New Waterford Girl (1999) Allan Moyle

This 1999 Canadian coming of age film, directed by Allan Moyle and written by Tricia Fish, takes
place in Waterford. Set in the 1970s, we follow teenager Agnes-Marie ‘Mooney’ as she attempts to
navigate an unorthodox path to her future, she is torn between her dreams of escaping to New York
from her small town in Nova Scotia and between her family duty. This film is a good example of how
melancholy and often bipolar being a teenager can be. A lot of us can relate to this as we follow
Mooney as it provides us with humour and the psyche of a teenage woman and her struggles.

Is New Waterford Girl (1999) a Canadian independent film? ‘Nation, Genre and Female Performance
in Canadian Cinema’ by Murat Akser looks into this by exploring the genre as theme based according
to the gender and geography. Akser talks about how different the films in Canada are compared to
America “strong female personas translate to a Canadian identity that is defined against its
neighbour, the United States and against its Cinema, Hollywood Cinema.”. This states the differences
between American and Canadian cinema by showcasing the way in which their countries are run
differently, “The strong male figure who saves the world is a metaphor for the American
government/culture/cinema based on the construction of macho male heroes or alternatively
another common depiction is passive female characters awaiting a prince. It is that metaphor of the
timid female waiting to be saved that Canadian Cinema refuses to duplicate.”

Independent films tend to steer away from the typical male protagonist and therefore have more
creative control over the type of stories they tell. In New Waterford Girl the main protagonist is a 15-
year-old-girl, this shows that it isn’t the typical Hollywood Film that is produced in mainstream
cinemas. New Waterford Girl (1999) also shows that women are not weakened by their desires
which are hard to reach, instead it shows how determined women deal with their emotions and how
they strive for better. As discussed earlier, Akser talks of how the geography and social space defines
identity, the landscape within this film becomes a huge plot point as Mooney wishes to leave New
Waterford and travel to a different country to pursue her dreams.

The budget given for this film was $4 million which later in the box office made back $774,469. The
funding for many Canadian films are given through tax dollars and the distribution is not very widely
ranged meaning that they are looking to tell stories that resonate with their viewers and to leave an
impact rather than be worldwide phenomenon’s which resonate with little audiences and has no
real deeper meaning, it also means that their creative control is their own.

- Akser, M., 2013. Nation, Genre and Female Performance in Canadian Cinema. Cinej Cinema
Journal, Volume 2.2.
- https://www.boxofficemojo.com/search/?q=new+waterford+girl