Review: Trigger

It’s difficult to watch or review or discuss Trigger without any conversation about it turning into a sort of loving eulogy of Tracy Wright. Though she starred in two films at this year’s TIFF, Trigger was the final role she played before her sad passing from cancer, and for better or worse it will always be thought of as such.

It’s difficult because, in my opinion, Wright shines more brightly in her other TIFF feature, Daniel Cockburn’s debut You Are Here, than she does in Trigger, where her character is just a touch too two-dimensionally acerbic to be completely likable.

Wright plays a former-junkie / local rock icon who’s stayed true to her indie roots over the years. Molly Parker is her former-alcoholic bandmate, now transformed into a slick music exec. When the duo’s old band, Trigger, is set to be honoured at an event, they’re forced into a reunion that brings all the old feelings out. The back and forth between the two actresses works. There’s real chemistry there, filled with real love and hatred and all the other complex things you feel for someone who is, essentially, an “ex”, though not necessarily in a romantic sense (though I’ll say from experience that bandmate relationships can be just as complicated as romantic ones).

I liked the dynamic between the two women, but something still seemed to be missing from the story. Perhaps I couldn’t entirely  buy Molly Parker as an ex rocker, in spite of what is a pretty emotionally complex performance. Perhaps what I couldn’t buy was the possibility that these two would reunite at all, considering the amount of antagonism that seemed to be threatening to boil over at any moment. Or perhaps I just didn’t really like what they’ve become – bitter 12-steppers who miss the old days but are neither brave enough to truly let them go or to truly jump back in. It’s a good relationship film with two very strong leads and a rock’n'roll atmosphere, but it never quite adds up to anything quite as big as I was hoping for.

On the whole, in spite of these minor quibbles, Trigger left me with an overwhelmingly positive feeling, something akin to nostalgia for “old days” that I’m not sure I ever experienced. It takes a skilled director to imbue the atmosphere of such a small, intimate story with enough familiarity to make it possible for me to miss my non-existent drugged-out past, so I commend Bruce McDonald for that.

The Can-con cameos were great as well. David Cronenberg, Sarah Polley and Don McKellar all got a chuckle out of me, and McKellar, Wright’s partner in the film and in real life, was actually pretty brilliant.

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