“Somewhere in California”: New Regional Spaces of Mobility in Contemporary Vancouver Cinema

Résumé 0

Scholars of critical regionalism have argued convincingly for a complex re-definition of regions/regionalism that examines the inherent mobility of cultures and their re-appropriation of place. This article aims to bring American-based critical regionalism into dialogue with research on Canada-U.S. cross-border regions, specifically the Pacific Northwest (Cascadia). I will examine an emerging aspect of western culture in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver, i.e. a (post)regional space of flows governed by the hyper-volatile film and television/entertainment industry that links Vancouver to Los Angeles. The cinema of award-winning Vancouver auteur filmmaker Carl Bessai is illustrative of this phenomenon. Bessai’s two most recent films, Fathers and Sons (2010) and Sisters and Brothers (2011) feature characters in non-traditional families who desire to work in film and television in Los Angeles. Through caustic humor, the films engage in multiple levels of critique: of the dysfunctional nature of these cross-border families, but also of the superficiality of image-culture and the “forced” migration of talent who are sucked into the entertainment vortex. Analyzing these films through the lens of critical regionalism foregrounds “West Coastness” as a region of flows, of bodies in mobility/circulation yet—in the case of Bessai—without side-stepping the obvious asymmetries inherent in Canada’s complex and enduringly ambivalent relationship with the United States.