Oh, Canada

Fiery but feeling his years and his illness, ailing documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) sits for an extended interview with Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), a former student. Finally revealing the truth and lies in his life and career, Leonard charges ahead with candid stories about his younger self (Jacob Elordi) in the fractious 1960s, and beyond. At Leonard’s insistence, his wife and indispensable partner, Emma (Uma Thurman), hears it all.

The plunge into the past begins with a pivotal moment on March 30, 1968 during the Vietnam War draft, years before Leonard became a filmmaker. Young Leonard (Elordi) is married to pregnant Alicia in Virginia, and about to embark on a trip to Vermont. But is it to visit friends, or a pretext to cross into Canada and evade the draft? When Alicia’s father makes Leonard a lucrative job offer, the choice between staying or fleeing responsibility hangs in the air.

But Leonard’s interview keeps snapping back into the present as Malcolm asks questions and Emma chimes in. Raw new memories come out, and spill out on the screen: young Leonard’s affair when he was a frustrated writer; meeting Emma when she was a brilliant student in his class; his delinquent early days in the idyllic Vermont town where he grew up. What begins as an interview turns into a personal reckoning and a sparring match over love and legacy.

Leonard’s energy start to flag, but he presses on with unburdening himself, although Emma tries to protect him (and maybe herself) from revealing too much. The crossfire of memories picks up with young Leonard visiting his painter friend, Stanley, and wife, Gloria, in Vermont, where they’re comfortable but stagnating. When young Leonard gets word of tragedy back in Virginia, a painful memory from decades later comes to the fore: when Leonard, by this time an established filmmaker, was approached by his estranged son, Cornel, at a screening.

The interview grows increasingly urgent and affected by Leonard’s health, until it finally addresses the truth about his behaviour during the Vietnam War draft. Leonard’s successes are held up against his failings—the fibs held up against the facts—and as the man in full is cleansed of the myth, Leonard must confront what is left.