Take This Waltz

Written and Directed by Sarah Polley.

RED, GREEN, BLUE, YELLOW…

You know what, Sarah Polley? I got too distracted by the colors.

No, I wasn’t. But I realized pretty soon what you were trying to tell, through this young married woman’s wondering, lingering in her apparent sustained little boring and yet satisfying life. At least it should be satisfying, but for this young woman it wasn’t. Because she’s the kind of person that will be looking to something else, looking for ways to fill a space that it’s probably already and permanently unfulfilling. Like the drunken says, ‘Life has a gap in it, it just does. You don’t go crazy trying to fill it like some lunatic.”

Michelle Williams’ character falls for a guy for non greater reasons, but she’s been happily married for five years, so all the imminent falling in love becomes a repressed process of wanting something she shouldn’t pursue. But is she really trying to be faithful to her husband or is she slowly working a way out of her marriage? She is in between. Until she ultimately gives in. When I said I realized soon what Sarah Polley was trying to tell, maybe it’s because she wrote this character well. Because if this character falls for someone the way she did, for a mere talk in an airplane and then follows this event regardless of the circumstances around her, the way she wonders, the way she questions things that can have direct answers, then these events will be happening to her more often than not, and she will not only hurt the other people around her but especially herself along the way. Then following this descendent melancholic world of hers, Polley composes a very neat and colorful, perhaps as a means of contrast, set and the authentic performances also bring more beautiful light to the film, even laughter. It’s part of the in between, and I guess the film is between an absorbing take on marriage and between long and open takes showing meanings of solitude.

I guess choosing that flag was also part of the colorful contrast.