Britt Lower brings a librarian to life

Writer-director Naomi Jaye has taken the unpromising story of a soft-spoken young librarian and transformed it into an eloquent and captivating little marvel of a film. Britt Lower (Helly in Breakup) is subtle but magnetic as Miriam, who works at a neighborhood library in Toronto and eats lunch alone every day in a nearby park. She seems content with her quiet life, even when she wanders a bit robotically through the library stacks in her oversized sweater. We don't yet know if his aura suggests sadness or complacency.

The film has a well-defined narrative trajectory, as Miriam begins a relationship with Janko (Tom Mercier), a Slovenian taxi diver and artist who eats lunch on the park bench across from her. But its distinctive quality comes from the way Jaye deftly balances this story with Miriam's inner life. She delicately takes us in and out of Miriam's memories and observances, with an occasional poetic touch, but the film never loses its connection to the real world.

Much of that reality hinges on Lower’s performance. Even when Miriam is enigmatic, Lower suggests the depth and, ultimately, heartbreak that lies behind her self-protective calm. The tone itself is not dark, however. In voiceover, Miriam wryly describes the library's regular visitors, filing reports on any disruptive events. Unmoved, she describes Suitcase Man, who always wears one, Fainting Man, who does so often, and An Unusually Pale Boss.

Strange, almost fantastic events occur gradually. Miriam discovers letters hidden in books and signed Rigoletto, like in the opera her father took her to when she was a child. “I am Rigoletto and I will suffer no more,” it reads. Others seem to be explicitly talking about Miriam, referring to her movements in the library.

This plot doesn't play out like a detective story, although Miriam's boss and a police officer also read the letters, so we know they exist. Jaye treats it as a psychological mystery, part of Miriam's key. His father is the touchstone. We don't learn until almost halfway through the film that he died, even though we saw him in Miriam's memory. He sits in the garage, surrounded by books stacked to the ceiling, the image sending an unspoken signal that something is wrong. But she tells Janko that he is alive and that he sells insurance.

Mercier's performance also perfectly reflects the understated tone of the film. Janko is just as sweet as Miriam, but more direct and open than she can be. He calls her Darkest Miriam, but his own paintings include an all-black textured canvas. As a couple, they seem perfectly suited.

The film is based on a 2009 novel by Martha Baillie titled The incident report, composed entirely of reports that Miriam filed. Darkest Miriam is much less elliptical, but it also allows things to be left unexplained, allowing viewers to piece together what they want. The questions and strange events begin to pile up. One evening, while cycling home, Miriam falls into a construction hole and, unharmed, looks up at the night stars. During her check-up at the hospital the next day, she is asked questions which she would obviously prefer not to answer, particularly whether she has ever had suicidal thoughts. The camera is close to Lower's still face and pained expression, while Miriam looks silently ahead.

Jaye is a Toronto-based installation artist as well as a filmmaker with a previous feature film, The pin (2013), but little known in the United States Darkest Miriam displays a sure sense of when to move the camera fluidly and when to let it rest, when to let the images speak for themselves. Miriam seduces Janko by stopping on her way out of his apartment, turning to him, and matter-of-factly undressing as if she had simply made a decision. The film is full of risky choices that work. Miriam is often seen through windows or silhouetted against a door.

Between sequences, Jaye sometimes includes close-ups of flowers and plants in the park, once moving from the darkness of Miriam's father's garage to the bright colors of the garden. In less capable hands this would all be pretentious, but Jaye maneuvers wonderfully, using these touches just enough to evoke the mysteries of Miriam's life.

There's a dramatic twist at the end that we don't see coming, and Lower allows us to feel Miriam's deep emotional pain, but the film ends with Miriam looking toward the future. This mixture of tragedy and hope is exactly the kind of unbalanced balance that makes the film so exceptional and compelling. Charlie Kaufman lent his name to the project as executive producer, and while there is some sympathy between his imaginative approach and his own, Jaye's artistry comes across as purely his own, a true discovery.