ROAD TO THE LEMON GROVE

DIRECTOR DALE HILDEBRAND

Road to the Lemon Grove

By Steve Pryce

Starring Burt Young, Nick Mancuso, Rossella Brescia, Charly Chiarelli, Loreena McKennitt, Tomaso Sanelli.

Director Dale Hildebrand

The film 'Road to the Lemon Grove' brings an intimate look at its creators’ understanding of their own history. Co-written by its star Charly Chiarelli, musician and story-teller, and Dale Hildebrand, a highly experienced maker of films for cinema and television, its ninety-something minutes addresses the reality of growing up and living as an adult in an expatriate community - in this case, the Sicilian diaspora of greater Toronto.

Not content with his first feature co-write, Chiarelli plays multiple roles in his first feature as an actor. As Calogero, an established Canadian academic, the ghost of his recently-deceased father Antonio (also Chiarelli) requires him to return his father’s ashes, hence to the lemon grove in Sicily that he left behind to build a new life in Canada.

On set with actors Nick Mancuso, Rossella Brescia and Director Dale Hildebrand

Ghostly father and son travel through Sicily together, bantering the differences that still remain between them. As a much-younger Antonio, Chiarelli appears in a flashback to the 1950s; he frequently breaks the fourth wall as narrator, then goes on to play a minor character in Sicily. Chiarelli’s versatility in his first feature film is impressive. Lemon grove is very much a vehicle for Chiarelli, but the ensemble

On set with actor Charly Chiarelli

Italo-Canadian cast all put in worthy performances. Italy’s prima ballerina, Rosella Brescia, makes a beguiling movie premiere (never apparently so) as an actress tired of paparazzi attention; Nick Mancuso plays a rare comedic role.

Road to the Lemon Grove alludes subtly to the history of the Italian diaspora. Its comedic references are now-unacceptable jokes and slapsticks that defined the evolution of humour through Calogero’s lifetime; a subtle look over the shoulder at seventy years of one part of how society defines, and re-defines, itself. Similarly, every character is on its way somewhere new. The father Calogero, hiding his true intention throughout, manipulates his son Antonio to set himself free from the boundaries and assumptions created by the cultures they both grew up in, and in doing so liberates himself. When on the journey Calogero talks with the ghost of his father, he liberates all those whose path he crosses from some of their social inhibition. Calogero’s ultimate resolution of the material conflict in Road to the Lemon Grove is that he just doesn’t care about his presumed motivations; that it’s more important to

compromise a mutual satisfaction on the limited number of trips around the sun that is the common human condition.

It is worth taking the time to watch Road to the Lemon Grove. It brings no simplistic message, the sublime humour of the plot and its implementation leaving much room for the viewer’s interpretation. Its partial illustration of the collective memories of expatriate Italiana serve to make the viewer reflect on the lives lived by them, and by the viewers themselves.

The metaphors are incomplete, giving the viewer room to add their own experience in the completion of understanding. Remember to bring your intellect, relax, and take your time to enjoy and think in your own time, about its meaning to you. Be open. Road to the Lemon Grove might make you laugh at aspects of yourself.

Starring Burt Young, Nick Mancuso, Rossella Brescia, Charly Chiarelli, Loreena McKennitt, Tomaso Sanelli.

Filming locations: Toronto, Canada and Catania, Sicily, Italy.

Photo Credits: Dale Hildebrand