Verona: Ontario-Set Coming of Age Drama Languid and Lovely

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B

For a film where not much happens, Verona is strangely beguiling, which augurs well for the prospects of Canadian writer-director Sebastian Back, here making his feature debut. The film’s lovely use of natural light and effortless pacing is almost hallucinatory, especially as it surveys the abundant forests and waterways of its rural locale, often from above.

Essentially a coming-of-age drama set across a few languid summer days in the actual Ontario town of Verona, outside Kingston — where Back grew up and filmed on location — the movie follows young Camila (Kat Khan) whose occasional narration abets the film’s slight dialogue.

Camila lives with her kindly and in-love parents Arthur and Bennie (Andy Marshall and Yanna McIntosh) and is secretly dating the town’s preternaturally gifted spiritual leader, Mackenzie (Basia Wyszynski). They have dinner, say prayers, make out at Mackenzie’s lakeside home.

During the film’s main section, Camila and her friends — all part of a church group led by Mackenzie but separate from her — party with Eric, the town’s cucumber-cool Bowie-esque chef (Eric McDonald) on his birthday, first in a field and, when it begins to rain, indoors.

The coke and booze–fueled party spills into the overnight and the next day, where Camila has an ill-advised sexual encounter that will have regrettable repercussions. Garlanding this main section are small, intimate, standalone scenes that invite the viewer to simply watch and reflect on the moment: Camila and her parents enjoying a beautiful dinner prepared by Eric; Camila and Eric goofing off in the local variety store; Bennie stroking cows in a field.

Back has described his film as “a humid slice of life from a forested suburb. Four dreamy summer days shifting between Camila's deteriorating relationship with her girlfriend, her mother's wanderlust, and her father's reckoning with his traumatic past.”

Which is about right. Much of what unfolds in Verona — its denizens almost otherworldly in their hipness and sexual fluidity, not to mention their complete acceptance of a very young, vibrant, female Christian spiritual leader with a tendency to speak in platitudes — happens inside people’s heads. Yet the principal cast effectively conveys emotion and intent wordlessly.

Yup, it’s beguiling. Keen to see what Back does next.

Verona. Written and directed by Sebastian Back. Starring Kat Khan, Andy Marshall, Yanna McIntosh, Basia Wyszynski and Eric McDonald. In Toronto’s Cineplex Yonge and Dundas November 3; in select Landmark Theatres for one night only November 6; and on VOD December 5.