- The Burning Season
- Directed by Sean Garrity
- Written by Jonas Chernick and Diana Frances
- Starring Jonas Chernick, Sara Canning and Joe Pingue
- Classification N/A; 89 minutes
- Opens in select theatres May 10
Critic’s Pick
The collateral damage that comes with keeping secrets is not a new premise: Countless stories hinge on exploring the perils of burying deep-seeded trauma. So a film based entirely on the destruction left by two people flailing amid decades of suffering might seem almost formulaic.
Yet The Burning Season offers a fresh and heart-wrenching take on the collisions of love, betrayal and personal tragedy. It’s an examination of the ways in which even the best intentions come to reflect a warped sense of self and reality, and how intimacy can be weaponized to ward off vulnerability.
When JB (Jonas Chernick) breaks down at his wedding and reveals a long-time affair with friend Alena (Sara Canning), we work backward from that moment until arriving at their first meeting. Across the film, we learn that it took years for their friendship to blossom into an illicit, summers-only romance. We watch the two struggle – and fail spectacularly – to maintain separate romantic relationships as a means of achieving normalcy. And finally, we reach the beginning: the prologue that sets their shame-ridden adulthoods in motion and explains their descent into the reality they’ve created.
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The Burning Season offers a fresh take on the collisions of love, betrayal and personal tragedy, writes Anne T. Donahue.Supplied
It helps that director Sean Garrity chose to centre his story on rich, complicated characters. While JB and Alena seem merely selfish and self-destructive at the onset, Garrity’s commitment to slowly revealing their intentions helps ensure the duo’s evolution into three-dimensional human beings (albeit still selfish and self-destructive) instead of caricatures of unhappy adults. JB’s wife, Poppy (Tanisha Thammavongsa) and Alena’s husband, Tom (Joe Pingue), grow along with them, making the consequences of their spouses’ indiscretions even more heartbreaking.
Winner of best screenplay at the Whistler Film Festival and the Canadian Film Festival, and a current nominee for best feature film at the WGC Awards, The Burning Season is straight to the point and solidly presented, while (thankfully) rejecting the cynicism that tends to define infidelity sagas. Instead, it commits to showcasing the consequences of shutting parts of yourself off to deal with pain – or, worse, depriving yourself of happiness believing you can’t be redeemed.
Compelling and smart (and set against a stunning Algonquin backdrop), The Burning Season is an unflinching examination of what adults do to feel whole again. An intimate watch of emotional carnage you hope you never have to experience in real life.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)