The Rowdyman

Every year the TIFF takes a classic Canadian film and makes a new restored print of the film. They screen it under the heading "Canada Open Vault". This years film was a golden oldie. One of the first major works of Canadian Cinema, written and starring an acting legend (O.K., only if you actually live in Canada) : Gordon Pinsent. It is the portriat of a jolly newfoundland fellow who has an infectuous desire to have fun and refuses to grow up. As the rest of his schoolmates get married, move away and leave his home town (Corner Brook, NFLD) things get complicated for him until he nearly breaks.
The film is all about Pinsent's performance which makes his aging boyish cad a very likeable fellow. And his character is not as simple as you first would think, his weekly visits to meet girls in St. John's include a trip to the old age home where he has a bond with an elderly patient who was once a womanizing legend himself. The conversations and body language between these two are at once tangential to the films narrative, but come back to the core of the picture. How to deal with yourself once you have spotted "the girl" that got away, the one you should have married.
What is great about this movie is that it is just damn fine storytelling (easy to follow, but subtly complex). A happier companion piece to another Canadian classic of Newfie losers who can't grow up, Going Down The Road, which came out only a year prior to The Rowdyman. These two films defined much of what types of Canadian films were made for a decade an a half as the Canadian Film scene was getting underway.
Side note: It was nice to see trains running in Newfoundland in this picture. The provincial government pulled all the railway tracks on the island up in the 1980s due to incompatible (with the mainland) rail standards .