Expiration
What goes up...
Taking place over the course of a single night in Montreal, Expiration follows the intertwined stories of several characters.
The film starts in small town Canada when Niki (Erin Simkin) tells Sam (Gavin Heffernan) that she’s pregnant. She then drops her bombshell and tells Sam that he’s the father.
Sam responds by trying to do the decent thing and invites Niki to night in the city in order to propose to her.
Rachael (Janet Lane) lives in Montreal and delivers drugs for a living. On the same night, she has a special delivery to make.
On the night, Rachael and Sam are among the victims of a hold-up in a convenience store and their lives become entangled as they try to recover what was stolen from them, journeying through parts of Montreal that neither of them imagined could exist.
Niki, awakening in a now Samless car, assumes she has been abandoned by her nearly boyfriend. Disoriented and without the keys to drive home, she too steps into the streets of Montreal and quickly finds herself in trouble.
Fortunately for Niki, she is rescued by Julia (Denise Depass), a prostitute and mother trying to strike an impossible balance between a need for an income and the need to support her daughter. Niki’s night becomes entwined not only with Julia’s but also with Julia’s wayward daughter, Naomi (Yetide Bedaki).
All of these characters are on a journey, lost and looking for a direction and Expiration follows them over the course of the night as they try to find some sort of meaning in their entangled relationships.
Expiration does get off to a bit of a slow start, but as the story unfolds the strength of the script becomes apparent and the film becomes thoroughly engrossing.
This is helped immeasurably by the ability of the actors involved. Director, Gavin Heffernan has done an excellent job of finding a group of very talented unknowns, all of who deliver performances that are both consistently believable and genuinely moving.
And the performances are vital, given that this is a film that really does centre on the characters – all of them lost, out of their depth and trying to make some sort of sense of their lives. And it’s this search for meaning that not only draws the characters together but also underlines the way in which the characters, despite their diversity, have far more in common than any of them would like to admit.
This could have been a very downbeat film, but it isn’t. A dry humour runs throughout as the characters chart their respective courses and the conclusion of the film is as uplifting as it is inevitable.
Expiration has a great script that deals with people, their relationships, their hopes and their fears and is amply supported by a cast of excellent actors. It really is one of those films that can be watched over and over again.
Tuesday 30 Sep 2003 | Paul Pritchard | Drama
