Alice, and Suzanne becomes increasingly threatened. This triangle tightens, closing in on itself, compressing and colliding until it shatters like tiny diamonds of ice and explodes into a rush of emotion, eventually setting each character free.
Look for this film at film festivals throughout the summer, including Frameline in San Francisco.
