Like a House on Fire: Montreal filmmaker Jesse Noah Klein on his moving new drama starring Veep’s Sarah Sutherland

In Like a House on Fire, the upcoming sophomore feature film from Montreal-based filmmaker and CEGEP professor Jesse Noah Klein, a young woman (Sarah Sutherland) returns home after a prolonged self-imposed absence and tries to reintegrate back into the family and community she left behind. For Klein, who also wrote the script, the story developed naturally — Klein left Montreal to attend film school in Austin, and studied and taught in the U.S. for six years before returning to Montreal to film Like a House on Fire.

Sarah Sutherland (daughter of Kiefer Sutherland) stars in the film as Dara, a woman who left her husband and infant daughter two years prior and is now attempting to reconcile with her family. Her Husband Danny (Jared Abrahamson) has moved on, and is now living with his girlfriend Therese (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), who is 7-months pregnant. Most heartbreaking of all, her infant daughter Isabel (Margaux Vaillancourt) has no memory of her at all.

As Dara valiantly attempts to move on from her prolonged absence and settle back into her former life, she can’t get out of her own way, often making matters worse as she tries to slip back into her old routine. Along the way, she encounters a calming young neighbour named Jordan (musician Hubert Lenoir), and begins to realize that she will have to adjust her expectations and actions in order to regain the trust and acceptance of those closest to her.

For Klein, returning to Canada was the right choice on both a personal and professional level, allowing him to pursue teaching and filmmaking in tandem. “It made sense for me to be in Montreal, partly due to the grant system that we have here,” says Klein. “It just made sense for me to start making films here. Because this is where I’m from, this is a community that I have the strongest ties and relationships with. And there’s an infrastructure here that stimulates young people beginning to make films and starting their careers.”

Klein began writing Like a House on Fire while he was teaching film production in Georgia, about a year before his move back to Montreal. “I started writing it as I was moving back to Canada, and these themes of coming home were very present in my mind,” says Klein. “Ultimately, Dara’s experience is about learning to make peace with aspects of her past, to be able to more fully live in her present and accept her future. I think those are just universal themes. I just had a very keen and very clear sense of who this woman is based on my own experience.”

While there are hints of Dara experiencing post-partum depression, the film never explicitly reveals what caused her to leave her family behind, or what transpired in those intervening years. The audience can piece together a rough narrative of Dara’s experiences through Sutherland’s emotionally vulnerable performance, which imparts all that we need to know about who Dara is and what she hopes to get out of her return.

“I worked very closely with Sarah Sutherland, so for her, it wasn’t murky at all,” Klein explains. “She had an extremely clear sense of every day that happened in those two years. But that’s just the work that you do before. I felt that this [film] was about the moment that she comes back. And what it means to try to reintegrate into this world that’s left you behind.”

“I think there is something powerful in not naming illness,” Klein continues. “And that’s because I think that it’s so prevalent that, yes, Dara did suffer from postpartum depression, that is a thing that is definable. But by the same token, her feelings and her struggles in this film are just human struggles. I wanted Dara to kind of walk this tightrope — she’s trying her best. She screws up a lot. She has the best of intentions. But ultimately, past demons are preventing her from living fully in the present in a way that’s healthy for everyone involved. What she’s trying to get is something we all need, it’s just connection, acceptance, love from our families. And the mistakes she makes, they’re not so egregious. To me, that’s what makes it more tragic, is that she’s really doing her best. For a lot of the movie, it’s just not good enough. Ultimately, she comes to a higher plane, but it takes the duration of the film to get there.”

Sutherland is best known for her role as Selina Meyer’s constantly aggrieved daughter on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ hilarious HBO show Veep, a character about as far removed from Dara as one is likely to find. “I knew that she had a tremendous range,” says Klein of Sutherland’s casting. “I suppose one thing that drew me to her is that I anticipated that perhaps she would be hungry for such a role, [given] that she was on such a beloved show for seven years. I watched interviews, and Sarah said she did [Veep] right out of college. And I just thought this might be something she would be interested in really kind of sinking her teeth into, and that turned out to be the case. So much of casting is just instinct.”

That instinct also proved vital in casting the role of the sympathetic neighbor Jordan, which went to boundary-pushing Montreal musician Hubert Lenoir, making his first feature film appearance.

“The story of his casting is probably the funniest one because it’s the only one that literally came to me in a flash,” says Klein. “I was actually teaching at the time. And I probably started listening to his record, like three months before, and I thought he might be perfect for this. It took a bit of time for us to reach out to his team and to get everything going. He is a very charismatic, dynamic, and talented person. The character of Jordan is really kind of Dara’s anchor in the film. So much is kind of uncertain around her. And I thought he really just brought such grace, such humility, and a real softness to the role.”

On the flip side of that emotional spectrum, Jared Abrahamson is often cast as intense and gruff characters in films like American Animals and Hail Destroyer, a fitting slot for the former mine worker and Professional MMA fighter. Even with that tough background, Klein explains that he knew Abrahamson would work as Danny, a man struggling to come to terms with the sudden reappearance of his wife after two years.

“I think what attracted him to the role is it was different than the kind of roles he’s often offered,” suggests Klein. “And I think the idea to play a father, to play a role that’s kind of vulnerable, I think he really was interested in that. And I thought that might be exciting for him. And it was kind of almost casting against type for Jared, he’s played these kinds of roles that were more rough around the edges, where I wanted to get something a little bit more emotionally precise. Over the course of the film, he’s kind of learning how to express himself. And I thought he really brought a delicacy and a real specificity to that.”

Like a House on Fire was shot on location in the city of North Bay in Northern Ontario, a remote setting that allowed the cast and crew to bond together over the course of the filming. “I think for the crew, it almost felt like sleepaway camp,” says Klein. “Because we were all a family together. And I think that does lend itself well to film because you just develop this intimacy, and this closeness that everybody shares. So that was a great experience shooting up there.”

While the ongoing pandemic has drastically affected film production across the globe, Klein already has his next project in mind, which will take on a much different tone than the intensely personal character studies he’s known for. “My next film is somewhat of a departure with regard to my filmmaking up until now, reveals Klein. “It’s been very character-driven, and very performance-driven. Whereas this time, I’m looking to do something somewhat more atmospheric, somewhat more in genre territory. And it’s centered around a ghost story.”

In the meantime, audiences will be able to catch Like a House on Fire in select theatres on March 26. Jesse Noah Klein will be participating in a live Q&A on opening night at Montreal’s Cinema du Parc — tickets are available here. The film will also be available on video-on-demand services as of March 30.