The Republic of Love
Encyclopedia
The Republic of Love is a 2003 Canada
/United Kingdom
romantic comedy film
drama directed by Deepa Mehta
. It is based on the novel of the same name by Carol Shields
and starring Bruce Greenwood
and Emilia Fox
. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival
in 2003. It was released publicly on February 13, 2004.
), and his "mermaid researcher" girlfriend Fay (Emilia Fox
). Tom has had a turbulent past with relationships and has had three divorces before the age of 40. Many of Tom's ex-wives turn out to be friends of Fay's. Fay is the opposite from Tom and has an overly high expectation of the men she dates; she expects perfection and wants to emulate her parents' rock-solid marriage. One day, it turns out that Fay's parents' marriage is not as perfect as it seemed and it breaks down suddenly, after 40 years of "wedded bliss". Fay panics and feels insecure in her own relationship and forces Tom to go to great efforts to convince the woman who has become his fiancée that their relationship is different and that they are meant for each other.
and the characters of Tom and Fay were created by her. The Republic of Love was conceived as a film adaptation in 1996, when Triptych Media producer, Anna Stratton
read the book and was highly impressed with its humour and diversity of characters, and confessed to being a fan of Shields's writing. She said, “It was the characters really that offered up a delicious cast for a film. I was also drawn in by the humour –characters, situations and events that made me laugh out loud and the interweaving of the magical elements – the mermaid myth and Tom’s middle of the night radio life – with the love story. The story itself is classic – rapture, rupture, reconciliation – and love stories are one of the most popular filmic forms."
Once Stratton had decided to produce the film, she looked to the United Kingdom
to provide sufficient resources and for a co-producer, given the popularity of Shield's work in the UK. Stratton met British producer Julie Baines in 1998 in San Francisco in 1998 and discussed a collaboration with Baines's Dan Films company and Triptych Media. In the summer of 2000, Stratton approached director Deepa Mehta, who fell in love with the story and commented, "The book, a treatise on the nature of love, attracted me, as it is complex and yet accessible. It is really about different aspects of love – mature love, familial love, sibling love and the nature of love and how elusive it is”. Mehta recommended Bruce Greenwood
to play the role of Tom and subsequently attracted him to the role. Meanwhile Stratton and Baines had remained in contact and met once again in early 2002 to discuss financing the project together and to find the female lead in Emilia Fox. Fox was immediately enticed by the character of Fay and said of the plot, “It mixes the idealistic with the realistic which I thought was very clever, and there’s a strong balance, there’s something we can hold onto.” Producers Chris Auty, Bruce Duggan, Sarah Green, Bruce Greenwood, Mehernaz Lentin, Neil Peplow, Sarah Sulick and Claire Welland would later join the production team.
firmly in the midst of their community where the networks of family and friends form the real street maps." Shields's perception of love is a mythical one, and she has said, " Love is, in the end, a magic and mythical force, inexplicable, indecipherable. Its arrival cannot be arranged nor its properties deconstructed. We can only marvel, as I hope the audience of this film will marvel, that, despite our fear and cynicism, it occasionally enters our lives and transforms us." This mysticism is intended to be reflected in the occupations of the characters with Fay’s involvement with mermaids intended to accentuate her existence with a mythic quality while Tom's charisma over the air waves and his impact on other people's lives is intended to give a magical dimension.
In adapting the script for the screen, Mehta mused over possible techniques that would capture the elusive nature of love on film and compared it to cooking an exotic dish where love is the main ingredient. In the end she collaborated with Esta Spalding
to produce the final script for the film version of the book. Carol Shields was unable to write for the film adaption because of her declining health. She was never able to see the final result, as she died on July 16, 2003, but during pre-production she would occasionally visit, with her husband, to approve of design drawings and photographs of the cast and costumes to be employed.
between November and December 2002. In selecting filming location, producer Anna Stratton felt it important to encapture the atmosphere of the novel by filming in a cold city during the winter. She was also influenced by the line that Tom says to Fay in the film, "geography is destiny" and believed the screen provided a rich visual opportunity to reflect this element of Shields's storytelling. The novel itself was set in Winnipeg
but in filming in Toronto, Mehta attempted to recreated the "Republic" and to provide a paradigm where the characters’ paths could criss cross and they would eventually meet each other. Frequent collaborators, production designer Sandra Kybartas, and cinematographer Douglas Koch were brought in to create the republic setting. They made many experimentations with the lighting style to reflect the contrast of mood in many scenes and to emphasise the strength of the love between the lead characters and their physical beauty, whilst maintaining a delicate balance.
Mehta later cited that the film was the most difficult she had ever experienced, given the ongoing financial anxieties and a series of mishaps onset and filming delays which led her to believe that the film was jinxed.
However, the film received a number of negative reviews. The film was awarded a 44% rating by the website Rotten Tomatoes
. Brian Gibson of the Vue Weekly
in Edmonton
said of the film, "The tiresome zaniness and Seinfeldian conceits might be forgivable if the romantic plot weren’t so full of empty truisms and nonsense lines that would stump a Zen monk." Film critic Christopher Null
criticized the directing of Deepa Mehta, saying, "director Deepa Mehta does nothing to make this palatable. In fact, she goes out of her way to distance us from the story and the characters, most notably through washing the entire movie into total gray, giving it just a hint of color (in the end, the movie brightens up in a particularly awful scene that has animated flowers growing over the frame). Wintry symbolism has never felt so forced—and in a film that ought to have been played as a romantic comedy, it's never been more out of place, either."
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
/United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
romantic comedy film
Romantic comedy film
Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily"...
drama directed by Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta, LLD is a Genie Award-winning Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, most known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire , Earth , and Water , among which Earth was submitted by Indian government for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film...
. It is based on the novel of the same name by Carol Shields
Carol Shields
Carol Ann Shields, CC, OM, FRSC, MA was an American-born Canadian author. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.-Biography:Shields was born in Oak Park, Illinois...
and starring Bruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood is a Canadian actor and musician. He is generally known for his roles as U.S. presidents in Thirteen Days and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and for his role as Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 Star Trek film...
and Emilia Fox
Emilia Fox
Emilia Rose Elizabeth Fox is an award-winning English actress, known for her role as Dr. Nikki Alexander on BBC crime drama Silent Witness, having joined the cast in 2004 following the departure of Amanda Burton. She also appears as Morgause in the BBC's Merlin beginning in the programme's second...
. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
in 2003. It was released publicly on February 13, 2004.
Plot
The plot centers on a charismatic radio talk show host, Tom Avery (Bruce GreenwoodBruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood is a Canadian actor and musician. He is generally known for his roles as U.S. presidents in Thirteen Days and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and for his role as Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 Star Trek film...
), and his "mermaid researcher" girlfriend Fay (Emilia Fox
Emilia Fox
Emilia Rose Elizabeth Fox is an award-winning English actress, known for her role as Dr. Nikki Alexander on BBC crime drama Silent Witness, having joined the cast in 2004 following the departure of Amanda Burton. She also appears as Morgause in the BBC's Merlin beginning in the programme's second...
). Tom has had a turbulent past with relationships and has had three divorces before the age of 40. Many of Tom's ex-wives turn out to be friends of Fay's. Fay is the opposite from Tom and has an overly high expectation of the men she dates; she expects perfection and wants to emulate her parents' rock-solid marriage. One day, it turns out that Fay's parents' marriage is not as perfect as it seemed and it breaks down suddenly, after 40 years of "wedded bliss". Fay panics and feels insecure in her own relationship and forces Tom to go to great efforts to convince the woman who has become his fiancée that their relationship is different and that they are meant for each other.
Cast
- Bruce GreenwoodBruce GreenwoodBruce Greenwood is a Canadian actor and musician. He is generally known for his roles as U.S. presidents in Thirteen Days and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and for his role as Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 Star Trek film...
... Tom Avery - Emilia FoxEmilia FoxEmilia Rose Elizabeth Fox is an award-winning English actress, known for her role as Dr. Nikki Alexander on BBC crime drama Silent Witness, having joined the cast in 2004 following the departure of Amanda Burton. She also appears as Morgause in the BBC's Merlin beginning in the programme's second...
... Fay - Kate LynchKate LynchKate Lynch is a Genie Award-winning actress whose career spans four decades. In 1980 she won the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Meatballs...
... Dr. French - Kate KeltonKate KeltonKate Kelton is a Canadian artist, model and actress, notable for appearing as the "Tic Tac girl" in television advertisements for Tic Tac mints for almost a decade throughout Canada, Australia, South America and Israel....
... Mother #1 - Sunday MuseSunday Muse-Biography:Muse launched "Sunday Muse Cartoon Voices for Kids", a workshop in Toronto, New York, California, and Vancouver, as a way to share everything she gained during her years as a lead voice actress. Her clients had roles on Family Guy, Super Why!, Will and Dewitt, Miss Spider, Rolie Polie...
... Mother #2 - Brooke D'OrsayBrooke D'OrsayBrooke D'Orsay is a Canadian actress and voice actress best known for her role as Caitlin Cooke on the animated Canadian series 6teen and on King's Ransom as Brooke Mayo. She was recently in the Nickelodeon movie The Boy Who Cried Werewolf as Paulina Von Eckberg.-Early life:D'Orsay was born in...
... Mother #3 - Jackie BurroughsJackie BurroughsJacqueline "Jackie" Burroughs was an English-born Canadian actress.-Life and career:Born in Lancashire, England, Burroughs acted in live theatre at Ontario's Stratford Festival...
... Betty - Alec Stockwell ... Mike
- Lloyd OwenLloyd OwenLloyd Owen is a British actor of Welsh descent. Trained at the National Youth Theatre and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he is probably best known for his portrayal of Indiana Jones's father Professor Dr. Henry Jones, Sr...
... Peter - Gary FarmerGary Farmer- History :Farmer was born in Ohsweken, Ontario into the Cayuga nation and Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy. Farmer attended Syracuse University and Ryerson Polytechnic University, where he studied photography and film production....
... Ted - Claire BloomClaire BloomClaire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
... Onion - Edward FoxEdward Fox (actor)Edward Charles Morice Fox, OBE is an English stage, film and television actor.He is generally associated with portraying the role of the upper-class Englishman, such as the title character in the film The Day of the Jackal and King Edward VIII in the serial Edward & Mrs...
... Richard - Kenneth Wickes ... Mr. Duff
- David HubandDavid HubandDavid Huband , also known as Dave Huband, is a Canadian actor. He is best known for his roles on Cinderella Man as Ford Bond and in the films Cube Zero, Dirty Pictures and The Lookout.-Career:...
... Sammy - Rebecca JenkinsRebecca Jenkins-Acting:She had starring roles in the 1990s CBC series Black Harbour, and the films Bye Bye Blues, Marion Bridge, Wilby Wonderful, Whole New Thing, South of Wawa and Supervolcano. She also had a supporting role in the 1992 film Bob Roberts, as Dolores Perrigrew...
... Maeve - Connor PriceConnor PriceConnor Price is a Canadian actor.An early role was Young Bobby Jr in the television drama Sins of the Father . Other works include BB. Jammies, Harvey and Bud in the Save-Ums , and Jay Braddock in Cinderella Man...
... Gary Woloschuc
Development
The film is based on the novel The Republic of Love by Carol ShieldsCarol Shields
Carol Ann Shields, CC, OM, FRSC, MA was an American-born Canadian author. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.-Biography:Shields was born in Oak Park, Illinois...
and the characters of Tom and Fay were created by her. The Republic of Love was conceived as a film adaptation in 1996, when Triptych Media producer, Anna Stratton
Anna Stratton
Anna Stratton is an award-winning Canadian film and television producer. Her projects include the feature films Zero Patience , Lilies , and Emotional Arithmetic...
read the book and was highly impressed with its humour and diversity of characters, and confessed to being a fan of Shields's writing. She said, “It was the characters really that offered up a delicious cast for a film. I was also drawn in by the humour –characters, situations and events that made me laugh out loud and the interweaving of the magical elements – the mermaid myth and Tom’s middle of the night radio life – with the love story. The story itself is classic – rapture, rupture, reconciliation – and love stories are one of the most popular filmic forms."
Once Stratton had decided to produce the film, she looked to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
to provide sufficient resources and for a co-producer, given the popularity of Shield's work in the UK. Stratton met British producer Julie Baines in 1998 in San Francisco in 1998 and discussed a collaboration with Baines's Dan Films company and Triptych Media. In the summer of 2000, Stratton approached director Deepa Mehta, who fell in love with the story and commented, "The book, a treatise on the nature of love, attracted me, as it is complex and yet accessible. It is really about different aspects of love – mature love, familial love, sibling love and the nature of love and how elusive it is”. Mehta recommended Bruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood is a Canadian actor and musician. He is generally known for his roles as U.S. presidents in Thirteen Days and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and for his role as Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 Star Trek film...
to play the role of Tom and subsequently attracted him to the role. Meanwhile Stratton and Baines had remained in contact and met once again in early 2002 to discuss financing the project together and to find the female lead in Emilia Fox. Fox was immediately enticed by the character of Fay and said of the plot, “It mixes the idealistic with the realistic which I thought was very clever, and there’s a strong balance, there’s something we can hold onto.” Producers Chris Auty, Bruce Duggan, Sarah Green, Bruce Greenwood, Mehernaz Lentin, Neil Peplow, Sarah Sulick and Claire Welland would later join the production team.
Script and adaption
According to Carol Shields, her basis for plot was that she loved stories that place lovers in isolation and wanted to " position my pair of loversfirmly in the midst of their community where the networks of family and friends form the real street maps." Shields's perception of love is a mythical one, and she has said, " Love is, in the end, a magic and mythical force, inexplicable, indecipherable. Its arrival cannot be arranged nor its properties deconstructed. We can only marvel, as I hope the audience of this film will marvel, that, despite our fear and cynicism, it occasionally enters our lives and transforms us." This mysticism is intended to be reflected in the occupations of the characters with Fay’s involvement with mermaids intended to accentuate her existence with a mythic quality while Tom's charisma over the air waves and his impact on other people's lives is intended to give a magical dimension.
In adapting the script for the screen, Mehta mused over possible techniques that would capture the elusive nature of love on film and compared it to cooking an exotic dish where love is the main ingredient. In the end she collaborated with Esta Spalding
Esta Spalding
Esta Alice Spalding is a Canadian author, screenwriter and poet who won the Pat Lowther Award in 2000 for Lost August. Born in Boston, Massachusetts to Phillip Spalding and Linda Spalding, she grew up in Hawaii and currently resides in Guelph, Ontario....
to produce the final script for the film version of the book. Carol Shields was unable to write for the film adaption because of her declining health. She was never able to see the final result, as she died on July 16, 2003, but during pre-production she would occasionally visit, with her husband, to approve of design drawings and photographs of the cast and costumes to be employed.
Filming
The Republic of Love was shot on location in and around TorontoToronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
between November and December 2002. In selecting filming location, producer Anna Stratton felt it important to encapture the atmosphere of the novel by filming in a cold city during the winter. She was also influenced by the line that Tom says to Fay in the film, "geography is destiny" and believed the screen provided a rich visual opportunity to reflect this element of Shields's storytelling. The novel itself was set in Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
but in filming in Toronto, Mehta attempted to recreated the "Republic" and to provide a paradigm where the characters’ paths could criss cross and they would eventually meet each other. Frequent collaborators, production designer Sandra Kybartas, and cinematographer Douglas Koch were brought in to create the republic setting. They made many experimentations with the lighting style to reflect the contrast of mood in many scenes and to emphasise the strength of the love between the lead characters and their physical beauty, whilst maintaining a delicate balance.
Mehta later cited that the film was the most difficult she had ever experienced, given the ongoing financial anxieties and a series of mishaps onset and filming delays which led her to believe that the film was jinxed.
Reception
The film was received a mixed reaction from critics. A number of critics noted that they were impressed with the performances of the main characters and several indicated that they approved of the variety of emotions displayed by the actors with critics such as Bruce Kirkland of the The Toronto Sun remarking that, "It is a treasure that speaks directly to the idea of love as an ephemeral emotion in all its complexity." He approved of the way the actors Bruce Greenwood and Emilia Fox interacted in their performances, saying, "Greenwood, in particular, resonates with a quiet dignity, and slight desperation, that signifies a man yearning for something that has eluded him for so long. He does this in the scenes with minimal dialogue, no mean feat. He has found his match in Emilia Fox, an unconventional beauty with a similar penchant for saying more with the fewest words. So, when they actually do talk, offering little glimpses into their tortured psyches, a seemingly insignificant conversation seems to take on a profound weight." Liam Lacey of The Globe & Mail concurred, noting the charisma of the cast and highlighting a believable magnetic charge between Greenwood and Fox.However, the film received a number of negative reviews. The film was awarded a 44% rating by the website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
. Brian Gibson of the Vue Weekly
Vue Weekly
Vue Weekly is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and with new issues coming out every Thursday.Vue was founded in 1995 by former employees and owners of SEE Magazine, upset over losing control of SEE to creditors...
in Edmonton
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
said of the film, "The tiresome zaniness and Seinfeldian conceits might be forgivable if the romantic plot weren’t so full of empty truisms and nonsense lines that would stump a Zen monk." Film critic Christopher Null
Christopher Null
Christopher Null is a film critic, columnist and former blogger for Yahoo! Tech, editor of Drinkhacker.com, and is the founder and editor in chief of Filmcritic.com.-Publications:...
criticized the directing of Deepa Mehta, saying, "director Deepa Mehta does nothing to make this palatable. In fact, she goes out of her way to distance us from the story and the characters, most notably through washing the entire movie into total gray, giving it just a hint of color (in the end, the movie brightens up in a particularly awful scene that has animated flowers growing over the frame). Wintry symbolism has never felt so forced—and in a film that ought to have been played as a romantic comedy, it's never been more out of place, either."