Ye Olde Yellow School Bus breaks down while conveying a bevy of seven elderly female tourists on an impromptu detour in the middle of nowhere, more specifically the middle of provincial Quebec. They find refuge in an abandoned two-story tumbledown cabin. (One of their number actually mouths the famous Bette Davis line: "What a dump!") A mock survival tale, a geriatric Swiss Family Robinson, seems to be shaping up. "It'll be interesting," predicts one of the party as they bed down for the night. Oh no it won't. They take their pills, throw rocks at salmon, fashion fish traps out of pantyhose, set up smoke signals with the help of the Mohawk in their company, pick berries, catch frogs, talk. Especially talk. A distinctive semi-improvisational stagnation grips the action. The characters, though hardly their fictitious predicament, are real: the nonprofessional players keep their own names and identities, and share their own stories. The most fascinating and touching and startling moments are the photo-album biographies of each woman in her turn, spanning from her youth through her middle age. These photos would be no less fascinating or touching or startling were they to be handed to you in a packet across the coffee table. Which is to say that, slipped in as they are at random in the narrative, they have nothing whatever to do with cinematic virtues. Directed by Cynthia Scott. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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