Still Mine

A Special Presentation at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, Michael McGowan’s Still Mine is an exquisitely mounted and deeply affecting story about one man’s determination to create a home for his ailing wife as they enter their twilight years.

One of a dwindling number of family farmers in rural St. Martins, New Brunswick, Craig Morrison (James Cromwell --The Artist, L.A. Confidential) is used to doing things for himself. Sometimes cantankerous and always stubborn, he’s managed to keep his traditional farm going not least because of the support of his wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold -- Dead Ringers, Coma), who’s as tough and determined as he is. But when Irene’s health begins to fail, Craig is faced with the choice of either building a new, more suitable home for her, or leaving the farm they have lived on for decades. A skilled carpenter, he figures the only obstacles he faces are time and the weather — that is, until he meets Rick (Jonathan Potts), a government inspector who makes it his personal mission to halt construction on the new house.

On one level a story about the clash between heritage and modernity, Still Mine is also a remarkably incisive and affecting character study of the taciturn Craig, whose labour of love is inspired as much by his profound need to prove that he is still capable of providing for himself and his family — and by his sense of his own mortality — as it is by his powerful devotion to his wife. Set against the gorgeous, windswept vistas of New Brunswick, sensitively and astutely directed by McGowan (One Week, Saint Ralph) and featuring magnificent performances from its perfectly cast leads, Still Mine is a moving, graceful, and beautifully understated love story.