Directors: Steven Kanter, Henry Loevner
Writers: Steven Kanter, Henry Loevner
Stars: Claudia Restrepo, Ben Coleman, Derrick Joseph DeBlasis
Synopsis: An emotionally adrift young woman forges an unexpected friendship with a wilderness guide when she and her fiancé take a summer holiday in Jackson Hole, WY
Peak Season is an idyllic trip to Wyoming, where love falters, friendship blossoms, and life’s trajectory is questioned under the microscope. A calm and restrained indie drama in which softness and tranquillity are a healing balm for the ennui of corporate, urban life. While conventional beats of the love triangle often creep in, the film finds inventive ways to inject freshness and introspection into two people following very different life paths.
Directed by Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner, Peak Season is the follow-up to the COVID drama The End of Us (2021). The film follows Amy (Claudia Restrepo) and Max (Ben Coleman), who are on holiday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Getting away from their work-dominant lives in New York City, they are recently engaged and need to plan their wedding. Things become complicated, though, as Max has brought work with him, both mentally and physically.
Amy is on a very different trajectory from her fiancé. Having worked at Deloitte, she had a soul-sucking job as a management consultant where “being results-oriented [was] literally the basis of my entire life”. After resigning due to burnout, Amy is taking time to rethink what she wants to do. Her family doesn’t come from rich, white, wealth; but Max does, which is highly evident. Their paths begin to splinter as Amy realizes the quiet life may be just what she needs.
Calling Max high strung would be an understatement. His logistics and supply chain management job makes him comically shallow. He schedules business meetings while driving the car, gets up every morning for an intense workout routine, and consistently sidelines Amy when they are meant to be on holiday. Emails and video calls are more important than the morning kiss. Coleman does what he can with the character but he mostly amounts to a one-dimensional grunt in a suit.
Max’s self-centered actions reach an apex when he ditches Amy for a work meeting, so Amy is left with no other option than to attend her fish-flying lesson – that the couple had booked together, alone. Teaching her is friendly wilderness guide Loren (Derrick DeBlasis). Having come from California, Loren left his desk job to become a free spirit of many vocations. A fishing guide, a ski patroller, and a bartender – his multifaceted behavior brings him great pride; he hates the thought of being “put into boxes, and then we die”.
Loren lives in his car with his dog Dorothy, who yawns with him when they wake up. A friendship quickly sparks between Amy and Loren as they go on many outdoor adventures together, including a hike Max had refused to go on. Loren has been teaching fish-flying for 15 years, a statistic shocking to Amy’s urban lifestyle, where your work life is constantly in flux. They bond over life and their differences but occasionally clash over how society functions. A touching but playful situationship begins to play out as Loren fills the holes Max keeps punching in Amy and his relationship.
Peak Season is a quiet but clear signal that switching off from the rigidity of routine grants clarity in finding out who you are and what you want. Happiness is not defined by following a life path that has either been paved for you or one to which you’ve grown accustomed. Amy studied and worked in business most of her life, but the second she reaches Jackson Hole, there is freedom, and a weight lifted from her shoulders. The corporate world can be so crushing that life is forgotten for currency, and Amy knows that’s precisely how Max is behaving now. Can she stay with her fiancé, knowing that her world has just been opened as far and wide as the Wyoming landscape?
While this may read like a shallow story of a tourist entering a place unknown to them and going on a journey to ‘find yourself’, Amy is purposefully juxtaposed with Max’s old ‘friend’ Fiona (Caroline Kwan). Early in the film, Max bumps into Fiona, taking his attention away from his fiancée and not even introducing Amy to a woman who was probably his ex-lover. Amy doesn’t sit there and take it, inserting herself into the conversation so Fiona knows who she is. Fiona is visiting for a conference and has no love for the land she is spending time on other than to gain some clout. She’s clad entirely in cheap cowgirl clothes and speaks ‘at’ Amy rather than ‘to’ her. Even cows, to her, are just an attempt to get social media traction.
Mixing Fiona with Silicon Valley tycoons, fears of Jackson Hole becoming a ‘2nd Aspen’, and tourists who claim they want to buy ‘hundreds of acres of land’, Peak Season has something to say about disrespectful, wealthy tourists. It may sound oxymoronic, considering the film focuses on a tourist couple from New York, but there is an effective sub-narrative that critiques the encroachment of tourism on rural areas.
Wyoming is captured with such reposeful beauty that it becomes almost a fourth character. Tourists who come to these places often have no appreciation of the land and its history – something that Loren is aware of and respects in Amy for not sharing the same attitude. These are two people who bond and connect in places of natural beauty away from civilization and technology. Profitability is the last thing on their minds.
Derrick DeBlasis remains the highlight of the film, performance-wise. His nomadic lifestyle as a free spirit exudes such freedom whenever he is on screen. Restrepo, as Amy, occasionally comes across as stunted, but her infectious chemistry with DeBlasis makes up for some moments that ultimately feel significantly held back.
Life can get too busy and too complacent. The natural look and feel of Wyoming matches the journey of Amy and Loren – an untouched beauty that flourishes without any outside tampering. Peak Season is about slowing down, taking stock, and analyzing your place in the world. While its laid-back indie budget sometimes feels overtly apparent; something sincere, engaging, and thought-provoking is going on at its center.
