Pavane

Back to HDFEST NYC Schedule

Synopsis:

Pavane takes place in Birds of a Feather, a fern bar where Jay is employed as pianist. When the film starts, Jay is playing the piano. Sitting around it are two women who have had a couple of drinks too many, and a brooding man, who we eventually learn is Paul, oh, ah, rather Phil. After a discussion of “requests”— in “quotation marks” because Jay actually has no intention of playing requests—Jay plays a spritely classical piece. During this segment (although we CUT BACK often) there is an ANIMATED sequence that sets up and gets into, briefly, the terrorizing incident. As the film moves towards its conclusion, we are back in the piano bar, where Jay plays Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante defunte.” We realize along with the ladies that all this, the playing, the false call for requests, the brothers playing strangers across the bar, it’s all darkly comic ritual that the broken, non-functioning brothers perform in an attempt to get at their pain.

Spiritually aligned with Mystic River, delivered in his own voice both profound and profoundly funny, Quarrington delivers a jewel of a film with an ending that holds the fragile potential of a new beginning.

 

Directed and Written by Paul Quarrington
Cinematographer D. Gregor Hagey
Canada

 

Paul Quarrington is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker.

He has written ten novels, the most recent of which is The Ravine, also the original work from which this short film is adapted. King Leary won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and Whale Music was given the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Whale Music was also made into a feature film, directed by Richard J. Lewis and starring Maury Chaykin.

Quarrington’s other novels include the cult favourite Home Game, Civilization and The Spirit Cabinet. Galveston, about people who like to get in the way of extreme weather, was published in 2004 by Random House Canada to great acclaim, and was short listed for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Ravine will be published by Random House in March 2008.

Quarrington has also published four books of non-fiction: Hometown Heroes, Fishing With My Old Guy and The Boy On The Back of the Turtle, and a collection of angling essays, From the Far Side of he River. Since his first popular novel Home Game, Paul Quarrington's writing has been favorably compared to that of Robertson Davies, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Francois Rabelais. Toronto Globe and Mail critic William French proclaimed Quarrington "a fresh and zany voice" in Canadian fiction.

Quarrington is a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre; he has written several screenplays and stage plays. His works for the stage include two musicals for children (So You Think You’re Mozart, music by Louis Applebaum, and Heavenfields, music by Glenn Buhr), two one-acts (Checkout Time, The Heart in the Bottle) as well as the full-length plays The Second, The Invention of Poetry and Dying Is Easy.

Quarrington has written or contributed to five theatrical screenplays: Men with Brooms (story, dir. Paul Gross), the afore-mentioned Whale Music, Camilla (directed by Deepa Mehta, starring Jessica Tandy and Bridget Fonda), Perfectly Normal (dir: Yves Simoneau, co-written with Eugene Lipinsky), winner of the Genie for Best Screenplay, and Giant Steps (dir: Richard Rose). He has also directed three short films: Mump and Smoot in ‘The Princess Who Wouldn’t Smile’, Moon and Mann and A Man’s Life, which was awarded a Golden Sheaf Award in 2002 for Best Comedy.

His television writing credits include Due South, John Woo’s Once a Thief, Power Play (writer & executive story editor), The Counsellors, Tom Stone and 1-800 Missing (writer and creative producer). Television movie and mini-series credits include writing The Cloud for CBC, story editing Cradle Will Fall and Keep Your Head Up: the Don Cherry Story for Barna-Alper, and Marie Hood Has a Secret for Duopoly/Barna Alper. He is on-camera host and story editor for BookShorts Moving Stories.

He was a story consultant and writer for the CBC animated show, Chilly Beach, in it’s first season, and wrote and story-edited a new comedy series for Showcase, Moose TV. He and co-creators Nino Ricci and Erica de Vascancelos have a series in development with Alberta Film Works, Changing Houses. He is also working on developing the television adaptation of Men With Brooms for CBC / Serendipity / Whizbang, wrote a documentary for the NFB, Rainforest Gold, and is working on a movie with director/producer Ron Mann. He has recently worked on several short films projects: a re-interpretation of What Casanova Told Me based on Susan Swan’s novel of the same name; was Story Editor and Co-Director of the BookShorts’ production Angel Takes All: No-Limit Texas Hold’em, and served various creative advisory capacities for the 2006 roster of half a dozen BookShort productions.