TORONTO – When writer-director Anne Émond imagined who would voice the guided meditation track in her eco-anxiety rom-com “Peak Everything,” she pictured a Gérard Depardieu type: a French superstar who would be immediately recognizable.
But then she met the film’s sound engineer, Stephen de Oliveira.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, what a voice,’” she recalled. Eventually she asked him to record the lines as a stopgap while they cast the final narrator, whose soothing tone repeatedly encourages the film’s protagonist Adam to stay calm despite the climate crisis.
But in the end, Émond said, de Oliveira’s deep, rumbling voice was irreplaceable.
“We watched the film with (his) voice and everyone was like, ‘OK, no, you keep this voice.’”
When the film closes out the Toronto International Film Festival’s 50th edition on Saturday, audiences will hear de Oliveira encouraging them in French to find space for gentleness and happiness, even as it seems the world is hurtling toward destruction.
The film is a love story for the modern era, in which everything from the characters to the weather emergencies are heightened to the point of near surreality.
“The movie isn’t really subtle at all, and I wanted it to be like that,” Émond said. “It’s a little over the top in the narrative. Everything happens. It’s unpredictable. The characters are a little bit over the top, too.”
Francophone Adam, portrayed by Montreal’s Patrick Hivon, has purchased a light therapy lamp to help bring his climate-related anxiety and depression under control, and calls the support line that came with it, thinking the number is for emotional support. But Tina, played by American actress Piper Perabo, is actually there to offer tech support.
Still, the pair strike up a relationship and eventually meet in person.
At one point, Adam and Tina listen to the guided meditation together and are transported to a snowy landscape, a dreamlike place where the cold is a comfort.
But the same forces that drive Adam’s anxieties in the film left Émond concerned about filming that part of the script.
“We were anxious that we would not have snow because of climate change. We never know anymore. Like it’s in Quebec, there’s lots of snow, but we weren’t that sure,” she said. “Finally, it was the biggest storm in the last 20 years that we had.”
But because the storm was real, it also caused a time crunch while filming — they wanted to make sure they got everything they needed before the flakes stopped falling.
But Perabo said she and Hivon leaned into the anxiety.
“The best way to stay warm was mostly just to make fun,” Perabo said to Émond in a joint interview on Friday.
“The more stressed you are, the better it is to make fun of you because it really slows production down. And since we’re filming in an actual snowstorm, everybody wants to go slow.”
As for the guided meditation, Perabo joked that she wouldn’t mind having de Oliveira’s voice on her phone.
Hivon said he’d tried out apps with narrated meditations, but hadn’t been able to stick with them.
“It’s hard to maintain every day,” Hivon said. He’s since switched to a simpler app on his phone.
“It’s just a gong, you know, and it’s enough for me.”
“Peak Everything” is set to be released in select theatres on Sept. 26.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2025.
