Life's a BEACH...and then you DRIVE!

A black-and-white tourist film from the sixties welcomes us to Wasaga Beach, the longest freshwater beach in the world. Lushly manipulated imagery of rides and amusement arcades follows. WASAGA's narrator, a video artist named Rebecca (Louise Liliefeldt) informs us, "I collect pictures of places that are gone and I rephotograph them." Then, in living colour, Rebecca arrives at a bus stop by a Wasaga shopping mall. She's come for a solitary working vacation at a family cottage, but her plans are frustrated by lousy weather, stolen scotch, noisy neighbors, and a bicycle accident en route to the liquor store. At a beach-side arcade, her anxieties take shape in an animated learn-to-drive videogame. In this town the car reigns supreme. Since she neither owns nor drives one, Rebecca calls Judy's Driving Academy. The driving instructor, Judy (Tracy Wright) agrees to combine chauffeur services with lessons and the two women embark on a driving tour of the area. As their friendship develops, a view of Wasaga Beach unfolds through a channel-surfing blend of archival footage, video art, and interviews with beach bums, aging bikers, teen deadheads and small-time entrepreneurs. The women cross paths with various local characters including a nosey antique vendor (Daniel MacIvor) and the one-man bar band "Live Entertainment" (Andrew J. Paterson), whose rendition of the seventies punk hit "Flat Tire" is "not to be believed". Judy tags along on the video tour of Wasaga, but she's more interested in Rebecca than in watching her tapes. After a night of Scrabble, Judy makes a pass but booze-insulated Rebecca brushes her off. Both retreat, seperately, to the bar. Rebecca's driving test transpires in the haze of a hangover. After it is over, as her vacation draws to a close, she and Judy finally connect, watching Rebecca's favorite "light effect" on the shoreline, then dancing to the strains of a slow jazz tune, sung by Molly Johnson. The story ends where it began, at the bus stop of the beach town, WASAGA.

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