‘Matt and Mara’ at OKCMOA quietly tackles hunger for drama


Storytellers want stories. They want (maybe need) for everything to be a story, for every moment and scenario in which they find themselves to be rich with drama and heavy with tension, no matter how mundane or simple or achingly real.

That seems to be the central conceit of Canadian writer/director Kazik Radwanski’s new “Matt and Mara,” an almost combatively quiet and intimate little drama that made equally quiet waves at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) earlier this month before being quickly snapped up for a run at OKCMOA this weekend.

It’s the kind of film that you might not be likely to hear about coming out of TIFF alongside bigger budgets and bigger stars, but it’s one that any fan of starkly realistic, fly-on-the-wall cinema should have on their radar, and that any creative should feel gravitationally drawn toward.

Mara is an accomplished cross-medium writer splitting her time as a creative writing lecturer in Toronto. Matt is a rising Canadian author now living in New York and clearly mining his own success and boisterousness for stories and status.

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Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson on the set of Matt and Mara (courtesy)

They’re old college friends – likely old lovers – and it’s obvious from the opening moments on screen that they’re each the occasional wrench that gets thrown into one another’s lives, automatically upending their contentment and providing the kind of uncertain drama that any writer craves.

That might all be fine and good for Matt, who’s riding some light acclaim for his second book and is briefly back in Toronto, but it’s more than a little problematic for Mara, who’s now married to a musician and maintaining a stable life with work, friends, and a daughter.

It’s almost like an anti-“Past Lives.” Two people back in their home with practically no deep-seated inner turmoil over identity instead seemingly needing to manufacture discomfort and openly invite drama into their lives for the sake of their work.

Even as the beats play out like a hyper-indie millennial rom-com, the actual driving questions have less to do with the nature of love and romance and everything to do with the nature of the creative mind.

How much dissatisfaction with life is needed for creativity to spark?

Does imagination require you to be distracted and disinterested in the reality around you?

Are quiet comfort and contentment the enemies of creativity?

Of course, none of this is ever explicit. There’s no “’Walter Mitty”-style daydreaming or fantasy sequences. It’s all internal and all very quietly and even passively implied.

But more and more, it becomes obvious that overbearing, cocksure Matt is seeing success and international interest from his writing while the quieter, professional, comfortable Mara – who’s shown to have a long and varied past resumé – is now simply teaching, critiquing, and adapting others’ works.

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Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson in Matt and Mara (courtesy)

So it leaves little wonder why Mara jumps so quickly and haphazardly back into Matt’s verbose, dramatic orbit the very moment that he invites himself unexpectedly back into her life.

And it’s even easier to understand once you’re swept up into their undeniable chemistry.

It’s a credit to the talents of leads Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson, each wholly and effortlessly embodying their character with a documentary-level realism and a thick, palpable romantic chemistry driven not by simple sexual tension, but by volatile intellectual compatibility.

The ease and believability with which they bounce off each other and get under one another’s skin is remarkable and difficult to find in films with ten times the budget and ten times the star power.

It’s also no surprise to see both Campbell and Johnson each receive an “additional writing” credit, as their playful banter and charged arguments feel so natural and off-the-cuff that they could only come from comfortable improvisation.

It’s also interesting to see a story about storytellers so effectively twist and tweak its own academic narrative devices.

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Poster art

Whenever mention is made of critiques or analysis, it seems to foreshadow a later scene or device in the film. Mara commends a student’s use of non-descript time jumps, a technique the film employs itself later on. A reference is made to religious imagery in Chaucer’s writings, foreshadowing the uncomfortable comedy of a religious imagery-heavy scene later.

In a story about writers, Radwanski is encouraging the audience to watch the film as writers themselves.

So yes, it’s a romance, but in quite a different way.

It’s not full of profound love or destiny. It’s about the romantic attraction of the drama itself, of the enticing, barnstorming pull toward the uncertain and the potentially more inspiring.

It’s not “will they?/won’t they?” it’s more “will she?/won’t she?” as we wait to see if Mara will sacrifice her family and her comforts to pursue a life more chaotic and narratively rich, or if she’ll simply file Matt away for potential inspiration down the line.

If you’ve ever felt yourself growing scared by complacency, or if you’ve ever just had that one tension-filled friendship that feels like it’s always begging for resolution, you’ll want to catch this one while you can.

“Matt and Mara” screens Friday, September 20th through Sunday, September 22nd at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
For showtimes, tickets, and more information, visit okcmoa.com.


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Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.