'The Oxbow Cure' Soundtrack

The original motion picture soundtrack for The Oxbow Cure by Lev Lewis is now available to listen and download. Make sure to check it out!

The Oxbow Cure

The Oxbow Cure is reminiscent of some Bergman dramas (The Passion of Anna): the characters retreat to a remote location, private fears are openly discussed, and the heavy existential themes are represented visually through the harsh weather.

It’s about a woman Lena, who has a spinal injury, and she leaves the city for a remote cottage, to treat her illness. There she starts a routine that includes exercises, walks, and cooking. She’s in touch with her father, who is hospitalized, and is dying. One night, she hears barking; following the noise she finds a trapped dog that she rescues.

The performance by Claudia Dey is exceptional; appearing both vulnerable and persistent as she treats her illness, and fearless as she walks through the forest. These scenes are filmed with a hand-held camera, and are both frightening and elegiac. The noises are especially harrowing as natural sounds, like, snow crunching and wind blowing, are reminders of Lena’s fragility. And the score by Lev Lewis goes from orchestral piano and strings to a P.J. Proby songs.

The Oxbow Cure is Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis’ follow up to Amy George, which is suburb drama about a teenager with a crush on a next-door neighbor. It might appear like a grand departure, but there are still some similarities. In Amy George Jesse has a photography assignment, and The Oxbow Cure begins with Lena taking pictures at the cottage. The walks through the woods in Amy George are heightened a ten-fold in The Oxbow Cure. And similar to how Jesse was seduced by Amy in Amy George, there is a beckoning in The Oxbow Cure that needs to be seen to be believed.

I’m not going to spoil any more of its mysteries. I’ll just say that The Oxbow Cure goes into some unexpected territory, gains in ambience from a theatrical setting, and richness through multiple viewings. What are these bold filmmakers going to do next?

The Oxbow Cure at the Lightbox (Opens August 23rd)

The Oxbow Cure is having its Toronto premiere and starts its theatrical run on Friday August 23rd at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. 

Recommended Reading:

• Interview: Yonah Lewis & Calvin Thomas by Andrew Parker (Dork Shelf)

Festival Premiere: The Oxbow Cure

The 15th edition of the Sarasota Film Festival recently unveiled their line up for this year's edition, which will take place from April 5th to the 14th. It includes many great films, most notably The Oxbow Cure.

The festival has a good reputation amongst cinephiles as they play the latest acclaimed independant and international films. The festival director Tom Hall says of the lineup that it "is really diverse, we're trying to bring the best films to the community." For example, in the Narrative Feature Competition there is Matthew Porterfield's new film I Used to be Darker. 

The Independent Visions Competition is presented by Factory 25, the New York based specialty DVD company, and the section's jurors are Matt Grady, Alex Ross Perry, Michael Tully, and C. Mason Wells.

The Toronto directors Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas's sophomore feature The Oxbow Cure will have its world premiere in the Independent Visions Competition. The film stars Claudia Dey (the mother from Amy George) and the program describes the film as, "a portrait of isolation that is at once riveting as it is beautiful. Using the frozen landscape of the Canadian winter as a cinematic backdrop for Lena’s slow road to forgiveness, C&Y have created a poetic portrait of a women seeking to heal herself." This is one of the most anticipated films of the year.

First Look: Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas' "The Oxbow Cure"

The film-making Toronto duo Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas follow up their first feature Amy George, a coming-of-age story about an unhappy adolescent, with The Oxbow Cure. The new film is about a woman (Claudia Dey, the mother from Amy George) who retreats from society to a cottage to recuperate from an illness. The website describes the film as, "When rivers meander and are sometimes cut off from their course, they form an oxbow lake." This much-anticipated film is still waiting to be premiered at a film festival. The website for The Oxbow Cure is now online.