Despite a winning cast, Bruce Sweeney’s Kingsway gets mired in one character’s struggles

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• Kingsway
• Written and directed by Bruce Sweeney
• Starring Jeff Gladstone, Colleen Rennison and Gabrielle Rose
• Classification N/A
• 98 minutes

Bruce Sweeney’s eighth feature Kingsway concerns the love and sex lives of three neurotic members of the Horvat family living in Vancouver, who decide what they want from relationships after the youngest child, Matt (the likable Jeff Gladstone, stuck with an unforgiving role), discovers his cruel wife (singer Colleen Rennison) is having an affair. Her betrayal forces the already fragile Matt into suicidal despair, as his mother (Gabrielle Rose) and sister (Camille Sullivan) try to keep him from ending his life.

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Sweeney’s unflinching portrait of family and a masochistic marriage is full of boomer pathos; his winning ensemble clearly adore working with him. Unfortunately, his film gets lost in the myopia of Matt’s cuckledom, sidelining the far more interesting mother-daughter duo who can’t help but keep walking in on each other’s one night stands.

Kingsway opens Dec. 13