Before Anything You Say is a 2017 Canadian experimental domestic drama film directed and produced by Shelagh Carter and written by Deborah Schnitzer about a couple struggling to maintain their love and marriage even as a life-altering decision threatens to tear them apart. Carter's second indepdendent feature film is partly autobiographical, its "impulse" based on an event in Carter's own life and another experience in Schnitzer's. The film toured mainly in Europe, at Film Festival International-organized events in 2017 and 2018, winning a handful of awards ahead of its Canadian premiere at the Gimli Film Festival in 2018, where Shelagh Carter was presented with an award by the Directors Guild of Canada.
Synopsis
While on vacation in Paris, a couple are faced with a crisis when Jack (Darcy Fehr) announces his intent to pursue a dangerous job that would require him to live in Bangkok for five years, working to combat human trafficking. He assumes that his wife Isobel (Kristen Harris) will follow, leaving her life and career behind. However, Isobel is not prepared to follow blindly. Hurt and feeling misunderstood by one another, they attempt to reconcile their lives and love in Paris while Jack attends business meetings, and in their recently built dream home in Winnipeg. Both struggle with a desire to care for others without being aware of their inability to care for each other, refusing to give up despite themselves and despite the world around them.
Cast
Kristen Harris
Darcy Fehr
John Bluethner
Toni Reimer
Graham Ashmore
Themes
On the surface, Before Anything You Say is a film about "life-altering decisions", but the way the film deals with the theme, the decision in question leads to an argument which brings other issues to the surface, as Sheila O'Malley points out in an interview with Shelagh Carter: Jack shuts Isobel out of his decisions, and Isobel has abandonment issues: "He is making a decision about his life and trying to involve her, but in her mind, he's leaving her." Carter said in response:Exactly. It's there and we were trying not to flag it. It's a feeling that registers. ... I'm discovering in my next film – which has a more Chekhovian influence – that all of my work in some way is about aspects of betrayal. And abandonment. It's something really deep in me from my own childhood, and it's coming up in different forms. The theme of abandonment is seeded throughout the film through brief inserts of other people: younger women, the woman at the coffee shop, the woman at the bar, the couple walking on the street, seeing the girls out the window, shots of long-haired women walking away from the camera:It's tied to what hasn't been addressed within the couple. The fact that she abandoned her daughter. The fact that she's heard from her from time to time. The fact that instead Martin reaches out to her. The father takes care of everybody else's son and can't take care of his own. They're both haunted. And then there's the trafficking of women, the lack of respect for women … We wanted to gently touch on that without overkill, and we also wanted to deal with repetition. These people keep showing up. What world are they really in? Are they contaminating the two main characters? Or are they there to point out that they haven't dealt with their shit?