We know how this story is supposed to go. There is a guy, there is a girl. He is married, and she is too. His wife is boring. Her husband is adulterous. We see them laugh; we see them flirt; we see them passionately have sex.
By most movies’ standards, this is enough for us to care about them — we can forgive their transgressions if they want to be together. According to many filmmakers, this is love.
Martin’s Pink Pickle is a subversive, anti-romantic comedy that builds this fantasy while asking the deeper, harder questions that a more shallow film would forget. Rather than seeing, feeling, and living in a heightened world because it makes us feel better about ourselves, this film replicates the conventions of Hollywood wish-fulfilment only to explore what a more simplistic film would sweep under the rug.
This hyper indie and low-budget Canadian production was written by Curtis Woloschuk, a film critic and SFU alumnus who has evidently seen his fair share of mind-numbing, Nicholas Sparks-style romances. Instead of critiquing conventions with witty prose, he has attempted to transform the genre from within — to judge dumb clichés by making a film that respects its audience through a refusal to heighten its characters’ relationships and devalue their problems.
We don’t empathize with a fantastical cartoon; Woloschuk has written a screenplay that causes us to feel for the characters because we can’t escape to the warmth of simple contrivances and easy coincidences.
Woloschuk, a fellow critic, is probably familiar with Roger Ebert’s famous phrase, “it’s not what a film is about, but how it’s about it.” Martin’s Pink Pickle has a good cast with uniformly strong performances, especially considering the film’s microscopic budget, but it mostly succeeds for the reason opposite the style: the content.
Although director René Brar’s DIY style and detached visuals are fitting, too often the film’s cinematography feels amateurish. Some choices, like the wide shots that create depth and detachment by placing objects in the foreground that frame the characters and add another layer of separation between them and the audience, are interesting and give the film a contemplative tone. But too often the imagery is overexposed and fails to engage beyond the thoughtful compositions.
During its final scene, Martin’s Pink Pickle has a glimmer of superlative filmmaking: the style compliments the content in a masterfully expressive way. The two “forbidden lovers” have come to the end of their rope. They must decide to make out (and pursue love, because those two things seem to be synonymous in most romance flicks), or make a harder but more realistic decision.
Brar frames the couple on the edges of the frame to accentuate their separation but to also tease the audience — they would normally meet in the middle for a climactic kiss. It’s ridiculous and we know this isn’t true, but that’s why we go to these movies: to see, feel, and live something we can’t.
Martin’s Pink Pickle, however, is a poignant film because we, like the characters, remain stuck. There’s no easy way out and everyone leaves a little bruised. There is no final kiss, no easy healing, and no minor consequences. Unlike what most romance films would have you believe, not even a climactic kiss dressed in warm golden hues could heal that.
