“Dear Diary. Nothing Ever Happens.” Sandy Wilcox (Margaret Langrick) longs for adventure and a modicum of respect. Neither is readily available to a 12-year-old growing up in rural Penticton in the late 1950s. Enter Butch in a screaming red Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. He’s 16 going on James Dean, a California runaway and about the most exciting thing to hit town since rock-n-roll.
Sandy Wilson’s first feature — 40 years young — is a genuine Canadian coming-of-age classic. With its lovely shots of the Okanagan valley, it evokes a heartfelt nostalgia for a more innocent time, while also capturing that adolescent restlessness that yearns for energy and change. Do these competing characteristics also stand for Canada and the US of A? Let’s just say the movie speaks gently to the present discord.
Q&A with director Sandy Wilson
A little gem, offering a look back to a particular time and place not only with boundless amusement and affection but with exceptional clarity and subtlety. This is nostalgia at its most endearing and admirable. […] My American Cousin is a an expression of pure, innocent joy recollected with thoughtful perception and saved from sentimentality by a witty, running commentary on Canadian American relations and attitudes.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
In Partnership with
Sandy Wilson
Margaret Langick, John Wildman, Richard Donat, Camille Henderson, Babs Chula
Canada
1985
English
6 Genie Awards
Book Tickets
Wednesday April 16
Credits
Screenwriter
Sandy Wilson
Cinematography
Richard Leiterman
Editor
Haida Paul
Art Director
Phil Schmidt
Also in This Series
Canadian Film Week spotlights 18 features, including six Vancouver premieres and four brand new films from BC filmmakers, plus returning classics, new favourites, and free screenings on National Canadian Film Day.
Sweet Summer Pow Wow
After the local hit The Great Salish Heist, writer-director Darrell Dennis proves his versatility with this charming love story about two young people who meet cute on BC's Pow Wow circuit. Her mom wants her to become a lawyer, but Jinny loves to dance...
The Decline of the American Empire
Friends from the History Department at the University of Montreal come together for a dinner party. While the men prepare the meal, the women work out at the gym. In both groups, the conversation returns repeatedly to sex...
Village Keeper
In Karen Chapman’s sensitive debut feature, a widowed mother desperate to shelter her teenage daughter and son from a surge of gun violence in Toronto takes it upon herself to cleanse the blood from crime scenes in her Lawrence Heights neighbourhood.
The Barbarian Invasions
Arcand's belated sequel finds his erstwhile "sensual socialist" facing terminal cancer and trying to make peace with his financier son. This is one of the most acclaimed Canadian films ever made, garlanded all over the world.
Incandescence
Filmed across the Okanagan before, during and after several devastating fires by veteran non-fiction filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper (Metamorphosis; ScaredSacred), Incandescence is a mesmerizing cinematic contemplation of the power of wildfires.