In the culture-hub that is Vancouver, even the trees are storytellers.
When cherry blossoms bloom and “Vancouver snow” blankets the streets, the trees tell us that spring has finally arrived.
When their leaves fall prematurely and their brittle limbs snap in the wind, we witness the devastating impact of a hot, dry summer.
And when their naked branches do little to shelter us from the relentless winter rain, we watch for the hint of green that signals relief is on the way.
Our trees are rich with poetry and evoke all manners of mood – a fact that wasn’t lost on director Michelle Kim when she set out to make a feature film inspired by an agonizing break-up.
In The Tree Inside, Kim – who also wrote and stars in the film – calls upon the city’s trees to anchor and mirror an emotionally charged love story.
The film follows a rollercoaster relationship between a woman (Kim) and a man (portrayed by Casey Manderson) over the course of a year, incidentally (but not accidentally) the same amount of time it took to film The Tree Inside.
“My romantic life seemed to go into cycles. I think it happens to a lot of us,” says Kim, a former CBC journalist and veteran of numerous shorts, including The Goodbye Girl, which won the National Screen Institute’s Drama Prize.
“I was heartbroken, I was contemplating the impermanence of a lot of relationships, not just romantic but any kind of relationship, and I wanted to make the connection between nature and human.”
During filming, Vancouver’s trees did their part, moving through their natural seasonal cycle. In order to garner similarly naturalistic performances from her actors, Kim employed a structured improv approach.
Actors were given a framework, and provided with marks they needed to hit and lines they needed to say, but otherwise, they were expected to improvise.
“The person I told the least to was the guy who played the boyfriend, because I wanted us to experience the relationship naturally throughout the year,” says Kim.
Kim wanted art within her art – something she admires about Spanish director Pedro Almodovar – and so she convinced Barbara Bourget of Kokoro Dance, and writer Michael Turner (Hard Core Logo), to appear in The Tree Inside.
“It’s a love letter to Vancouver, and all the art in Vancouver,” says Kim, noting the inclusion of artworks by local painters Andy Dixon and Alison Yip.
Also in the cast: Diana Bang, who, while filming The Tree Inside, squeezed in a co-starring role in one of the most controversial movies of the last decade.
“Diana said, ‘I’m on this paid gig and it’s really improv-y, and they don’t know what time they’re going to be done,’ and I’m like, ‘Who are these guys? What amateur film is she working on?’” laugh Kim. “And we go to pick her up, and it’s The Interview.”
In The Interview, Bang played the North Korean propaganda minister; in The Tree Inside, she’s Kim’s best friend.
The Tree Insidewas co-directed by Rob Leickner and premiered at the Green Film Festival in South Korea.
This weekend, it screens for the hometown crowd as part of the 19th annual Vancouver Asian Film Festival (VAFF).
“I’m half Korean, a lot of the cast is Asian, but that’s not something I thought about. This is just my world, and I think it’s a reality in Vancouver,” says Kim.
“I’m happy about the inclusion in VAFF. Rob and I are both interested in, and influenced by, Asian cinema, in particular Korean cinema, and I think that with everything that we shoot, we invoke techniques from Asian cinema.”
The 2015 edition of VAFF screens 37 feature-length and short films, including one world premiere, four North American premieres, and 13 Canadian premieres – all designed to encourage audiences to “examine the complications within the search for personal and cultural identity.”
Highlights include a program of Canadian shorts exploring multiculturalism, as well as Beyond Redemption, an adrenaline-charged feature film from longtime stunt coordinator Bruce Fontaine showcasing the versatility and dynamism of Vancouver’s red-hot stunt scene.
