In the emotionally shattering See Grace Fly, screening as part of the World Film Festival, a schizophrenic woman is out to warn the world that the end is nigh. Roles this juicy are an actor's recurring dream come true.
 
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Last Friday night, Billy Bob Thornton ripped through a set of Southern gothic roadhouse rock with a crack band at the Spectrum, Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove proved an inspired choice for thousands at the free outdoor screening on the esplanade at Place des Arts, and hundreds took full advantage of a party thrown by Unifrance across the plaza in the Musée d'art contemporain. As a snapshot of the World Film Festival, it was a keeper, although it did seem like organizers missed the main chance when they failed to take advantage of Billy Bob's felicitous tour routing and honour his body of work as a writer, actor, director and genuine star with some kind of tribute. At the very least, they could have bought a bunch of concert tickets, sprayed them around visiting guests and done wonders for the event's coolness quotient.

But then, this remains a place where producers have to beg the top brass to cough up hotel accommodations for someone like Jason Priestley, in town for Die Mommie Die! On some profoundly subconscious level, they just don't get it. It's either that or sociopathic skinflintery.

Speaking of social, it doesn't get much more social than the mob here for See Grace Fly. Writer/director/co-producer Pete McCormack, star/producer Gina Chiarelli and cinematographer Larry Lynn are the visible tip of a Vancouver invasion to support their emotionally shattering story of schizophrenia and family ties that blind, and they are a breath of fresh Pacific air on the festival interview circuit.

Apparently McCormack and Chiarelli are huge on the coast, where he turns the renaissance-guy trick as a prize-winning novelist, screenwriter, playwright, musician, wired comic raconteur and available single male, and she rocks the twin worlds of theatre and film as a fearless actor and producer. Lynn is more laid back - he's behind the lens, after all - but Quebecers will know him for his stellar work on movies like Hochelaga. Together they're hustling See Grace Fly, inspired by the history of Chiarelli's schizophrenic aunt wandering the streets of Montreal, shot on DV in major Van locations like Chiarelli's house last summer, edited to a knife edge and blown up to film on a budget that would not have paid the Unifrance wine bill.

They are stoked by what they have accomplished out of virtually nothing, and should be. Chiarelli's possessed portrayal of a brilliant 38-year-old woman out to warn the world that the end is nigh is the reason awards were invented, while McCormack's writing is a reminder that words really do help in the lost art of communication. Lynn's edgy hand-held camera keeps up, which may not seem like a compliment until you've watched Chiarelli maniacally wear out shoe leather.

Here's a sample of the McCormack style, lifted from the director's notes in the press kit: "At least the film is commercial: a metaphorically layered, quasi-religious thriller/drama/downer about a schizophrenic woman who looks like hell, is in psychosis the whole time, and who is trying to convince her repressed missionary brother - who by his own admission hasn't been laid in 4,000 years - that their mother's funeral on Friday is really just a front for the Second Coming."

Chiarelli is the first to admit roles as juicy as this are an actor's recurring dream come true. She talks about "this incredible character I had the privilege of inhabiting." Now that it's over, she misses the freedom of slipping all of society's restrictions, "misses her sense of truth. She doesn't think she's falling apart. She's on a mission. Being her is exhausting, yes, but exhilarating in another way."

McCormack struggled with the script to "find the truth in the fiction. My goal was to create characters opposite from each other, yet sharing a sense of struggle. As a writer I want to affect all those f--kers who never believe in anything."

See Grace Fly in its world premiere tonight. Renew a little faith in the resilience of the creative spirit.

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