The unconventional Toronto-set romantic drama “Matt and Mara” keeps viewers guessing

Kazik Radwanski’s prizewinning 2019 drama “Anne at 13,000 ft” left in the air more than the fate of its skydiving title character. It also dangled the outcome of the relationship between daycare worker Anne (a mesmerizing Deragh Campbell) and Ontario Science Centre tech guy Matt (Matt Johnson of “BlackBerry”). Their romance seemed promising when they met cute at a friend’s wedding. Did their evident chemistry survive the dilution of an inevitable argument?
Five years later we have an answer of sorts with Toronto writer-director Radwanski’s engrossing “Matt and Mara.” It’s an unofficial followup to the earlier film, although Campbell’s character is now named Mara and she’s a creative writing professor.
Matt is now a semisuccessful writer based in New York; his latest book, “Rat King and Other Stories,” is a collection of his “sharp takes” on modern life, as the cover blurb attests.
Old friends who drifted apart, Matt and Mara meet again by chance — or is it something else? — outside the classroom of the Toronto college where she teaches. She’s unsettled but also quietly thrilled by his sudden reappearance; we quickly intuit the two had a relationship that may have been more than platonic.
The spark Mara experiences seeing Matt — which he reciprocates, much more obviously — is the opposite of the disconnect she feels toward her husband, avant-garde musician Samir (Mounir Al Shami), with whom she has a young daughter (Avery Nayman). A sign of Mara’s disinterest in Samir comes at a party when she admits to him and their friends, much to their astonishment, that she never liked music of any kind. She’s also never told Samir about her friendship with Matt.
If this were a conventional romantic drama, the road ahead would be paved with caresses and tears.
That’s not how Radwanski works. An admirer of the relaxed naturalism and subtle ethical inquiries of the films of Eric Rohmer (whom he hat-tips twice in “Matt and Mara”), Radwanski is fascinated by the small and often unconscious choices people make in life that can have unforeseen consequences. He’s drawn to characters who are hard to love but impossible to hate. In Campbell and Johnson he’s found two eager conspirators and brilliant actors.
Radwanski is a filmmaker of great economy, not just in the brisk running time of his features but in his dialogue, speaking volumes about his characters and their back stories with a few well-chosen words. Matt refers to Mara as being “made of glass” and having “the soul of a child.” She, in turn, says he “takes himself a bit too seriously.”
There’s also bit of professional rivalry. Matt’s writing career is going well enough that he can afford a New York apartment. His return to Toronto has been prompted by concern for his ailing father (Simon Reynolds), who is in hospital.
Mara still considers herself a writer, too, but since she became a mom she hasn’t had the time or energy to pen much of anything.
Yet she and Matt are clearly comfortable together, teasing each other as they make day trips around Toronto. They react with humorous fury when a rude coffee shop manager boots them out at closing time, and pretend to be husband and wife while posing for passport photos at a convenience store.
Cinematographer Nikolay Michaylov helps maintain the air of mystery by framing characters from the side, prompting viewers to lean forward to try to read expressions on faces that are partially hidden.
This contributes to the will-they-or-won’t-they suspense when Mara gets an invitation to attend a writer’s conference in upstate New York. Samir says he’ll drive her but bails when his band schedules a gig.
Matt volunteers to take the wheel and attend the conference with Mara. The situation is ripe for an affair; Mara’s friend Emma (played by Toronto writer Emma Healey) warns her that such gatherings are more about sex than scholarship.
This is Radwanski’s fourth feature; we should know by now that trying to predict its course or outcome is a mug’s game.
The central image from “Anne at 13,000 ft” returns to the mind’s eye: that of being suspended in the air, enjoying the lift of the wind while contemplating the finality of gravity.