Somer’s sophomore feature a dramedy about family and guilt

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It’s tempting to assume that Calgary filmmaker Sandi Somers’ second feature, Hailey Rose, is at least partially autobiographical.

Rightly or wrongly, down-to-earth dramedies about families are often seen as springing from the real life of its creator. There are some surface similarities between Hailey, Somer’s protagonist played by Vancouver actress Em Haine, and the filmmaker. Like Hailey, Sommers grew up in Nova Scotia before heading to Calgary, where she has lived and worked as a filmmaker for two decades. Like Hailey, she attended baloney barbecues when growing up out East and had her first sips of beer while sitting around the campfire. Like Hailey, Somers says she would feel “westernized” whenever she would return to Cape Breton after spending so much time in Alberta.

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But, ultimately, Somers was aiming for something a little more universal in her tale about a young woman returning home to Nova Scotia to reluctantly reunite with her estranged family.

“Originally, it started as a young woman going through what a lot of people call Saturn Return,” says Somers, using an astrological term that refers to an adult coming of age in their late 20s. It’s around the age of 27, 28. It’s just a time when you start to come into your own as a human being. Is that belief mine, or is that belief what I grew up in? You start shedding your skin to become who you are.”

That’s where the screenplay for Hailey Rose, which opens Friday in Calgary theatres,  started but as it developed, it also became a family drama – albeit often a very funny one – and a character study that explores how two very different sisters and their difficult mother negotiate dysfunction after a death in the family. The story begins during the childhood of a reserved Hailey and the high-strung, heart-on-her-sleeve Rose (played with unhinged exuberance by Calgary actress Caitlynne Medrek). Hailey is doted upon by her sickly father (Billy MacLellan) but has trouble connecting with her mother Olga (played by Lethbridge expat Kari Matchett). When her father dies alone on a fishing excursion that Hailey was too hungover to join him on, she feels as if the family blames her. She escapes to Calgary and cuts off all ties for years while in a loving if cautious relationship with the non-binary Syd (Riley Reign). When Rose convinces Hailey to return to Nova Scotia, she becomes entangled in more family drama and must come to terms with the past she ran away from.

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While this may sound heavy, it’s a funny and affectionate film filled with gorgeous scenery of the East Coast – most of it was shot just outside of Halifax – and some endearing supporting characters, including Cole (played by Josh Cruddas), the kind and still-smitten ex-boyfriend she abandoned.

“My attempt was to write full characters who you could love and hate simultaneously,” she says. “Sometimes there are people in your life or in your family that you just want to shake sometimes. But they are who they are and you try and find a way to accept them. One of the things with Kari (Matchett), she just took that character in so well. She didn’t make the character angry or anything, this was just the character: This is who I am. She did such a brilliant job because it was so important for the complexity of a character like Olga to have someone realize she i doing the best she can and is just emotionally dysfunctional.”

The film offers juicy roles for all three of its leads and also showcases Somer’s knack for naturalistic dialogue, which included digging up some gems specific to the Nova Scotia dialect. The resulting film seamlessly mixes comedy with drama.

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“Writing this, I didn’t know if I was a good enough writer to pull that off,” she says. “You have complex characters that could easily be hated, but you want them to be funny (and) to have their tragedy. I set out to do that because that’s life. So many times, I’ve been in utter tragedy and just laughed about something because you need that relief. We all go through stuff and laughing through dramatic, traumatic things is a good thing. So I worked at that really hard, to find that balance but also to not take it out of the human experience.”

Somers has directed over 75 short films, music videos and episodes of television and web series, but Hailey Rose is only her second full-length feature. It follows 2017’s Ice Blue, a chilling and dread-filled dramatic thriller about a less-than-perfect mother and a dysfunctional family.

Somers also founded Herland Video Production Mentorship Program, a five-month program for female filmmakers with previous industry experience. The program was initiated in part to address the imbalance of women working in film and television. Representation continues to be important to Somers. The film features queer, non-binary characters and one in a wheelchair (Brian George, a former stand-up comedian and accessibility advocate based out of Halifax.)

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“It was important to me that all the characters be represented by appropriate actors,” she says.

While there is an LGBTQ+ relationship at the centre of the film, Somers says cinema has evolved to a point where presenting these relationships is hardly novel.

“I can look at my trajectory as a queer artist from my first queer film and my world leading up to this one,” she says. “It’s interesting to me to look at how my work was initially underground then moved its way above ground. What’s amazing to me was the amount of people who talked to me after they watched (Hailey Rose) and they talked about their relationship with their daughter, or their relationship with something. Has anyone ever mentioned queer or LGBTQ+ or any of that? Never. That’s never been brought up. Some people talk about (not having) a relationship with their daughter anymore and it struck home.

“I’m maybe generalizing too much, but I do love that all communities can see this film … and it still hits home that it’s about relationships and how we are as families and nothing else counts, like where it’s from. In terms of the actual story, it’s a universal thing that family is family.”

Hailey Rose opens at Cineplex Odeon Eau Claire on Friday.

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