Portrait of A Serial Monogamist

There is nothing more sadistically funny than watching the opening scenes of a movie witnessing the protagonist dumping her girlfriend of five years. She is just the last new recruit into the ever expanding group of ‘exes’ that Elsie has managed to accumulate over the years. In fact Elsie is so experienced at the whole routine of discarding lovers that she has finished with, that she has the whole occasion finely tuned into a art where she manages to manipulate the wounded party into actually making the break.

Robyn, the latest one to be let go is a stand up comedian but she doesn’t find this unexpected turn of events in the least bit funny and and ends up taking refuge at the home of Elsie’s best friend Grace. It’s Grace who then starts to lecture Elsie that this pattern of loving then leaving women without even taking a pause to come up for fresh air, is a compulsive addiction that she must break and so she challenges her to actually remain single for five months.

Elsie accepts the wager as she is gradually realizing that the part of Toronto that she lives in seems to be getting like a really small place these days, but that is partly due to the fact everywhere she goes in the neighborhood is littered with her ex-girlfriends. There are also major changes afoot at the TV station where she works and it seems like the music program she produces may either be changed beyond recognition or dropped. So forty-something-year-old Elsie thinks that this is all adding up to be the time for a new chapter in her life, except that she really doesn’t know what it will/should be.

Torn between pursuing Lolli a pretty barista-cum-photographer who is initially reluctant to show any interest in Elsie, and seeing the lives of her other friends move on, she actually starts to regret that she may have been too hasty in getting rid of Robyn who just may be the big love of her life after all.

This rather delightful dramady written and directed by newbie filmmakers Christina Zieldler and John Mitchell has more than its fair share of comedy thanks mainly to a spirited performance by Diane Flack as the complex and confused Elsie. She is charming and quick-witted enough to (almost) get away with her rather shabby treatment of other people in her life with her funny barbed comments made straight to camera. However, there is a particular scene at a memorial for a departed pet which dissolves into a hilarious dispute full of rancor between the some of the exes that hints that this movie had even more untapped humorous potential.

It had the exactly the right ending that Elsie deserved and which made perfect sense, although probably serial monogamists watching it may have been secretly praying for a more resolved conclusion.

★★★★★★★