I haven’t been to a movie in months! So when the theatres opened back up again in Manitoba I was eager to hit ’em up. Thing is, it took a while before a film was released that stuck my fancy. How about a Mennonite-Filipina romance? Sounds good to me!
When I found out that I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight was playing, Andrew and I drove in from Steinbach to Winnipeg… only to discover the theatre wasn’t open on Monday. Whoops! Apparently during the pandemic theatres aren’t open seven days a week. Shows how little we’ve been paying attention, I guess. Disappointed, we drove back home, only to find ourselves in Winnipeg a few days later.
I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight, a film by Sean Garrity, is a romantic comedy about a Filipina woman and a Mennonite man — a Friesen of all people — set in a typical Winnipeg winter.
After the first few scenes, I thought the film was influenced by Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. I would have loved to see a film that was set in Winnipeg and recorded the conversations between two people in one 24-hour day. However, this film was different. It’s Winnipeg, after all. You can’t expect people to walk around all night chatting about philosophy when it’s -20 out.
The film spends more time exploring Filipino culture than Mennonite. This may be the first ever film exploring the Filipino diaspora in Canada. Modern assimilated Mennonites have rarely been explored in film, but this film does feature a character of the Friesen variety and a number of interesting scenes set in Morden. Without disclosing spoilers, I do wonder whether the phonebook used in the film might actually have been a Steinbach phone book rather than a Morden one. (You’ll know what I mean when you go see it!)
Featuring fantastic cinematography, ribald humour, and sex scenes that will offend your Oma, I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight is a must-see film!