Suspicious River

Directed by Lynne Stopkewich

Canada, 2000 (fiction, 92 minutes, colour, English)

Film Description:
"Leila Murray (Molly Parker) works as a receptionist at a small-town motel. For the same price of a room, Leila offers herself to the men who pass through—she can neither understand nor explain why she keeps doing this. Hiding her money away, she claims to be saving for something, something that shimmers beyond the horizon, but whether beautiful or terrible she can't tell. [...] Delving into difficult subject matter, director Lynne Stopkewich interrogates the compulsions that drive us and examines the choices we have, or think we have. Leaving behind her family, co-workers, and a young girl she has befriended, Leila's past and future collide in a crash course with destiny. Honest and compelling, Suspicious River is disturbing in its frank assessment of violence and self-destruction."
-- Liz Czach (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Written by:	Lynne Stopkewich
Based on:	Suspicious River, a novel by Laura Kasischke
Produced by:	Michael Okulitch, Hamish McAlpine, Erik Stensrud
Principal Cast:	Molly Parker, Callum Keith Rennie, Mary Kate Welsh, Joel Bissonnette, Deanna Milligan, Sarah Jane Redmond
Cinematography:	Gregory Middleton
Film Editing:	Allan Lee
Music:	Don MacDonald
Production Company:	Suspicious Films Ltd.

(sources)

Notes about Suspicious River

Shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2000.

(sources)

Quote by the Director

"I felt that in creating a filmic translation of [the novel] Suspicious River, less would be way more. I couldn't attempt a literal translation because it would be almost unwatchable."
-- Lynne Stopkewich (source)

Quotes about Suspicious River

"Based on the story by Laura Kasischke, Suspicious River is the kind of work that would seem to defy a filmed approach. The fact that it works as well as it does is a testament to [Lynne] Stopkewich's talent for navigating the lumps beneath the carpet, and [Molly] Parker's ability to look alive and dead in the same frame."
-- Katherine Monk (source)

"In Suspicious River, she de-objectifies prostitution and controversially introduces it as a middle-class 'problem' while presenting it as a multivariant and contradictory escapism."
-- Kalli Paakspuu (source)

Bibliography for Suspicious River

Brief Sections of Books

Monk, Katherine. Weird Sex and Snowshoes: And Other Canadian Film Phenomena. Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2001. (pp. 338-339)