Hmm: Take This Waltz review

Take This Waltz is disorienting from the start, in no small part due to the fact that it is set in present-day Canada and my narrow, jingoistic American brain  could not figure out why Michelle Williams kept saying ‘soory’ until forty minutes into the movie. But even after I finally figured that out, the first two thirds of the film are still eyeroll inducing. Unfortunately, Take this Waltz suffers from Serious Writer syndrome,  an ailment comprised of faux subtlety and other advanced creative writing tropes that tends to afflict earnest, indie films like this one, about ordinary people with ordinary problems.

Margo, the film’s protagonist, meets cute with a guy in Montreal at some sort of 18th century colonial reenactment town. With the sort of happenstance that only occurs in the movies, they meet again on the plane back to wherever it is they live in Canada and immediately have one of those metaphorical conversations, too rich and too hokey to be true. “I’m afraid of missing connections.” Margo says to her muscular confidante Daniel played by Luke Kirby, one of those actors who you’ll feel like you’ve seen in a thousand recurring guest roles on TV, but whose name always escape you. Daniel, like characters in movies with Serious Writer Syndrome tend to do, can parse Margo’s intentions with the keen acumen of someone that only the creator of all the characters can posess. He is also a rickshaw driver.  Read the rest of this entry »