A Thriller That Is Also a Relationship Movie

A thriller that is willing to stop being a thriller and to become not merely “psychological” but a relationship movie of sorts, only to become a thriller again in climactic moments, and then to return again to relationship and character concerns in its conclusion is already a rare accomplishment. This structure suggests a satisfying perspective that we don’t encounter often enough in film: The thrills and trauma of violence are not what life or fiction needs fundamentally to be about even in a story focusing on adolescents, crime, and desperation. Our feelings are more generous and our interests broader than is indicated by the mindsets we exhibit in crisis. We tend to compartmentalize our broader, more vulnerable selves when struggling to control our feelings and behavior to address urgent situations; sometimes we tend temporarily to forget about that broader perspective entirely. When others genuinely help us, not through didactic means but through a subtle empathy, to recall our humanity during stressful circumstances, something lovely and substantive has happened.

The subject of these meditations is Cassandra Nicolaou’s 2006 Canadian thriller, Show Me. Aside from very convincing performances from its three leads, this film, shot mostly in a few locations with almost no other actors, creates an intimacy that suggests it might have worked even better as theater. Sarah, an apparently upper-middle class businesswoman, is kidnapped when she rolls down her car window to pay a teenage girl, Jenna, who had tried to clean her windshield. She and her boyfriend Jackson, in need of money and space to think out their next move, accompany Sarah to a cabin in the woods where she plans to meet her lover, detained by meetings, for what is later revealed to be their tenth anniversary. In a strange way, they get to know one another.

None of these characters is given an adequate back story; the explanation provided for the teenagers’ desperation is embarrassingly melodramatic (a single traumatic event involving an alcoholic parent seems to be crucial) and at the same time unpersuasive. Interesting and plausible accounts of motivation tend to recognize the significance of complex environments that affect people over time, including perhaps a number of explicit crisis points, or none at all.

But this movie is a psychological study, if not of individual characters or narratives then of relationships and how they affect people. At first, Sarah forms a strategy of trying to work on Jackson, whose tone is apologetic and practical (Jenna is initially angrier and meaner). Her efforts to escape eventually bring them into direct conflict, however. Meahwhile, it becomes apparent that Jenna is as angry with herself as she is with Sarah. As Sarah senses this, her sympathy for Jenna grows. The film really becomes interesting as the hostage dynamic recedes almost to nothing (indeed, Sarah actually manages to escape for a time). When Jenna, for her part, watches some home videos of Sarah and her lover, she comes to feel a grudging affection and longing for connection with her. Jackson is not thrown into stereotypical rage by this development--in a refreshing break with thriller clichés about paranoid criminals and the use of divide-and-conquer tactics by hostages or cops, his bonds with Jenna, however stormy, are unbreakable. Yet he senses the shifted dynamic and seems hurt in a background sort of way. In the later parts of the film, his anger, mingling with his fears and neediness, seem to dominate his motivation, carrying terrible consequences in a climactic, unforeseen crisis.

There are any number of kidnapping movies featuring complex dynamics between criminals and their hostages. There are fine studies of kids on the cusp of adolescence like Lisa Krueger’s indie Manny & Lo (1996); there are vivid slice-of-life classics like Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Despite its somewhat vague, stereotyped portrayals of its teenage characters, Show Me deserves a distinguished place in this suspense subgenre, because the dynamics between characters believably change so many times, just as real relationships are apt to evolve—hopefully, as here, to a measure of understanding. Such sympathy is not always enough to ensure a fully happy ending, but if nothing else it helps define life by something more than its crisis moments.