Jennifer Tilly hopes the quintessentially Canadian Saint Ralph reaches a wide audience

TORONTO-Because Saint Ralph is a movie about a runner, it seems appropriate that Jennifer Tilly has to race through our interview. Thanks to a scheduling glitch, we only have a few minutes to talk. As soon as she hears this, Tilly shakes her head, laughs, and asks how the Georgia Straight is doing and what I need to know for my story.

We're meeting just after the film's world premiere at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, and as Tilly paces the interview room, she starts explaining why this is the ideal starting gate for writer-director Michael McGowan's quirky coming-of-age story about a gawky Grade 9 Catholic-school kid who becomes convinced that if he can miraculously win the 1954 Boston Marathon, he'll earn his dying mother a miracle that will save her life.

"I was getting ready to go to the Toronto film festival last year and my manager called up and he said, 'There's these people and they're making a film during the film festival and, you know, they want you to do it and it's only going to be three days and it's not much money.' And it was like, 'Ooh, sounds like a winner.'" Tilly pauses for breath and laughs. "I'm talking really fast because you only have five minutes."

Then she continues at warp speed. "So they sent the script over and I started reading it and by the end of the script I was crying. I just sat on the sofa, sobbing. And I thought 'Well, I have to be part of this.'"

The Victoria native, whose big-screen credits range from the title deadly doll in The Bride of Chucky to an Oscar-nominated turn as the leading moll in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, plays the kindly Nurse Alice, who believes in and befriends Ralph (Adam Butcher, who's featured in the upcoming made-in-B.C. TV series Terminal City). As Tilly describes it, the making of Saint Ralph was its own mini-miracle. "They just threw it together, really. They called me up and offered me the part less than a week before we started filming. And I said to Michael, 'What would you have done if I'd said no?' And he said, 'Oh, we didn't really get that far. We just figured it's now or never.'

"When I started filming-I only worked three days on the movie-I filmed the first three days with Adam, the kid, who's a genius. And they hadn't even cast Campbell Scott or Gordon Pinsent yet. I said, 'I can't believe you've started shooting and you don't have your two leads yet.' And Michael said, 'Oh, we're talking to people and I think it'll all work out.' And it did. I can't imagine anybody better than Campbell Scott in the role of Father Hibbert. And Gordon's just a brilliant actor." Scott plays Ralph's inspirational teacher, and Pinsent is the by-the-good-book priest who's not keen on people talking about making their own miracles.

Saint Ralph was one of the hits of the Toronto festival, scoring a U.S. distribution deal with Samuel Goldwyn Films. And media and industry were buzzing that it had the legs to get noticed internationally (it opens in Vancouver on Friday, April 8).

Tilly says she never doubted Saint Ralph had the pedigree to be a winner on the international scene. "I felt like it could transcend borders and be a movie that people could relate to, like a Breaking Away or Billy Elliott. And I think it's because everybody associates with being the underdog and striving to succeed. And I think we walk a fine line between being poignant and being maudlin and that we straddle that line very well. And I think that it's a very authentic film in terms of emotion, and that's why it speaks to people.

"It's the details that make a film read authentically. In acting class, they say vagueness is never a good choice. You have to know what you feel about things. Or you have to ask specifics. If someone asks, 'What was your character's most traumatic moment in Grade 3?', well, hopefully you know. Hopefully you have an answer. It's specificity that makes a film charming. I hope it's a crossover success, because people really respond to this movie. I think when a film is set in Canada and filmed in Canada, then it has its own special flavour."

Part of what Tilly thinks makes Saint Ralph charming is setting it in 1950s Hamilton-a city known more for steel and smog than charm. "A lot of independent films that cross over, usually the place is another character. Look at Local Hero or The Full Monty; Sheffield [England] was a character in the movie. And in this movie, Hamilton is. You understand what drives the kid growing up in Hamilton. It's so much more specific than if he's just in an imaginary pastoral town somewhere up north.

"It's a story about beliefs and prevailing and an ordinary person transcending his limitations. And I just think it's a film with heart. And what I love about it is a lot of times you make films in Canada and they think, erroneously, that if you know the film was shot in Canada you'll never go to see it. For example, Toronto will be New York, except for super squeaky clean. Or a city will be some sort of generic American city. And then they try to make the Canadian actors not use their accent. 'Don't say about like that.' Or 'Don't say eh.' And they have the people spending American money in the stores. And this one sort of embraces Canada."

The specificity also appeals to Tilly's own sense of Canadian identity. Although she now lives in Los Angeles, she still considers Victoria home. "I do tons of Canadian films because I'm Canadian. I just think they're always the little engine that could, and you just hope that they do," Tilly says. "We have a lot to offer. We have the Canadian sensibility and we have our culture and we have beautiful vistas, and why pretend it's anywhere else? Like, in this movie I was just charmed to see when he's reading about the martyrs, the book that he's reading says Canadian Martyrs. I loved that. Are there Canadian martyrs?"

Before I can even wonder whether or not Joe Clark would count, Tilly continues.

"I like the Canadian films because they have a very intimate sensibility. Like a lot of the scripts-like Saint Ralph-is a quintessential Canadian film. The scripts are more character-driven, and they're smaller stories, perhaps. In Hollywood, the movies are, like, 36 men are saving the planet from exploding and there's a babe in a bikini. I'd say the work here is always rewarding.

"I think Canadians make films that they want to make. It's a story that they have to tell. I think with American films, usually when they shoot up in Canada they're looking for the cheap labour and the tax break." -