I’m a sucker for films with even a modicum of scientific literacy in their DNA. So what happens the very week I decide to calculate my age on various planets – did you know that 50 Earth years is fewer than 27 on Mars? Along comes Space & Time , a romantic drama where the main character experiences a crisis brought on by the fact that she’s – wait for it – almost one Saturn year old!
There’s more to it than that, of course. Twenty-nine-year-old particle physicist Siobhan (Victoria Kucher) is in a comfortable relationship with boyfriend Sean (Steven Yaffee) – maybe too comfortable. He’s spinning his wheels as a photographer, while she’s thinking about applying for a fellowship in Geneva. An argument over their future together leads to a sombre realization: “The only thing we have in common is this relationship.”
The result plays like a strange combination of Marriage Story and The Big Bang Theory . There’s less drama than the recent Noah Baumbach divorce tale, and fewer laughs than the hit TV show, although Amy Jo Johnson as a flaky psychic is pretty funny; where Siobhan looks at Saturn and sees an astronomical body, she’s all about its astrological significance.
Lack of TTC breakdowns pushes this film into the realm of science fiction.
Toronto writer/director Shawn Gerrard frames his story as a love letter to the city – the opening scene feature Sean and Siobhan planning a camping trip to the Toronto Islands. (Lucky they cancel, since it’s against municipal bylaws to stay overnight there.) Characters are also forever hopping on the TTC, although its lack of breakdowns pushes this film into the realm of science fiction.
Nicely paced over its 89 minutes, Space & Time follows its two eminently likeable characters as they spiral away from each other like subatomic particles after breaking apart in a supercollider. Is that taking a metaphor too far? Perhaps, but Siobhan is also obsessed with the theory of the multiverse, the notion that there exist alternate realities with different versions of ourselves who made better choices – or worse ones.
Speaking of exotic physics, I think Space & Time may have fallen into a wormhole – after a debut at the Austin Film Festival in 2017, it’s only now getting a limited Canadian release. It’s a shame it isn’t more widely available; stripping aside all its scientific trappings – which you don’t need to geek out about, honestly – at its core is a simple, bittersweet tale of romance and the life choices we make, right here on this planet, where a year is a year.
Space & Time opens Feb. 21 at the Carlton in Toronto.
4 stars out of 5
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
