Jeremy LaLonde’s latest film "How to Plan an Orgy in a Small town," is philosophical in nature. The film follows the residents of a fictional town called Beaver's Ridge, a town populated with conservative characters. Their ideals are challenged by the return of our protagonist, a former townsperson turned Toronto sex columnist Cassie Cranston (played by Firefly fame Jewel Staite). Cassie finds that her city ways and views doesn't quite fit with the local way of living in Beaver Ridge.
The film acts as a giant nod to Plato’s "allegory of the cave.” The ‘Allegory Of The Cave’ is a theory concerning human perception. The allegory describes a group of prisoners who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. These prisoners watch shadows projected on the wall from things passing in front of a fire behind them, and they begin to give names to these shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then describes how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners. This is Plato's claim that knowledge gained through the senses is no more than opinion and that, in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical reasoning.
In "How to plan an Orgy" Cassie acts as the one who sets the prisoner cave dweller free and the locals representing the prisoners. Through Cassie’s sex columns our characters are confronted with seeing the fire itself. The light becomes almost unbearable for the townsfolk when Cassie points out, in a terribly awkward confrontation with local mean girl Heather, played by Lauren Lee Smith, that the whole town is backwards and sexually repressed. Heather takes this accusation on as a challenge and decides to host an orgy to show how open minded the town really can be. Ultimately enlisting Cassie to help in planing the orgy. Heather and her husband Cassie’s high-school sweet heart Adam (Ennis Esmer of The Listener) begin to recruit people to participate in their sex party.
Once the shenanigans of planing an orgy in a small town start, our characters start changing drastically. Tapping into their needs and secret desires realizing that they cannot and do not want go back to their old way of living. The inhabitants of Beaver’s Ridge begin to see the wonder in embracing their sexuality and begin working to remove the walls that hold their sexual selfs.
"How to Plan an Orgy" uses its run time of 101 minutes to explore our status as individuals as both sexual and social creatures. In a comical manner, it tackles topics of racism, "slut-shaming" and the blatant instrumentation of people in our lives for the benefit of self, as well as healing the demons of adolescence’s at topic which is handled nicely with in Adam and Cassie’s interactions.
The film also toys with the dangers of holding a capitalistic value of self, which is quite notable in Heather, a character who's motives for stepping away from the shadows that rule her cave comes from a obsessive desire to reproduce. This goal encourages her to completely dehumanize her infertile husband.
Although the title acts as bait for viewers, and in fact does involve "How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town," the film views more like a romantic comedy that tackles what I would call an adult coming-of-age story. Having all the characters evolve, many shedding the unlikable traits they held at the start of the film. It makes you wonder that if planning an orgy for these characters that seem so real could make such a major change in their lives, maybe just maybe, if we also planned an orgy we could also grow in such a dramatic way, after all it doesn't really look that hard when all is said and done.
The film's cast ability to be relatable and at at times so funny you want to cry, result in a five star rating.
Check the Trailer here:
Northern Banner will release "How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town" theatrically in Canada in early 2016.
