Mouthpiece

Based on a stage play of the same name by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, the story follows Cassandra who is portrayed by the two women expressing the opposing voices that exist inside the modern woman's head, during a 48-hour period as she tries to organize the affairs for her mother's funeral.

"Using two actors — co-creators and performers Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava — to show a young woman’s split psyche after her mother dies — proves once again to be a startlingly affective way to explore modern womanhood, seen in Patricia Rozema’s film Mouthpiece and the award-winning play of the same name that inspired it.

Both play a writer in her twenties named Cassie, who struggles to get through a day of negotiating with her aunt and brother, running errands for the funeral, and planning her mother’s eulogy. Nostbakken and Sadava at varying times mirror, fight, enable and comfort each other as they parse through Cassie’s complicated relationship with her mother Elaine (an empathetic Maev Beaty, giving Elaine an empathetic presence that’s missing from the stage play), who clashed — sometimes dramatically — with her daughter over their different ideas of what strong, independent femininity looks like .

While the theatre production relied on Nostbakken and Sadava’s intensely intricate physical and vocal choreography (and a bathtub — watch for its importance in the film too), Rozema (Mansfield Park, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing) uses these elements more sparsely to turn the story from a battle cry into a haunting, self-reflective dream that looks at the pressures and expectations women place on themselves and particularly on each other." Carly Maga, Toronto Star