TIFF 2025 Review: Little Lorraine – “has an in-the-moment feel to it.”

A coal mine is shutdown after an explosion and a miner is presented with a proposal from his estranged uncle to work on his lobster boat which turns out to be a front for a criminal organization.

Haunted by nightmares of being buried in a coffin, Jimmy is able to escape from an explosion which killed 10 of his fellow coal miners, but in the aftermat,h faces something as equally terrifying as death, unemployment and the inability to support his family.  A tempting solution comes from his notorious uncle Huey with a criminal record who proposes that his nephew and a couple of his friends join him on his lobster boat where they will get on-the-job training.  All is going well until a mysterious vessel appears that exposes the real reason behind the enterprise, which is the importation of cocaine into the North American market.  The discovery causes a family schism that threatens to destroy everything in its wake.

Set in the mid-1980s, the soundtrack makes clever use of period music such as “Moonlight Desires” by Lawrence Gowan, as well as the production design that captures the aesthetic of the period.  Theatrical stage techniques are deployed to create the impression that while the protagonist Jimmy is lying in bed having a nightmare that he is being buried in a coffin.  The cinematography is ambitious, enabling the town of Little Lorraine to become a character in its own right.  And there are visual effects for the explosion that consumes the coal mine.  In other words, director Andy Hines has put together a professionally well-crafted production that has an in-the-moment feel to it.

There is no Hollywood resolution, and the inclusion of The Men of the Deeps singing at a funeral mass adds to the sense of authenticity, but the real weakness is in the storytelling and the performance of the cast. Outside of the speech from Huey that essentially explains why people turn to a life of crime, nothing else really stands out.  Sean Astin as a parish priest feels parachuted into rather than part of the community and Stephen Amell has mastered the art of brooding leading man from his days as Oliver Queen.   The characters go to dark places. In particular, with the ending, however, none of this comes across as a profound exploration of how far people are prepared to go to protect the ones they love.  Instead, the narrative is pedestrian in nature and treads a common ground.

The 50th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4-14, 2025, and for more information visit tiff.net.    

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada; he can be found at LinkedIn.