Last month, Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” was privately screened in NYC. It’s 91 minutes and Richard Gere’s performance is said to be great. This could very well be Schrader’s most personal film as it tackled a dying artist in the last stages of his creative life.
All of this to say that I fully expected it to be submitted for next May’s Cannes Film Festival. Schrader has confirmed that very intention in an interview with Le Monde, where he, curiously, compares “Oh, Canada” to one of his greatest films:
It’s the first time, since Mishima, that I’ve made a puzzle film. Or an assembly of scattered memories, heterogeneous formats, fragments.” And despite wrapping two months ago, a 91-minute cut (retaining every scene shot over 17 days) is already finished, now only awaiting a score by the group Phosphorescent.
But when do we see it? Schrader thinks “Oh, Canada” has a cast that would please Cannes’ Thierry Fremaux, but adds that “often, what should please him scares him.” Should all else fail, he says Venice is the next best option — that’s where he’s premiered his last three films (“First Reformed,” “The Card Counter” and “Master Gardener”).
The film, based on Russell Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone,” stars Jacob Elordi, Richard Gere and Uma Thurman. This is said to be a very grim film about a health-stricken artist who comes to terms with his own life.