Quirk-heavy Zoom chokes on all that irony

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      Starring Gael García Bernal. Rated 18A

      The novelty of having a story told three different ways wears off fairly soon, as it dawns that this story, though visually stimulating throughout, was never really worth telling.

      Initially, that tale involves two people who work in, or run, a sex-doll factory. One measure of the immaturity of Matt Hansen’s script is that we’re never given clear pictures of existing relationships, thereby lowering the stakes when weird things happen. We’re supposed to simply ignore mute factory workers when Alison Pill and Tyler Labine, as nerdy Emma and grubby Bob, grab quick shtupps in the backroom or openly discuss intimate business, with more than the requisite “fuck”s attached to their consistently juvenile dialogue.

      For some reason, Emma feels her breasts (that’s a classic, folks) are not superhero grade, and so gets implants without checking in with Bob, who is revolted. Naturally, she compensates for this mistake by seriously reducing the penis size of a cartoon character she’s currently drawing. This introduces us to the animated, and most engaging, part of the program, with colourful lines smoothly rotoscoped over cast standout Gael García Bernal as Eddie, an action-movie director trying to make an art film, and Toronto types Don McKellar and Jennifer Irwin, who join him in this indie-biz saga.

      What we see of Eddie’s story moves the live-action stuff to Brazil—home of Zoom director Pedro Morelli—with Mariana Ximenes as a model turned writer increasingly undervalued by her rich-guy boyfriend (Jason Priestley). As art-house fare goes, this film within a film looks pretty darn schlocky. A recurringly Trump-ian obsession with the size of things is, sad to say, a recognizably male notion of what women think about. (Now cue the gratuitous lesbian-sex scene.) The self-consciously quirky effort has seemingly inoculated itself against such considerations by changing media, tone, and attack so often that everything ends up with ironic quotes around it. How much you’re expected to “care” remains its only compelling mystery.

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