Alone and longing for a little connection, she finds comfort in her work: a feature film, also called Spice It Up, about seven 17-year-old girls who fail their final year of high school and decide to join the Canadian Armed Forces.

[1] Many of the roles in the framework section are played by local Toronto filmmakers, including Igor Drljaca, Sophy Romvari and Albert Shin, as well as film critic Adam Nayman as Rene's thesis advisor.

The directors hoped to mix the two contrasting genres and create something wildly different from their previous effort, The Oxbow Cure, an austere and nearly-wordless film focused on a single protagonist.

The Globe and Mail's Barry Hertz named it one of the top ten Canadian films of the year, writing, "for those with a taste for bold cinematic gambits, it pays off beautifully.

"[12] National Post's Chris Knight called it "a lovely, funny story about thwarted artistic creativity,"[13] and NOW Magazine's Norman Wilner praised it as "something else entirely – something new, different and strange.