New Brunswick filmmaker Gia Milani has shown herself in the past to be a deft director of actors, and that talent almost enables her to clear the various hurdles and complications she sets for herself in the 20-something ensemble drama All the Wrong Reasons. But those contrivances ultimately prevail. Set in a big-box store, the story concerns James, an ambitious, likeably bland manager (played by the late Cory Monteith) and his strained relations with Kate, his intimacy-averse, PTSD-suffering wife (Karine Vanasse). She observes the world from the safely detached vantage of the store's closed-circuit surveillance system, but tentatively returns to the world of the flesh when confronted with a sensitive Irish firefighter, Simon (Kevin Zegers), who's dealing with his own form of trauma. And with Nicole (Emily Hampshire), a desperately struggling, sexually tactical single-mother cashier, you're left with an awful lot of explosive emotional material packed into one little movie. The result teeters uncomfortably between dead-end-job slacker comedy and high soap, but it shows enough potential to bode well for Ms. Milani's future.
At VIFF: Sept. 27, 6:30 p.m., International Village; Sept. 28, 1:10 p.m., International Village
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