Adam (Patrick Hivon) really needs help when he calls the customer service for Polar Lux in “Peak Everything,” and employees of the electronics company can probably assume on occasion they’re helping to fix broken people rather than products with their therapeutic devices. The therapy desk lamp is clearly a last resort for Adam, who runs a kennel for strays off the grid and can’t hide his distaste for the material world, making the order for any consumer good a significant one, and when it doesn’t immediately have the desired effect, he finds himself reaching for the phone.
In a movie that makes perfect sense of these unpredictable times in which the world makes none, Adam finds exactly the support he needs, but not what he could reasonably expect when he connects with a random Polar Lux employee named Tina (Piper Perabo), who hardly flinches when she identifies that it isn’t the lamp that needs a reboot, but rather the customer himself. In gently surreal universe imagined by Canadian helmer Anne Émond, Adam’s personal meltdown is a symptom of larger potentially apocalyptic forces as storms, earthquakes, and even meteors are cropping up at an alarming rate. However, instead of coming together in the face of what looks to be an existential threat, the population appears to be fracturing and burrowing into their private places of comfort, which Adam no longer looks to have when he is caught up in a whirlwind of despair before any actual major catastrophe can reach him, feeling as if he’s wasted his life with few accomplishments to his name in his forties.
The title of “Peak Everything” may refer to the anxiety coming from every direction that plagues its anxious lead, but it also nods to being the ultimate Émond film when the writer/director is in top form and bears her longtime interest in central characters who often struggle to find a way out of their isolation and a desire to work in various tonalities. Only a chameleon like herself would think to follow up “Nelly,” a harrowing biography of the late sex worker-turned-literary-firebrand Nelly Arcan, with the cheeky coming-of-age comedy “Jeune Juliette,” and find a commonality in their restlessness over their perception. That versatility allows the director to round corners more smoothly when journeying through a world on edge, bringing along an occasionally wacky sense of humor with a guttural dread in a situation for which laughter seems like the only appropriate response. There is no straightforward road ahead for the panic-stricken dog handler except to Ontario after a call to Tina is disrupted by a natural disaster and he’s compelled to drive across Canada to check in on a woman he only knows by the sound of her voice. Still, it’s not the drive, but even showing the slightest bit of compassion that goes a long way in “Peak Everything” when everyone is caught up in their own personal drama to be of much assistance to anyone else.
Émond creates a fascinating sense of scale when refraining from news reports or other narrative devices to affirm the chaos that would seem to largely exist exclusively inside Adam’s head, yet the real estate it takes up feels enormous as everyone he comes into contact with are coping as best they can, blinded towards one another to some degree out of self-protection. (The likelihood this was conceived around the time of a global lockdown that everyone remains all to aware of also eliminates the need for further exposition.) Tina’s job obliges her to have a chipper attitude on the clock, but as Adam eventually gets to know her, she too probably had greater aspirations than where she ended up as a suburban mom with no time to herself between her day job and domestic duties, a history that Perabo in a rare role to show her considerable range is able to express on her face alone. Although Tina could go home after her office is shut down after disaster strikes, it makes more sense emotionally as much as practically to leave with Adam when she’s more at ease in the care of a stranger than she is amongst her immediate family.
A romance seems inevitable in spite of the minor inconvenience of a spouse to think of in Tina’s case, but Émond has never been one to offer easy outs to anyone or take one herself. Instead of putting much energy into a will-they-or-won’t-they dilemma with the main duo, the writer/director finds more compelling tension in whether Adam and Tina can acknowledge the ground shifting beneath their feet when it would be easier to carry on in denial of where they are than feelings towards one another. Their fears evolve from the unknown to what they know all too well and reaching a tipping point where playing it safe looks like the place of greatest peril, “Peak Everything” offers a welcome respite in embracing chaos rather than running from it.
“Peak Everything” will screen again at the Cannes Film Festival as part of Directors Fortnight on May 19th at 9 am at La Licorne, 11:30 am at Les Arcades and 7 pm at Alexandre III.