MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Vermont’ a Paean to Vanishing Way of Life

“Vermont Is for Lovers” (at the Sunset 5 Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.) is as endearing as it is slight. Essentially, it’s an improvised, low-budget--try $80,000--romantic comedy that allows its maker, John O’Brien, a Harvard-educated part-time sheep farmer, to say as much about his hometown, Tunbridge, Vt., as it does about wedding jitters.

George Thrush and Marya Cohn play a pair of 30ish New Yorkers named George and Marya, who decide to get away from the big city to get married; they’ve known each other for two years and have lived together six months. They’ve settled on Marya’s aunt’s home in Tunbridge, but no sooner have they arrived in this most pastoral of settings then they start squabbling. George is an impassioned architect fascinated by old structures, but Marya soon groans, “No more covered bridges.”

Wisely, they decide to give each other some space, but when George continues his tour of the area alone while Marya visits with her perceptive aunt (played by O’Brien’s mother, Ann) we discover that Marya in fact could have reason to think twice about what she’s getting into with George. He’s not a bad guy, but he can be such a jerk, a bit smug and patronizing to the locals.

However, George Thrush the actor is terrific on his feet. In effect he interviews the various citizens he encounters. That they’re doubtlessly familiar to O’Brien and that Thrush knows how to keep the ball rolling prevents the non-professionals from seeming self-conscious to a degree that’s amazing. “Vermont Is for Lovers” demolishes the stereotype of New Englanders being distant and close-mouthed.

Thrush mainly asks about the secrets of successful marriage, but gradually we get a larger picture, of a region superficially unchanged for a couple of centuries but actually on the verge of losing its ancient farmlands to increasing housing developments. On one level, one that’s of special importance to O’Brien, the film is a document both of an endangered area and of O’Brien’s neighbors, many of them elderly.

Thrush and Cohn are as poised as they are natural, and so is Ann O’Brien--so much so that it’s hard to realize that we’re watching a fictional narrative. And O’Brien the cinematographer has made “Vermont Is for Lovers” look as good as the story he tells so well.

‘Vermont Is for Lovers’

George Thrush: George

Marya Cohn: Marya

Ann O’Brien: Ann

A Zeitgeist Films release. Writer-director-producer-cinematographer-editor John O’Brien. Music Tony Silbert. Sound Gordon Eriksen. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

Times-rated Family. Suitable for all ages.