Why does it always seem when one is trapped in a place which is off the map, it's usually where one was meant to be in the first place? That seems to be the argument posited by Conquest, a droll comedy about eccentrics living in a small town and the outsider who falls in with them. Tara Fitzgerald, from Sirens and Brassed Off fame, plays the traveler whose 'steed' breaks down and Lothaire Bluteau is the town's banker who becomes smitten with her when he knows she doesn't plan to stay long. Albeit the cracks and seams of this tried and true genre are evident here but the mixing up of genre staples such as the brothers who spend their time painting while in debt to the bank, the old biddies constantly making jelly salads and getting drunk while berry picking whenever they purchase new shoes, and the banker who yearns to leave but can't because for 1)the bus never seems to stop and 2)his family was ruined by the same bank he works for so he figures he can make a difference, all work well to give, at least to this bitter and jaundiced viewer, a chance to smile and await the obvious machinations to develop as we know they will. Not entirely original but entirely enjoyable.
Conquest
(1998)
A woman's car breaks down in Conquest, Saskatchewan and a banker is taken with her.
29 November 1999