In new romantic comedy Peak Everything, Adam (Patrick Hivon), gets apocalyptic premonitions after he buys a light-therapy box. He falls in love with Tina (Piper Perabo), the customer service representative for the light-therapy company.Immina Films & Metafilms/Supplied
Peak Everything
Written and directed by Anne Émond
Starring Patrick Hivon, Piper Perabo and Connor Jessup
Classification N/A; 100 minutes
Opens in select theatres Sept. 26, including TIFF Lightbox in Toronto
Like its central character, a depressed kennel owner named Adam who lives in a bedroom community of Montreal, the new romcom Peak Everything is desperately seeking some kind of connection. With its audience, with its characters, with its own up-and-down tone. Yet as genial and well-meaning as writer-director Anne Émond’s film can sometimes present itself, it ultimately drives any potential suitors away, leaving everyone frustrated and confused as to where, exactly, everything went just a little too off the rails.
The problems don’t exactly start with Adam (Patrick Hivon), whose loneliness and apocalyptic premonitions are magnified after he buys a light-therapy box (a real “come to light” moment if there ever was one), and begins to fall hopelessly, foolishly in love with Tina (Piper Perabo). In a twee twist, Tina is not a co-worker or neighbour but a Sudbury-based customer service representative for the light-therapy company who, despite her unfamiliarity with French, finds herself inexorably drawn to this anonymous Québécois bachelor.
As played by a thoroughly convincing and engaged Hivon, Adam arrives on screen full of spirit, far more than the script seems to afford him. But after Tina enters the picture, matters get irreparably jumbled. An earthquake, a wacky encounter with pot dealers, a sting by police, a misunderstanding with Tina’s teenage daughter − Émond piles up the contrivances steadily, forcing Hivon and Perabo to carry the twists and turns as if the weight of the world was on their shoulders.
If this were solely Hivon’s show, the audience might come out the other side unscathed. But Perabo − the Texas actor best known for her Coyote Ugly days, though she’s more recently been a mainstay of television, including the hit series Yellowstone − is simply not picking up whatever sensibilities and vibe Émond is laying down for her. There is a fundamental clash of performance and material here that turns any potential of chemistry between Hivon and Perabo into mush.
Perabo, left, is best known for her role in the movie Coyote Ugly, but has recently starred in the hit TV series Yellowstone.Immina Films & Metafilms/Supplied
Occasionally, particularly attuned audiences can see just what Émond is trying to do here in this tale of love in the face of the presumed final days (the film’s French title is the far better Amour Apocalypse), which is perhaps why the film has already enjoyed such a healthy festival life, having played the Directors Fortnight program at Cannes this spring, and closing out the Toronto International Film Festival the other week. Peak Everything is far from a world-ending disaster. But it won’t save anyone, either.