If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from Pinocchio, the now Disney-fied protagonist of Italian writer Carlo Collodi’s classic 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, it’s that lying can quickly spin spectacularly, and irretrievably out of control.
In Pinocchio’s case that wild spiralling away from any semblance of truth manifested itself as a nose that grew longer and longer with every porky pie he told.
In the case of Ruth (Sonja Bennett), the faux-pregnant heroine of Canadian film Preggoland, written by Bennett and directed by actor/director Jacob Tierney, things are quite a bit more complicated as the synopsis from Cineplex makes all too clear:
“All of Ruth’s friends have kids. As the odd one out, single and frustrated party girl Ruth (Sonja Bennett) makes the mistake of her lifetime: telling her elderly dad (James Caan) that she’s pregnant. There’s just one catch, of course, she’s not having a baby, and her small outburst has spread like wildfire within her small town and circle of friends. Now, not willing to admit that she’s not knocked up, Ruth must continue her charade with hilarious results. Even Machete himself, Danny Trejo gets wrapped up in her story.”
That kind of trumps Pinocchio’s lies just a little although to be fair it’s unlikely that Ruth will find herself turning into a donkey as a result of her untruths any time soon.
But into a fake pregnant woman who somehow has to produce a baby at the end of nine very faked pregnant months?
Oh that will totally have to happen if she’s not going to break her dad’s heart or those of pretty much everyone she knows and you can bet there will be heaps of crazy, hilarious situations that will ensue in a film that has a lot of fun playing with what the official synopsis (via Mongrel Media) says is “our societal obsession with babies and the lengths we’ll go to be part of a club”.
And the film, which premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, clearly has at least something going for it if this excerpt from Heather Magee’s review in the National Post is any indication:
“… where many cooker-cutter clichés about single girls in their thirties…fall short, Jacob Tierney’s Preggoland presents this demographic honestly.”
No word yet on when Preggoland will be released internationally with the only screening date listed outside of North America being at the Istanbul Film Festival on 9 April but it sounds like an entertaining take on the old Pinocchian dilemma of what happens when you lie and lie and lie and cannot stop and I can only hope it reaches Australia at some point.