It's 1976. Kit and Alice are fifteen and they use that teen trick of telling their parents that they are spending the night at the other kid's house. Instead, they are planning to hitchhike from Antigonish to Sydney, Nova Scotia. There's a beach party and then Kit plans to move in with his mom (a very convincing Molly Parker). She doesn't exactly know the plan.

It's not a huge spoiler to reveal that Kit is gay, since one of the first things he does in the film is commune with his Elton John poster. That's the reason he wants a change of scene, but dealing with his sexuality remains particular and individual rather than a larger statement about 'being gay.' It's more a question of being a little bit different, but McDonald shows that you can feel different and still find ways to fit in with friends and family. Alice turns out to be the more interesting character. She's sort of pushing Kit to accept himself while trying to hang onto him as her boyfriend. It is her perspective we get once the teens get to Kit's mom's free-wheeling artistic house and try to figure out what it all means.

I haven't see legendary Canadian director Bruce McDonald's work since the big, bold, sometimes messy statement that was Hard Core Logo, about a fictional rock and roll band. Weirdos is the opposite of that film; it's quiet and sweet and restrained and, overall, a better creation. McDonald used black and white to remind us that this is an imagined universe, not so much to remind us that it is the past. This does give a pleasant sort of blurry feeling of unreality to the film, as does the addition of Andy Warhol, who occasionally talks to Kit, giving him pretty unhelpful advice. The film is a little uneven, but every time I thought McDonald was straying off the path—becoming trite or obvious or manipulative—he steadied the story with a moment that felt free or poignant or profound.