Trying to Overcome

By Melora Koepke, "Mile End in sight" - Hour Ca - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Thursday, October 16, 2008

"Adam's Wall" lends fresh eyes to age-old themes and a Montreal neighbourhood

Mile End, and Montreal in general, has rarely looked as lovely as it does in Michael MacKenzie's Adam's Wall, a coming-of-age story set in our city's storied Jewish quarter.

In the film's opening sequence, powdery snow blows off the rooftops of triplexes as the wind blows through the trees of the Mountain, and an intro voiceover by Adam (Jesse Aaron Dwyre) tells us his life story thus far. Adam's parents are dead, and he grew up in the house of his grandfather, a rabbi, surrounded by ancient books and the mournful timbre of a life without parents.

When he meets Yasmine (Flavia Bechara) at a pro-Palestinian demo, his world expands exponentially. Yasmine is a pretty young Lebanese literature student (who wants to translate the words of Sufis) living in Montreal with her art-dealer dad (Paul Ahmarani) while her mom stays in Beirut.

Meanwhile, Adam's grandfather objects to a naked-breasted statue in the window of Yasmine's father's gallery on behalf of his community's children.

The rift between their two cultures deepens. Then bombs fall on Beirut, and Yasmine's mother goes missing. The drama between Paul and Yasmine deepens. Winding through all this is an interplay of mystical secrets of Sufism and Kabbalah being kept by a bookstore owner named Mostapha (Tyrone Benskin).

Adam's Wall is a very local sort of story about the communities hidden from the outside view in our city, and the overt exposition in the script seems most appropriate for a younger audience - a Mile End afterschool special, if you will, with a fresh take on an old theme.

Beautiful soundtrack contributions by Patrick Watson add to the youthful appeal in this fresh take on old differences and two young people who are trying to overcome them.