It's the season of chaotic sensations and somber reflections. "Take This Waltz" feels so right at this time of year, if only to remind us of one of life's basic facts: What starts off as something new and shiny will eventually get old and rusty. A bowl of peaches left on the table is already speeding toward decay, just as a summer love affair will bloom wildly in the sun only to wither and brown when the cold winds blow. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that nothing "grew stale so soon as pleasure," and that probably goes double for the pleasures reaped in summertime.
"Take This Waltz" is languid and sensual, driven by a summer passion that moves along in fits and spurts like the engine on some retro automobile. And it all unfolds under an azure Toronto sky, Leonard Cohen crooning the title song in the background. There are scenes of front porches and wicker chairs; of communal shower stalls and a nighttime swimming pool; of feverish kissing and gentle hugging and holding hands under a bar table. Let me say at this point that I hope you have your cut-off denim shorts handy, because after this you will feel a monstrous need to change into them.
The filmmaker/writer is Canadian actress Sarah Polley ("My Life Without Me," "The Secret Life of Words") and this is her second feature behind the camera. As with her previous and brilliant Oscar-nominated "Away From Her" in 2006, the film is an ode to Canada in terms of backdrop, the nod to Cohen and Polley's own, intimate knowledge of Toronto suburbia-scapes.