User Reviews

I saw this new flic at its only press screening on April 6 at the Revue Cinema in Toronto. Billed as a road film, the Lost Highway is anything but. The demise of Highway 7 as the principal route for vehicles traveling from Toronto to Ottawa is simply the setting for a painful expose of the lives of two families who call this home. Howard & his parents have run "Gibbs Gas" for many years, & Howard hopes his daughter Melanie will take over the family business. The filmmakers follow Howard's aspirations for three years & many painful interviews in his ramshackle digs. The twists and turns of Howard's life pale by comparison with those of David & Linda, proprietor of Nomad's Inn outside of Arden, ON. The film captures the disintegration of their relationship and David's estrangement from his young boys. Pretty powerful stuff, and I question the judgement of the filmmakers in putting some of this into a film. In their defense, they argue this is a "character driven story" . True enough, its more along the lines of their 2007 film, The Last Call at the Gladstone. A shorter version of this film (58 minutes) will be broadcast on TVO (which helped fund the doc). I for one won't be watching as I find this film unnecessarily exploits these characters. Its as if the boys from Toronto arrived and took the local's dignity.