The ravishing Okanagan Valley in British Columbia is composed of many natural features the world might not expect from a northern country like Canada, such as verdant, green hills for nurturing fruit tree farms, fertile soils for expansive networks of vineyards, and even desert-like swathes of dry, arid land. This is the region that plays setting for Until Branches Bend, a beguiling and thoughtfully composed debut feature from Vancouver-based director and production designer, Sophie Jarvis, who has drawn from her own childhood experiences living in the valley to inform her work. The final product on screen is a sensual, textural, and many-layered drama of social realism à la the Dardenne brother’s Two Days, One Night, albeit with a stronger emphasis on environmental concerns and touches of a psychological drama.

Grace Glowicki, who you may recognize from last year’s Strawberry Mansion, plays Robin, a low-rise jean-wearing, bespectacled thirty-something who works dutifully as a grader at a local cannery and lives with her younger sister, Laney (Alexandra Roberts). The two support each other, but also depend on their jobs (Laney works as a picker), and, by extension, on the agricultural robustness of their town. When Robin discovers a beetle that has burrowed its way into the middle of a peach on her inspection line, the farming season of the fictional Montague is thrown into jeopardy. The town had a season ruined by an invasive species of moth just two years ago, and so the beetle raises immediate flags and gets farming halted, despite the farmers’ pleading to continue working. Meanwhile, Robin will try to deal with an unwanted pregnancy and evade the scorn of angry farmers and townsfolk who are suddenly without work, and Laney’s well-to-do boyfriend will urge her leave the Okanagan and explore more of the world.

Moving elsewhere isn’t really an option in Robin’s mind. Played by Glowicki with equal parts tenderness and a hard shell, Robin is someone who has become a pure expression/extension of her environment. She works diligently and enjoys eating the fruits she grades; she loves her dog Rupert and playing with her neighbour’s children. Despite her good intentions, she has wound up pregnant, feeling something inside of her that she did not intend to carry. This concern is compounded and even reflected in Robin’s obsessive pursuit of proof the beetle’s presence, Jarvis bringing into question parallel scenarios of female disenfranchisement when Robin’s claims become other peoples’ business. It is a winding and treacherous path towards vindication, even when your community presents itself as cheery and understanding on the surface.

I wouldn’t go as far as to refer to Jarvis’ effort as a horror, but there is plenty done to put you in Robin’s headspace and make you feel unnerved and alienated, everything taking on a menacing bent as Robin works to rectify her good name. Many scenes are filled with the sounds of bugs buzzing around Robin to instill a sense of paranoia, while a very distinct score from composer Kieran Jarvis utilizes flute, cello, and vocals (amongst other instruments) to establish tension and a tone of chilly unease. In an interview with Filmmaker magazine, Jarvis cites Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995) as having a strong influence on her film, and this can be felt immediately in the subtle but meticulously effective work done to destabilize the filmic world. Moments of erratic editing suggest a sort of mania taking over Robin, while quiet and intimate moments—such as when Robin, having a bath, juts her tiny baby bump out of the water—prove that Jarvis’ story isn’t all doomsaying.

Though dread bubbles throughout the film, so much in Until Branches Bend is lovingly obsessed-over—the result of Jarvis’ respect for her film’s location and her holistic, collaborative approach to working with her team. Never has the Okanagan looked better—as rich and as lush—as in the frames of Jarvis’ film, Jeremy Cox’s gorgeous 16mm photography giving the area a tactility and a glow that digital simply couldn’t have offered. The Okanagan Valley finally has a story it can be really proud of; one that gets at homegrown authenticity and reflects so much of the real-world issues plaguing the area. A quick Google search on the Okanagan will reveal to you everything from tumultuous politics regarding the agricultural sector to recent ecological and climate concerns such as heat waves and the resulting forest fires. Production of Until Branches Bend took place in the summer of 2021, when a now famous “heat dome” gripped the region (one BC town even went up in flames, quite literally), and the sense of calamity in the film is palpable. Even the matter of an invasive species of beetle is far from a random invention by Jarvis—as I write this, my hometown in BC struggles with the fallout of a Japanese beetle invasion.  

So much is woven into Jarvis’ unassuming script that rings as startlingly relevant to our current environmental crises. Think of the film as a smaller scale Don’t Look Up, without the bloated length and the grating smugness, as well as a greater penchant for subtlety. Until Branches Bend never goes the route putting on the nose or in your face what agendas it has; instead, it anchors its commentaries in metaphor and gives more space for its lovingly developed and authentic-feeling characters, each of whom struggles with personal conundrums beyond the film’s central conflict. Though the film has “bigger picture” commentaries, it is rooted firmly in the individual, and how the modern individual must conflate the abstracting of their own autonomy with their increasingly at-risk surroundings.

Subtexts aside, Until branches Bend also demands to be soaked in and mulled over on a purely aesthetic level. It is an assured debut in every sense of the phrase, and it struck me as one of the most distinct and artful features that TIFF has had to offer. The film had its world debut at TIFF on September 10th, and is sure to inspire some buzz going into VIFF later this month, where it will screen again. This writer holds that the highest praise you can give to a film is a re-watch, and will certainly try to give Jarvis’ work further attention and thought when it hits my festival at home. Hopefully, the film will garner even stronger responses from BC-based audiences, and hopefully these responses will find purchase in environmentally conscious audiences the world over.