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film review
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Laysla De Oliveira and Giacomo Gianniotti in Acquainted.Kat Mint/Courtesy of Red Eye.

  • Acquainted
  • Directed by: Natty Zavitz
  • Written by: Natty Zavitz
  • Starring: Giacomo Gianniotti, Laysla De Oliveira, Rachel Skarsten, Raymond Ablack
  • Classification: 14A; 101 minutes

Rating:

2 out of 4 stars

In the for-couples-only drama Acquainted, boyfriend Drew and girlfriend Claire buy a house together. Drew (Giacomo Gianniotti, from Grey’s Anatomy) dutifully puts the Ikea shelving together but gets upset when girlfriend Claire (Rachel Skarsten) purchases a sensible piece of furniture. “It’s just a couch!” she yells. But it is more. It is unexciting domesticity and a relationship plateau. When Drew meets a gorgeous girl he went to high school with, she represents an escape. Said gorgeous girl (Emma, played by Brazilian-Canadian actress Laysla De Oliveira) is also in a serious partnership. Yet she’s leaving Toronto for postgraduate studies in Montreal, while her guy of many years is set to go to Japan for a pottery apprenticeship. Does anyone here want to grow up? And, a pottery apprenticeship in Japan? From young Toronto filmmaker Natty Zavitz, Acquainted explores questions of the is-this-all-there-is kind. Like the four principal actors, Acquainted is nice to look at but not so stimulating. And while the soundtrack of Charlotte Day Wilson and Daniel Caesar is cool, the film is not nearly as sexy as that music.

Acquainted opens April 5 in Toronto and Vancouver.

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