The anomaly in Brendan Gleeson’s increasingly impeccable filmography, Don McKellar’s The Grand Seduction is a bafflingly bland heralding of old-fashioned values such as traditional gender roles, anti-environmental work practices and resistance to multiculturalism. Adapted from the 2003 French-Canadian film Seducing Doctor Lewis, the unabashedly broad film is set in a quaint harbour village, whose residents have been struggling since the fishing industry collapsed. With the possibility of luring a “petrochemical by-product repurposing facility” to the village, they have to convince a young American doctor (Friday Night Lights himbo Taylor Kitsch) to take up permanent residence, and thus embark on a bizarre, backward charm offensive.
As phones are tapped, romantic connections are orchestrated and the small town pretends to be riveted by cricket and jazz, there’s more than a touch of farce, which veers between wholesome and subtly offensive. While Gleeson and his fellow townsfolk are all grizzly bucolic charm, their amiable characters can’t escape the slightly skin-crawling messages of the script, which idealises the technophobic, sexist, Caucasian homogeneity of rural living. This is even seen in the visuals. The picturesque harbour is lovingly captured in wide-shot gold tones, the city in claustrophobic close-ups and cold greys; it’s hard not to notice that the city has people of different ethnicities, while Newfoundland’s Trinity Bay remains definitely whitewashed.
Kitsch and Gleeson are watchable; the former playing down his usual smugness, the latter embracing his bear-like character with gusto. The community spirit, older warm-hearted characters and nostalgic depiction of rural living may appeal to an older demographic, but frankly Gleeson could do much better.