*Until Branches Bend* (dir. Sophie Jarvis, 2022)

Set in the Okanagan, Until Branches Bend introduces the fictional peach-harvesting town of Montague. Robin, a worker of the town’s packing house, discovers a bug that threatens the community’s semblance of calm.

With elements of environmental and psychological drama, the film crafts an enveloping examination of the dangers that lurk beneath the surface, depicting more than one type of invasion.

Enclosed by the suffocating tensions of a looming environmental threat and an unwanted pregnancy, the film draws us in with the urgency of its thematics. Director Sophie Jarvis’ sensorial and intimate storytelling allows the viewer to be fully immersed in Robin's plight, scaffolded by a committed lead performance, while the film builds up to a disaster that grows to unmanageable proportions.

The warnings it puts forth are nonetheless universal, and the story’s fictional extrapolations feel more banal than calculatedly evil, despite the extremities portrayed. They invite us to reflect on how we deal with chaos when it confronts our unreconciled frailties and shortcomings.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Until Branches Bend, is the meditation and ultimate resolution of its main character’s emotional unraveling. Robin’s unyielding and troubling journey is ultimately depicted in service of fostering a greater dignity towards each other and the places we inhabit.

Sophie Jarvis, director, spoke to SAD about some of the processes and challenges of writing and directing her first feature:

From the places the characters inhabit to the subtly ubiquitous details, like pesky moths and peaches in various stages of decay, Montague feels very richly layered.

Thank you! Working with the art team in this film was very special. I have a background as a production designer, and I had worked with all of them in the past. What I take as a director from production design the most is knowing that it’s so much more fun to work with a team that has a coherent understanding of the world that we are building.

The presence of wildfires is another detail that builds up the unsettling atmosphere of the film. Was that something you made a conscious choice to include?

We were definitely anticipating the fires. We filmed in the summer of 2021, during the heat dome and the pandemic. The conditions were challenging, and we had limited resources as an independent film, but I really commend my producers for doing their best to accommodate all the individual needs and assuring we were being good guests. I knew that the image was going to be affected by the smoke, and also with the themes of the film, it was important to find a way to weave the fires into the story.

Director Sophie Jarvis. Photo by Tyler Hagan

You portray a small but diverse community. Everyone deals with Robin’s discovery in various different ways. How did you manage those tensions?

I wrote the first draft of the script in 2016. Over the years, I spent a lot of time going to the Okanagan and talking to farmers, entomologists, and people of the Syilx Nation. My personal relationship with the place is that my mom grew up in Summerland. I grew up visiting and had developed a specific understanding of it, so I wanted to learn more. Everyone I met while doing research was very welcoming and open, and they really informed the speculative nature of the story. Every single person had a really definite point of view about what could happen in a situation like this, and I think that made it into the script and into the film. In a film you kind of have to have flawed characters and show what their perspectives and priorities are. I wanted to tell a story that showed what could happen without trying to lay judgment on any of the characters for their choices or for their instincts.

After being exposed as the whistleblower, many factors press down on Robin to the point of unraveling. Can you tell me a bit more about the relationship between Robin and her sister Laney?

Robin (Grace Glowicki) becomes a caregiver to Laney (Alexandra Roberts) when she's around eighteen years old. A lot of what me and Grace talked about was how Robin’s kind of stuck in that time. In a way, the psychological drama she goes through is her rebelling against the place where she’s stuck and where she's not being believed. She also has no control over her pregnancy, and she is still feeling like she has to take control of her sister’s life, so there's this misplaced urge everywhere that she doesn't know where to put. Laney, now being around 18, is starting to express desires that Robin might have had around that age, but never had the chance to fulfill. And through a newfound relationship with another fruit picker from out of town, Laney starts to understand where Robin is coming from and that there’s different types of people in the world who might put her in a box.

Can we talk about the bug?

I was inspired by the real incident of the codling moth in the Okanagan, which was an invasive species that ruined apple trees. I borrowed very heavily from that in order to set the scene of Montague, which is recovering from its own previous moth infestation, and where people don't want to deal with another infestation, because they’ve just recovered from this one bad thing. That was kind of where the atmosphere and background of the film came from.

I talked to entomologists at the Summerland Research Station to develop a fictional bug, which we ended up calling the spear beetle. We wound up auditioning a whole bunch of real life beetles, and we settled on one called the darkling beetle. Based on this darkling beetle, we then got a concept artist to develop the markings on its back. The visual effects team did an incredible job on the bug.

Following a sold-out world premiere at TIFF, as well as screenings in Calgary and Sudbury, Until Branches Bend has made its way across the country for its hometown showcase. You can catch it on Oct. 7th at the Rio Theatre. Book tickets here.

Sophie has another bug-related film playing at this year’s VIFF. A stop-motion short co-directed with Alicia Eisen, Zeb’s Spider is showing before Huesera on Oct. 8th at the Rio Theatre. Book tickets to see both here.

Angie Rico (she/her) is a Mexican-born cultural worker, currently living and working in so-called Vancouver. Her primary mediums of communication are writing and the moving image. Her arts journalism has been published in outlets such as Reissue and Peripheral Review. Her work currently focuses on themes of family & collective memory.

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Vancouver International Film Festival Review: Until Branches Bend