Susan Kent as Jamie in The Snake
I felt very honoured to be able to attend the Atlantic Gala screening of The Snake, written by and starring Susan Kent and directed by Jenna MacMillan, at the Atlantic International Film Festival on Saturday night. The film premiered at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas back in March, where Kent won a Special Jury Award for her performance, and Saturday was its Canadian premiere. The film is hilariously audacious, and also genuinely takes the audience on a journey of twists and turns where you’re never quite sure where Jamie, the protagonist, is going to land. Beyond being, of course, very funny, being written and starring Susan Kent, Jamie’s story is also a poignant one about an “ungovernable woman” finding her own unique path to empowerment.
When we meet Jamie she is already in trouble, and when she goes home to her sweet little pink house in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island she and her mother, Anne, played by Robin Duke, start going at it immediately like two brawling sixth graders. Jamie has de facto inherited the house from her grandmother, who was the parental figure who showed her the most warmth, care, and concern growing up. Now her mother is laying claim to the house and wants Jamie, who she treats like a hopeless deadbeat, out of there.
Jamie has nowhere else to go but her boyfriend’s van. Davey Danger, played by Dan Petronijevic, is very hot for her, but he refuses to be part of an actual mature relationship. Sometimes this appeals to Jamie, who mostly acts like she’s still 21, dresses like Tracy and Martina (costumes are excellent by Nicole Steeves), and mostly just wants to drink, dance, party, have fun, cause a little havoc and look smoking hot doing it. Yet, in reality she is not 21, and there is something about the hollowness of her relationship with Davey that makes her feel unfulfilled, inadequate, and afraid- because if she can’t grab onto him for support when she needs it, who the hell else will help her?
Like many women perpetually followed by tumult Jamie has a Type A best friend from High School named Laura, played by Emma Hunter, who often will come to bail her out. Laura lives in an expensive looking, but beige, Live Laugh Love house and is married to Steve, played by Jonathan Torrens, who has a PhD, but is underemployed. Steve is miserable in a marriage where he often feels deliberately humiliated and emasculated by his ambitious and successful Karen of a wife, and sparking a connection with Jamie opens a door up for him that neither of them expect. Jamie suddenly has to contend with both her complex feelings for Davey, and this weird dynamic with Steve that’s risking her friendship with Laura, all while being homeless and trying to figure out how to get back into her Nana’s house.
One of the things I like the most about this film is that I knew that Jamie’s relationship with Davey Danger was toxic, but her relationship with Steve was, arguably even more problematic- I knew what I didn’t want for Jamie, but I didn’t know what exactly I was rooting for, beyond something better. It seemed idealistic to hope for her to be able to fix her relationship with her mother because clearly there were decades worth of serious unprocessed trauma and systemic emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in Jamie’s past, and it is suggested that it’s likely that her mother had a very similar background as well- certainly her own mother had also been abusive. Kent does such a clever job of putting Jamie in such a dire predicament, it’s hard to see where the light is going to shine in- but she finds a way to do so that doesn’t seem contrived or sanguine, and that doesn’t take the spirit out of Jamie.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen urban contemporary Charlottetown depicted in a film before, and I found that in itself very moving. This is also a side to Charlottetown that isn’t immediately very recognizable- we are seeing a lot of little alleys and backyards between and behind the houses, but also a lot of the action takes place in a queer bar, with drag queen bartenders, one of which is played by Jimbo the Drag Clown, which in itself is, I think, reaffirming that PEI is more than Road to Avonlea and Anne of Green Gables. The film is very beautifully shot. I felt completely immersed in Jamie’s world from the cozy pinkness of her tent to the massive, but oppressively cold seeming, loft where she spends a few nights. The story feels very grounded in Charlottetown, and in Atlantic Canada in its humour and spirit, but there is nothing about it that you need to be from here to understand. It has a wide universal appeal.
All the actors are doing a wonderful job at creating these very specific characters. Emma Hunter as Laura is so chipper like she’s had one too many coffees. Dan Petronijevic does a good job at oscillating between being just charming enough that you can understand why Jamie can’t quite shake Davey, while also being infuriatingly unreasonable and immature. Jonathan Torrens’ facial expressions as Steve are comedy gold. Especially at the beginning of the film when his words are very low and muttered, his movements are very small but deliberate, but his eyes and his mouth are communicating at near mime levels, and the disparity between how silent and also how expressive he is, and the fact that Laura either doesn’t see or doesn’t care, really creates a character who is silly, but that we empathize with enough to entertain that maybe it’s a good idea if he and Jamie become friends. Then, once Jamie unleashes a sense of abandon in Steve Torrens’ whole being bursts out in a wildly cringey display of earnestness and vulnerability- but also so much misguided nonsense. We see Jamie slowly and subtly mature over the course of the film where Steve regresses rapidly from seeming like an adult to seeming like a child.
Robin Duke is absolutely formidable as Anne. She oscillates wildly between being bitingly cruel to Jamie, to leaning into a more sympathetic older woman character to play on the emotions of others, to filling with anxiety and gushing to Jamie in attempt to get back her control. It’s rare to see two women fighting as ferociously as these two women fight- especially an older parent and an adult child, but it feels like its inevitable given who these two are and where they have come from. Anne is very much like Jamie, and you do get the sense that she wants a better future for her daughter, but she cannot get out of her own way and find a way to really connect with her. Anne would rather push Jamie away than have to contend with the fact that much of Jamie’s struggles are due to her own past failings.
Susan Kent has played characters before who come from working class Atlantic Canadian familial dynamics that are intense- I’m thinking of her playing Darlene in A Christmas Fury (2017), and there are a lot of depictions of folks in these scenarios in Atlantic Canada, like Tracy and Martina, that come from our long tradition of sketch comedy, where one aspect of the performance is poking fun at the culture, our own culture, that has spawned these larger than life characters. In Jamie, in The Snake, even though the film is very darkly funny, Kent and MacMillan aren’t making light of the context that Anne and Jamie live inside. This film delves into that darkness, and exposes it for what it is- systemic poverty, systemic misogyny, rampant abuse, and all these coping mechanisms that folks in real life latch onto that may look frivolous and fun from the outside, but are actually masking a whole lifetime of pain. Prince Edward Island, like Cape Breton, like Nova Scotia, like all of Atlantic Canada, has struggled since 1867 to compete with the larger and more central provinces- has struggled with entire industries disappearing, with historic disparities in wealth and power distribution between those of English and German ancestry and basically everyone else- and also even between Protestants and Catholics. So much of what’s hilarious about us is actually a trauma response, and I love the way that this film honours both sides of this truth.
No one ever doubted it, but Susan Kent’s definitely still got it.
For more information about future screenings of Club Red Productions’ The Snake written by Susan Kent, directed by Jenna MacMillan, and produced by Melani Wood and Sharlene Kelly please visit this website, and follow The Snake Film on Instagram.
The Atlantic International Film Festival runs until September 23rd, 2026 and features screenings of over 100 films, Q&As, receptions, panels, and industry events. “The festival champions both emerging and established filmmaking voices from Atlantic Canada and beyond, helping audiences discover new artists, uncover fresh perspectives, and connect through the power of storytelling.” The screenings take place at Cineplex Park Lane (5657 Spring Garden Road, Halifax). For Accessibility Information about this venue please visit this website. For more information about AIFF please visit this website.
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