Filmmaker Laura Adkin's Bowen Island-set Re:Uniting explores the ups and downs of nearing 50
Set at a 25-year reunion for close college friends, the waterfront shoot was like
”summer camp”
Carmen Moore, Michelle Harrison, and Bronwen Smith in Re: Uniting.
Re: Uniting opens in Vancouver on March 15, with a Q&A with Adkin and select cast on March 16 at Cineplex Odeon International Village
ASK VANCOUVER ACTOR-WRITER-DIRECTOR Laura Adkin what it was like making her first feature film, Re: Uniting, on Bowen Island, and she compares it to summer camp—even though it was still pandemic times.
Shooting the story of six friends reuniting at a giant waterfront house 25 years after their college graduation had challenges like masking and other Covid protocols. But it also involved shooting scenes of cocktails on Adirondack chairs and people riding boats and floatplanes.
Several of the actors lived on the island, and the cast and crew were put up in local B&Bs.
“It was really, really nice to be able to shoot there and have the support of a small town,” reflects Adkin, whose mother is also a resident of the quaint, pine-covered isle 15 minutes by ferry off Horseshoe Bay. “It is so, so different than shooting in Vancouver or Toronto or wherever, where everyone was there together on an island, getting all our catering from the local restaurants. Of course, we were all struggling at the time and it was just really, really great—such an amazing experience, and we were able to infuse money into the community.”
That sense of fun blends with harder realities in a story about people hitting an age where they start to have regrets—mulling the years lost to child-rearing, feeling the strain of overwork and coming home to an empty apartment, or realizing that long-talked-about girls’ trip to Italy may never happen. For some, it’s also a time when your first friends start to get ill or die, a wakeup call that time is running out.
“I like to call it the second coming of age—okay, maybe even the third,” says Adkin of the characters in their 40s, pushing 50. “It’s so funny how we talk about coming of age when you're 18—and then that's it? There are so many milestones. And maybe your life is turning out the way that you wanted it to. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's time to try something new. That was a really interesting timeframe to delve into and talk about.”
Laura Adkin
The folks in Re: Uniting may be on the back side of middle age, however they are still admirably down to party like it’s 1995, getting gooned by noon, dancing to the ‘90s’ greatest hits in the living room, and embarking on desperate searches for aspirin each morning.
The ensemble film also allowed for rich territory in acting—a field Adkin knows not only from her own career in front of the camera, but from running classes at Vancouver Acting School. Born and raised here, she began her career in film and TV in the early 2000s, first as an actor and then moving behind the camera a decade later as a producer, writer, and director. She’s made her name for standout shorts like the “The Goodnight Kiss”, walking her signature razor’s edge between comedy and darkness.
Re: Uniting catches viewers similarly offguard, starting out as full-on comedy—watch Carmen Moore’s Natalie scream “What’s up bitches!” as she steps out of a floatplane, then slips and splashes into Howe Sound—and then ending up as a much more serious meditation on mortality and friendship.
“I mean, the amount of funerals I've laughed at, because it's just, you know, you find something funny in tragedy—that’s a real human quality,” Adkin observes. “I think that's something that people can relate to. I worked on the script for quite a long time and I did a number of table reads to see what wasn't working. I'm very lucky to have access to actors at my disposal, through the acting school, as well as all my friends. And yeah, I think we strike that balance.”
The women in Re: Uniting are complex—take Moore’s Natalie, a neurosurgeon with a penchant for shooters. Or Michelle Harrison’s Rachel, the host who has a perfect house, a loving husband (Jesse L. Martin), and happy kids, but seems to be carrying the weight of a secret.
“I just love actors. I love actors so much,” Adkin says. “And I think, you know, all of my training as an actor really helped me to be a better director.”
The male characters are equally complicated—not least of them Danny, played by Adkin’s husband David James Lewis, who also took a comic turn in “The Goodnight Kiss”. His character is the perennial party animal we meet naked in bed one morning, still handcuffed to a one-night stand he may or may not recognize.
“David is a really fun person, and he really has this side of him that we never see on screen, but I see it all the time,” Adkin begins. “He's very funny. He is, you know, a great husband and he's great dad. He's just an all-around great person and he generally plays these characters, if you look at his IMDb, that are, like, either the guy that is the murderer, or the guy you think is the murderer, or else just the corporate guy. He often plays these very white-collar straight-laced characters. And I wanted him to be able to play a character that is basically an exaggerated version of himself. I always joke that if David had never had kids, or never met me, that he probably would have become Danny.”
And then there were the more poignant moments—sometimes offered up by Mother Nature. Those included an appearance by a whale off the coast that offered a beautiful, and completely unscripted, bit of symbolism at a crucial moment in the film. Adkin and cinematographer Sterling Bancroft were grabbing a bite after a day of capturing stock shots of sailboats when Adkin asked him to quickly pull out his camera.
“We were just sitting there eating pizza, and I just looked out and saw a mama humpback whale with her baby,” she recalls.
Whether it’s that kind of West Coast magic, or its unique mix of light and dark, Re: Uniting has earned a warm reception at festivals here and south of the border, including the Austin Film Festival, where it made its world premiere in October. That, in turn, has led to it being picked up by Cineplex theatres this weekend—pretty cool when you consider Adkin once worked at the late, great Granville 7.
“My first job ever was at Cineplex, so it's really exciting to be able to come full circle,” says the filmmaker. “I worked there for seven or eight years and I became a projectionist. So I would just sit in the booth watching these movies on film. I would always like look through the little window at the movie and just dream that my movie would play there.” 
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