A romantic dreamer rips her heart out for the man she loves only to find he has other ideas when she decides she wants it back in With Love and a Major Organ. We talk with actress Anna Maguire about love, life and pushing the boundaries of her craft.
With Love and a Major Organ tells the quirky tale of a lovelorn insurance agent/aspiring artist named Anabel (played by Anna Maguire) who becomes enamored-at-first-sight with an emotionally repressed stranger named George (Hamza Haq).
In a desperate attempt to get his attention, Anabel (literally) cuts out her heart and deposits it on his doorstep, only to have George adopt it as his own, run away with it and refuse to give it back.
Directed by Kim Albright and based on the stage play by Julia Lederer, the feature-length dramedy wonderfully blends elements of magical realism with commentary on our technologically-saturated lives to produce some big laughs and even bigger feels.
As Maguire explains, the film ventures beyond the boundaries of conventional romcoms to invite deeper questions about what it means to be true to one’s own heart.
“It’s a musing on love, but it’s not a love story or a romance as we’ve been conditioned to understand them in normal cinema,” she says. “Instead, it’s asking questions about love more generally and more conceptually. It deals with romantic love, but it also deals with familial love, friendship love and the love that we have for the world.”
Despite being involved in the project from early on, Maguire says she knew that navigating the story’s poetic dialogue and wide-ranging emotional shifts as an actor would be both “challenging and complex.”
“A lot of it was really how to ground in reality some of the story’s rich imagery and language that comes from the stage play, but I love that kind of challenge in a performance,” she says. “To be able to push against the boundaries of my own craft and try new things out, it was such a gift of a role as an actor and it did push me.”
“To be able to push against the boundaries of my own craft and try new things out, it was such a gift of a role as an actor and it did push me.”
She adds that she was fortunate to have a wonderful co-star with whom she could prepare and that a natural chemistry helped the duo elevate their performances on screen.
“Hamza was just a delight and even from our first read I felt like he was pushing me to make decisions and respond in a different way. He’s such a gifted actor, but he’s also really a nice person,” she says. “We were also blessed with some great people who brought their best, but with no egos. We all just came together to make something, so it was a pretty great project to be a part of.”
Maguire emphasizes that a big part of what made the film such as great project was the ability of Albright and the rest of the cast and crew to keep an open mind to new ideas while rolling with the changes as they occurred.
“Whenever I make something, my biggest rule is to just prepare the hell out of it as much as you can and then, on the day, let it all go and see what happens,” she says. “Trust the process and trust the people who you’re there with, because everyone is bringing something to it and trying to make something that is going to be more than the sum of its parts.”
“Whenever I make something, my biggest rule is to just prepare the hell out of it as much as you can and then, on the day, let it all go and see what happens.”
She further notes that while the experience of working on With Love and a Major Organ has given her added energy to keep moving creatively, it has also inspired her to reflect more on the future of how films could be made.
“I’ve been working in this field for a very long time, but one of the big things I’ve been thinking about recently is, how do you make filmmaking sustainable not only for ourselves, but also for the planet and for all the people who work on sets?” Maguire says. “That’s a big question that the industry is asking itself at the moment.”
With Love and a Major Organ has already made festival stops around North America and overseas (picking up numerous awards along the way) and kicked off its theatrical release across Canada on April 12 (there is still time to catch it).
“There’s so much that you glean and get out of the process of making a film,” Maguire says. “But having the opportunity to share our work with the amount of people that we’ve managed to share it with, I count myself very lucky to have been able to do that.”
She adds that it has been “quite joyous, vivifying and heartening” to be around audiences during screenings of the film and to feel the energy of people coming out of the cinema after they have seen it.
“Cinema for me is an art and a way of going, ‘Hey, I’m here. Are you there, too?’ and reaching across the void,” Maguire says. “So, I think it matters less what people should leave the cinema with and more what all the different ways are that somebody’s own lived experience might meet the film where they are.”
With Love and a Major Organ is now playing in theatres across Canada. Check your local listings for showtimes or follow the film on Instagram here (@withlove.andamajororgan) for more details.
