Anne at 13,000 Ft: A brilliant performance you’ll watch through your fingers

If you have ever experienced acute anxiety, panic attacks or any other nervous disorder, then watching Anne at 13,000 Ft – presumably through your fingers – will bring a sense of representation and horror in equal measure. It’s The Shining for nail-biters; Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence for millennials.

It’s not that anything truly horrifying happens during this succinct, naturalistic drama. The third feature from Ontarian wunderkind Kazik Radwanski demonstrates, yet again, why his work earns favourable comparison to that of Ken Loach and the Dardennes.

The stressed urbanism of Radwanski’s oeuvre finds jagged articulation with Nikolay Michaylov’s claustrophobic camera and Deragh Campbell’s erratic Anne.

Anne is a little too free and childlike with her youthful charges. Her laugh is a little too manic

Campbell, the star of MS Slavic 7 and Never Eat Alone, is a brilliantly understated performer who could bring gritty grounding to The Tempest’s Ariel – or any other literary sprite or nymph of your choosing. Playing a socially awkward daycare assistant, she walks an exhausting emotional tightrope for the film’s duration.

Anne’s worried mother (Lawrene Denkers) irritates our heroine with maternal fears, but the viewer, in time, is equally concerned.

Working from his own script, Radwanski evokes a sense of duty of care. Anne is perennially, poignantly off the neurotypical pace. She’s a little too free and childlike with her youthful charges. Her laugh is a little too manic, especially when, scolded by a co-worker for drinking hot liquids, Anne throws an empty paper cup at her unamused accuser. Anne’s speech at the wedding of her friend and colleague Sarah (Dorothea Paas) is a little too emotional. Her propensity to feel overwhelmed is seldom far away.

Mortifying date

When Anne meets Matt (Matt Johnson, director and star of criminally under-rated shooter drama The Dirties) at a wedding, she cheerfully proceeds with the relationship even though he gets her pass-out drunk and takes her back to his hotel room. Their next, entirely mortifying, date sees Anne surprising Matt by introducing him to her mother and family as her fiance.

For all her flaws and faux-pas, Anne is a lovable creature. Too guileless and too sweet to be Fleabag, her foibles frame, rather than mask, her fragility. The film is bookended and punctuated by Anne embarking on a tandem skydive. It’s an adventure that works on literal and figurative levels for a heroine who is always falling fast, one that builds toward an ambiguous final shot.

Earlier this year, Anne at 13,000 Ft won the Toronto Film Critics Association’s best Canadian film award and two Vancouver Film Critics Circle awards, including a richly deserved statuette for Campbell. You’re unlikely to see many better performances this year.

Streaming from October 1st