Beginning this weekend, you can catch “I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight” at Brandon’s Landmark Cinemas – a romantic comedy set in Winnipeg.
Sean Garrity, who hails from Rivers, Manitoba wrote, directed and produced the film with many scenes shot during a typical Manitoba winter.
“I felt like I really wanted to make a movie that was signature Manitoba, and so I shot it in the winter,” says Garrity. “A lot of Hallmark Movies you see on TV have a lot of fake winter, and fake snow; people are outside and they have their coats unbuttoned and their breath doesn’t make any kind of mist in the air, and so I was very much after a kind of an esthetic of a Manitoba winter that I haven’t seen before on the screen – and we had a lot of fun doing it.”
Garrity says his lead characters also reflect two prominent ethnic groups in Winnipeg “one of them is Mennonite and one of them is Filipina, because I kind of feel like those are two very foundation communities in the City of Winnipeg.”
(Image: Hera Nalam as IRIS in I PROPOSE WE NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN AFTER TONIGHT. Photo by Andrew Forbes)
(Image: Kristian Jordan as SIMON in I PROPOSE WE NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN AFTER TONIGHT. Photo by Andrew Forbes)
“I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight” begins “in the depths of a Winnipeg winter, when everyone covers their faces in scarves and balaclavas to protect them from the cold, and Iris mistakes Simon for someone she knows. This initiates an energetic, fun, sexy affair complete with all the passion and intensity of a 20-something infatuation. But when it starts to feel like real love, Simon gets freaked out, and decides to take a step back to get perspective by leaving town for a few weeks. Iris interprets this as “let’s take a break” like most of us would, and downloads an app to hook up with a bunch of other people. Then, when Simon returns, earnest in his rekindled love for Iris, he discovers she’s been unfaithful, and is devastated. He takes off. When she goes looking for him, and starts meeting other people in Simon’s life, she finds out she doesn’t know him anywhere near as well as she thought she did.”
Garrity says the character Simon’s family comes from Morden, and Iris’ family is from the city, “so her family plays a whole lot more – and 20 of the movie’s 29 cast members are Filipino Canadians.” He says with such a large Filipino cast, they shot a couple of scenes in ‘Taglish’ – half-Tagalog and half-English.
“You know, mom and dad are speaking in a mix of the two languages and the kids are talking back in English – and to me it felt like the quintessential Canadian home story,” says Garrity. “It worked so well, we decided not to subtitle those scenes, and many people who’ve seen those scenes have said ‘My God, that’s my house!'”
He also says the film did so well when it opened in Winnipeg with long line-ups, that they opened it on a second screen bumping “Spiderman”.
“I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight” starring Kristian Jordan as Simon and Hera Nalam as Iris, can be seen in Brandon starting on Friday at Landmark Cinemas.
