People grieve in different ways that sometimes push boundaries or taste, but Iseaeli filmmaker Savi Gabizon really stretches that concept with Longing, a remake of his 2017 movie of the same name.

New York businessman Daniel (Richard Gere, in a performance that makes his small role in Movie 43 appear nuanced) keeps everyone in his life at a certain distance, due to past trauma and his anti-social behaviour. When an old flame, Rachel (Suzanne Clément of À La Vie), reconnects with Daniel, she tells him about the son she hid from him.  Rachel was pregnant and, because she knew Daniel did not want kids, she gave birth and raised her son Allen in Canada before a recent car accident took his life. Shaken yet curious, Daniel travels to Hamilton ON to learn more about Allen.

As soon as Daniel sets foot in Hamilton, he finds windows into Allen’s life; including his underage girlfriend Lillian (Jessica Clement of Letters to Satan Claus), a problematic crush on a teacher (In The Fade’s Diane Kruger), his expulsion from school, and a scheme to sell marijuana with his friend Mikey (Wayne Burns). Daniel is instantly interested in Allen, mistaking his son’s obsessive qualities as misunderstood passion, and even envisions his spirit (Tomaso Sanelli). The audience, however, has difficulty channeling Daniel’s wavelength. Gere does his best with his cagey character, but Daniel’s insistence to push himself on to other people, using Allen as a crowbar to wedge himself into others lives, is a half-baked and semi-morbid characterization; almost as if the movie is trying hard to satirize incompetent adults who overcompensate to show concern. Other roles are portrayed with peculiar deadpan that conveys that either the actor, or writer/director Gabizon, has misunderstood the character’s sensitivities.

However, acting as an anomaly that I can’t help but obsess over, this constant empathetic disconnect the production has with the material, and vice versa, is what held my attention throughout Longing. Considering some of the ghoulish ideas the movie has about death and closure, it’s actually kind of incredible how the overall numb atmosphere can carry this strange movie through messier areas of the story. Other filmmakers wanting to depict unconventional grief shouldn’t use Gabizon’s movie as an example to follow, but they rather should study it for how to be resourceful during daunting emotional climaxes. Casual moviegoers will find their own curiosities fulfilled by Longing as a guilty pleasure, even if the viewer becomes frustrated at how stilted and mechanical the film’s spirit is.

Longing is a fascinating failure that serves as proof that even cinema’s more overt blemishes are still, maybe, worth seeking out.

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie