Anne at 13,000 Ft.
Directed by Kazik Radwanski
Running time: 1hr15 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE
Anne at 13,000 Ft
It’s a scene we’ve seen many times before in other, less inspired films of the boilerplate “heartwarming” variety: our protagonist goes skydiving, the screaming adrenaline release of the jump handily signifying a general emotional liberation, a carpe diem victory, another strike off the bucket list. In Anne at 13,000 Ft., however, it plays a little differently. There’s exhilaration the first time, certainly, but each time the title character takes the leap — again, and again, multiple times in the course of the film — it becomes less an act of freedom than one of dependency, betraying a desperate urge to be suspended above life for a while.
Played with raw-nerved fearlessness by Deragh Campbell, Anne is a woman whose need to be in mid-air makes perfect sense: it’s the only place she doesn’t feel friction with absolutely everything and everyone around her. A vibrant, volatile worker at children’s daycare centre, she has an anxiety disorder that the film doesn’t specifically diagnose, though it vividly depicts how it affects her and those in her vortex — from the children who largely thrill to her care, to the co-workers who roll less easily with her unpredictability, to the friends, family and recently acquired boyfriend who love her as she is, though that doesn’t make their relationships with her any less testy at times.
Canadian director Kazik Radwanski’s remarkable film gains its tension and rhythm from Anne’s inconstant mood and energy, though at no point does it feel like it’s exploiting mental illness for drama: this is intimate, empathetic filmmaking, more preoccupied with how its protagonist feels her way through life than how we should feel about her. Made on a shoestring, and clearly indebted to the John Cassavetes school of close-up realism, it’s only notionally a “small” film: this is life writ large, heart-in-mouth riveting as character study, forcing us to jump with its heroine into freefall, even when she’s on solid ground.
ANNE AT 13,000 FT (2019) Written by Kazik Radwanski, Deragh Campbell | Shot by Nikolay Michaylov | Edited by Ajla Odobasic