2008 Toronto International Film Festival Journal
I
arrived in Toronto on Monday the 25th, late afternoon, after an
uneventful, if exhausting red-eye flight from L.A. to Buffalo and a great bus
ride through to Toronto in rapt conversation with my anonymous
seat mate, a young Canadian guy and a fine
conversationalist. Tuesday morning I waded through the
pickup line in Dundas Square and managed to get my goody bag by
10AM. Lots of work to do to schedule the festival...but that's
the fun part. Contents of this years goody bag: Official
film schedule; 2 advance order booklets; a page of handy tabs from Sun
Life Financial; a mystery gift card from Pizza Nova; a sturdy, stemmed
330ml beer glass from Stella Artois; a small box of 3 milk chocolate
Lindt Lindors; a menu from Matignon; a card touting RBC's t-shirt
design by Deepa Mehta; a Toronto Life Square directory; cards
publicizing the Drake Hotel and the Jackson-Triggs Niagara Estate; a
70g (2.5oz) bag of Starbucks Cafè Verona Bold coffee; a
green/yellow marker; a combo key chain & flashlight (which actually
works) from FedEx; the all-important drop off envelope; and finally the
extra price ($33.50) Program Book. Not a particularly great
haul.
I've written an Excel spreadsheet which lists all the 2008 TIFF feature
films along with screening information and a personalized description
of each film to aid me in prioritizing my chosen 50 films. For
anyone with Excel who might be interested, it can be found here.
Today (Thursday 8/28) I dropped off my festival requests into Box #24
after working hard at making the choices over the past two days.
The new box office space is fine, right in the middle of an excellent
new food court. However, one peculiarity stands out: there
is no down escalator at all from the food court/box office level.
Every other level has up and
down escalators; but not this vital one...and there's only two
elevators and a very hard to find stairway that leads down. I can
only imagine the traffic jam which is likely to happen when festival
screenings let out. Unless I'm missing something obvious, there
is simply no easy way to exit the theatres to get to the street or
subway. Hmmmmm. Design flaw or the devil at
play?
(8/30): A nice person named Julian wrote me in e-mail that the
down escalator at the food court/box office floor of the AMC Dundas Sq.
actually does exist...only it is at the back of the room, not readily
visible from the vantage point of the other escalators. I scoped
it out for myself when I attended a film there this
morning. Sure enough, there was the down escalator, big as
life, if hard to see from any place in the room. I still contend
that initially people are going to have trouble finding it.
I also scoped out the secret passage through the subway tunnels to get
from the Yonge line Dundas station southbound to the Toronto Life
Square building. The secret is that you have to take the passage
to the northbound
side, then there is an exit directly into the basement of the AMC
building...which takes you right across from elevators directly to the
third level ticket office bypassing the street entrance.
(9/1): I'm not sure why; but last year by 3PM on Labour Day Monday the line
to pick up advanced tickets was down to 10 minutes or so. That
didn't apply to the line for buying and exchanging tickets, which
still was pretty long late into the day. This year I waited until
2:30 to even attempt picking up my tickets (aided by the fact that I
got everything I wanted and have no need to make any changes.)
However, the line to turn in the pick-up voucher for tickets still
stretched outside in Dundas Sq. for as far as the eye could see
around the block. And the second line to buy and exchange was even
more ridiculous, starting outside and continuing on the 3rd level at
the actual box-office.
What a madhouse. I decided then and there that I just wasn't in a
hurry. I'll pick up my tickets tomorrow afternoon when I accompany my friend
Susan to the box-office. I have a feeling that they aren't going to
finish dealing with the pick-up line by the time the box-office is
scheduled to close tonight, so the madness may spill over to tomorrow.
PLUS TARD, TU COMPREHENDRA (d. Amos Gitaï)
I don't believe I've seen a Gitaï film before...surely an
unaccountable lapse in my cinemagoing. However, for all the
promise that this film had (French actors that I love, Holocaust
related, emotional connectedness to being Jewish), I felt distanced and
uninvolved except intermittently. Certainly I can't fault Jeanne
Moreau, who in a crucial Yom Kippur synagogue scene with her
grandchildren moved me with her soulfulness and gravitas.
Moreau's character, as a young mother in France during WWII, daughter
of Russian Jews, married to a Catholic man, survived the war by hiding
her Jewishness, although her parents ultimately perished at
Auschwitz. The film is about the future reverberations of
this denial of heritage on her grown children and
grandchildren. Gitaï's style is the opposite of
flashy, depending on close-ups and long dialog scenes. I wanted
to feel emotionally connected to these characters; but I couldn't
manage it. ** 1/2
ACNÉ (d. Federico Veiroj)
Veiroj is a young director who has made quite a satisfying
coming-of-age film about a 13 year-old Jewish boy growing up in the
1990s in the small Jewish community of Montevideo, Uruguay.
Alejandro Tocar, a slight young actor with a convincing case of acne
and an even worse case of surging hormones, is quite fine in this
perfectly observed, sexually frank story of adolescent growing
pains. This is one of those well made little films which
make festival going a pleasure. ***
PASSCHENDAELE (d. Paul Gross)
Gross is an interesting actor,
best at wry comedy. This was obviously a labor of love for him,
directing and playing the lead in a high budget romantic war
drama. The film does look great, glossy wide screen,
convincingly realistic WWI footage which exemplified the carnage and
vainglory (however, it is no All Quiet on the Western Front
in that regard.) Oddly enough, the film reminded me most,
especially in its look and feel for the era on the home front, of East of Eden,
except with nobody with the star wattage of James Dean. The weak
link (besides a script which left few clichés unplayed) was
the dorky young second male lead (Joe Dinicol), who never convinced me he was worth
the ultimate sacrifice which was the crux of the climax. Maybe
with a little less obvious symbolism and a lot more subtlety, this
might have been a fine film. As it was, an overwrought but honorable failure
is the best it had to offer. ** 1/2
KHAMSA (d. Karim Dridi)
Khamsa is Arabic for five, a lucky
number for Marco...11 1/2, half gypsy, who wears a pendant with
the Arabic sign for Khamsa which was his only memorial of his long dead
mother. Marco has been in the French equivalent to Borstal after
burning out his step-mother's trailer; but he has escaped and returned
to his alcoholic father's gypsy caravan where he joins his cousins and
some towelhead Arab urchins in petty crime. The film rambles
through various crises...but the kid who plays Marco (Marc Cortez) has the innocent
exterior and tough interior to carry the film. Also, it
seems to be a very accurate depiction of the Roma lifestyle in southern
France...a tribute to the dedication of the filmmaker having immersed
himself with the actual culture for a year and a half before starting
the film. ** 3/4
LINHA DE PASSE (d. Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas)
This is a
story of a mother with four fatherless sons ranging in age from early
teens to early twenties who lives in impoverished circumstances in Sao
Paolo, Brazil. She is pregnant, again with no visible
father. One son is a motorcycle currier with a baby son of his own,
but separated from the boy's mother. The second son is struggling to
accept Jesus while working an honest job in a gas station. The
third son (played by the kid from Salles' Central Station,
now grown up) has just turned 18, too old to interest the professional
soccer establishment but determined to utilize his talents there.
The fourth son is a troubled young black boy who spends his days riding
buses around town. The film intercuts the actions of each
of these characters, and I have to say I was quite involved with each
of their stories. Earlier today I got into a discussion about
this film with two women
while waiting for another film to start. All of us had different
perceptions of the way each of these stories worked out...an example of
the power of ambiguity in the service of a brilliant script. The
film is
shot in a neo-realist, off-the-cuff style; but unlike other recent
Brazilian
films like City of God, the
film gives a more nuanced, even positive view of a lower class family
struggling against social barriers in modern Brazil. The more I
think about it, the more props I give to Salles & Thomas and their
remarkably realistic cast. *** 1/2
ME AND ORSON WELLES (d. Richard Linklater)
It seems like every
TIFF I choose one film playing at the Ryerson which is destined to be a
surprise popular success. Last year it was Juno,
the rapturous reception of which sort of surprised me since I was at
best mixed in my response to that film. However, in this case I
do agree with the enormous audience approval of Linklater's new
film. The film belongs to Christian McKay, who plays the young
Welles of 1937 with brio...capturing his essence in everything but the
sonorous voice, which was so unique to Welles. However, it also
belongs to rising teen-age heartthrob Zac Ephron, essaying the central
role of Richard, the high school attending aspiring actor who lands the job of
working besides Welles in the opening play of the Mercury Theater, a
modern dress production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
Ephron shows true star qualities in a role which demands dramatic chops
in addition to charisma. Linklater shows that he has
mastered the art of making a large scale period film. The sets,
costumes and the play-within-a-play production were brilliantly
conceived. This is entertaining hokum, to be sure; but a
surefire hit if there is any justice. *** 1/4
UNIVERSALOVE (d. Thomas Woschitz)
Five eccentric love stories from around the world (Brooklyn, Marseilles, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Belgrade) cut together Intolerance
style to an annoying rock score which was integral to the original
script. None of the stories grabbed me, especially the gay story
which was perfunctory and unlikely. But that really applies to
the entire film. * 3/4
Lots of stories to tell, including
setting my alarm for 7PM instead of 7AM and oversleeping on Saturday
morning for the first time ever. So I'm falling behind on this
blog; and I wonder if I'm ever going to be able to catch up!
TONY MANERO (d. Pablo Larrain)
The main character in this film
(played with maniacally quiet fury by co-writer Alfredo Castro) is a 52
year old man who is obsessed by the eponymous movie character played by
John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
The year is 1978; and a Chilean television network is presenting a Tony
Manero impersonation contest (too bad it isn't an Al Pacino lookalike
contest since Castro eerily resembles that actor.) We start
thinking of this man as something of a clown figure; but the film takes
a startling turn and with one act the character changes the audience's
perceptions of him forever. Suddenly the film is a metaphor for
the Pinochet years of repression and violence, which are in full swing
outside. This isn't a pretty film, or one easy to like. But
as I reflect on it a couple of days later, my admiration for its grit
and honesty have raised my estimation. ** 1/2
THE PARANOIDS (Los Paranoicos) (d. Gabriel Medina)
Daniel
Hendler is the draw here. He is playing Luciano, a slacker type
30-something aspiring screen writer in present day Buenos Aires.
It's a role that Jeremy Davies could play in the American remake.
The film is ostensibly a romantic comedy...but Luciano is so antic and
off-the-wall, that he's hard to relate to as a romantic hero. His
best friend from school has gone to Spain and based the hapless main
character in a successful television comedy called "The Paranoids" on
him. Hendler carries the film, which overstays its slender
premise. He's in virtually every scene, and his performance is
like an exposed nerve, edgy and electrifying. ** 3/4
UN ÉTÉ SANS POINT NI COUP SUR (A No-hit, No-run Summer) (d. Francis Leclerc)
This
is a feel-good coming of age story of a young boy's summer of 1969 (the
year that the
Montreal Expos emigrated to Canada). He tries out for the pee-wee
baseball team, practices a mild rebellion against his father's
values. It's a gentle family story which captures the era
quite well. Nothing earthshaking here, this certainly doesn't
have any of the edge of another French Canadian film about the era,
C.R.A.Z.Y. Rather it's just a G rated bit of nostalgia, fairly well
done. ** 3/4
PATRIK, AGE 1.5 (d. Ella Lemhagen)
Perhaps
the best gay themed
film I've seen in years. Gören and Sven are a gay married
couple, newly moved into a suburban home and qualified to adopt a
kid. Their application comes through for a 1.5 year old boy named
Patrik; but there was a little misprint, and when troubled and
homophobic 15 year old Patrik shows up at their door, they're convinced
that it is a mistake. The film is blessed with two outstanding
performances which amaze: Gustaf Skarsgard (2nd son of Stellan
and whose older brother Alexander just made such an impact in the HBO
series "Generation Kill") as the nurturing partner and Thomas Ljungman
as the boy. The film plays with the conventions of the
romantic comedy with a gay twist. It also presents its suburban
milieu as a satire of normalcy, all vivid hues and exaggerated
undercurrents of scandal. A pure entertainment and a trenchant
satire to boot: a must-see for all future gay festivals and
possibly a true breakout film destined for rare commercial success. *** 1/2
THREE BLIND MICE (d. Matthew Newton)
Newton
wrote, directed and played one of the lead actors in this dramedy about
three Australian sailors on the last evening of leave before they must
ship out again to service in the Persian Gulf. The evening
bursts with
action: picking up girls, a card game, dinner with future
in-laws, second thoughts about desertion, prostitutes, fights,
pratfalls, falling in love. It's almost too rich in plot; and it
doesn't help that much of it is shot in extreme close ups which tended
to be disorienting on the big screen. Still, the film had energy
to spare, excellent acting, and a script which develops nicely as a
character study of young men pushed to extremes. ***
FAUBOURG 36 (d. Christophe Barratier)
The year is 1936, a time of labor strife and political tumult in
France. A few itinerant vaudeville types are trying to make a go
of a theater in one of the Paris outer neighborhoods. In a way
this is an interesting French version of the similar situation in the
film Me and Orson Welles,
seen earlier in the festival. Both were about starting a theater
company in the same pre-war era. Both were lush productions
featuring elaborate plays-within-the-play. But for me the French
film didn't work nearly as well, with an inferior, clichéd
script and looking like a shabby knockoff of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. However, for all that, the film entertains with a fine cast. ** 3/4
THE GIRL FROM MONACO (La fille de Monaco) (d. Anne Fontaine)
Fontaine has made a typical piece of French fluff, a bloated romantic
comedy about a Parisian lawyer defending a big murder case in
Monaco. His employer hires a bodyguard for his protection, as the
murder victim was
apparently part of the Russian mafia. And in a convoluted plot
contrivance the lawyer gets involved with this ditzy tv weathergirl who
once was romantically involved with the bodyguard; and things spin out
of control. It's all a rather pointless farce which only works to
any degree because of its gorgeous photography and setting, and assured
performances by expert farceur Fabrice Luchini and striking (albeit
annoying in this role) newcomer Louise Bourgoin as the eponymous girl.
This is a sellout to pure commercialism by the director. ** 1/4
IS THERE ANYBODY THERE? (d. John Crowley)
Crowley snuck into TIFF last year with my favorite film of the festival, Boy A.
This year he can't fly under the radar; and his new film is also a
winner, albeit not as wonderful as last year's film. It has a
predictable plot: unconventional and odd young boy teaches a
vital life lesson to elderly man. But the boy is played by the
extraordinary Bill Milner from Son of Rambow;
and the old man is played by Michael Caine in another of his career
capping, brilliant and daring performances. The film takes place
in a rustic, English old-folks home; and features cameos from just
about every interesting, elderly English character actor still
alive. Crowley has an assured way with actors, and this touching
film simply works. *** 1/4
LORNA'S SILENCE (Le silence de Lorna) (d. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
The Dardenne brothers make uniquely realistic films about ordinary
people in crisis, usually running around in circles. They use
hand held cameras, and let the natural
sound work without dramatic additions such as music or elaborate
setups. They also are masters of casting; and Dardenne regular
Jérémie Regnier is a favorite of mine (he's remarkable
here playing an emaciated junky). But the film belongs to the
Albanian actress Arta Dobroshi, who is part of and trapped in a
marriage-for-EU-citizenship ring of lowlifes. Her silence implies
assent to an evil act, and it comes at terrible cost to her. The
Dardennes'
spare narratives cut to the bone; and this film affected me
deeply. *** 1/2
THE OTHER MAN (d. Richard Eyre)
Eyre gives great Q & A, he's so erudite. So are his
films. This subtle, adult, romantic thriller/melodrama has a
great cast led by Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Antonio Banderas.
Its plot progression offered a central surprise which I really didn't
see coming; so perhaps it's better to come to this film without prior
knowledge. In any case, Eyre has a talent for making "well
made" quality films which also are entertaining and emotionally deep,
reminding me a little of David Lean's more intimate films.
Somebody in the audience compared him to Harold Pinter; but I didn't
see that. One final prop to Banderas, who brings an amazing
authenticity to his complex, sleazy/romantic fraud of a
character. Neeson and Linney have well practiced chemistry; but
Banderas brings a whole new depth to the Euro gigolo type. ***
REAL TIME (d. Randall Cole)
I had low expectations for this Canadian film; but I scheduled it
anyway since I like Jay Baruchel and I've been known in the past to
program weird films at TIFF just to see some of my favorite Canadian
actors in films that are unlikely to get to L.A. Actually,
I was pleasantly surprised, as this film was hardly a waste of
time. The hook is that Baruchel is a degenerate gambler who has
pissed off one too many bookies and has a hit out on him. Randy
Quaid (in an interesting reversal of Quaid's first film The Last Detail
where he played the younger character) is the older hit man...and the
film
takes place in real time for the hour and a half that Quaid gives
Baruchel to live. The film is a mini-road film with added
tension. The interplay between the two actors was well
written, witty; it's a pleasure to watch two actors of this caliber
working in such an el chapo indie. ** 3/4
THE COUNTRY TEACHER (d. Bohdan Sláma)
Sláma's previous film Something Like Happiness
marked him in my mind as a director to watch. He has surpassed that
film here and made an important, humanistic film on a subject so taboo
that it hardly has been covered in films. The great Czech actor
Pavel Liska plays an elementary school teacher who, when the film
starts, has left his job teaching upper class kids in a posh Prague
academy for a country school with no such aspirations. We soon
learn that the teacher probably left because of some hushed-up
homosexual scandal at his previous school. What follows is a
character study of a fundamentally decent, but flawed human being whose
urges lead him to fall in love with a straight teen-age boy (not one of his students), while he
is emotionally involved with the boy's dairy farmer mother. What
makes the film great is that it doesn't judge the teacher...rather it's
about repentance, acceptance and, above all, the wonderful mutability
of the human condition. The Q&A opened with an angry
statement by a man offended by the tack the film takes towards its main
character. He then walked out in a huff when a lady's impassioned
defense (to thunderous applause) of the film followed his hostile attack. This is a film
which obviously divides audiences; but I felt that it came closer to my
concept of what a great gay film should be than any serious drama I've
ever seen. That makes two first class gay films at this festival
(along with Patrik 1.5); my cup runneth over. *** 3/4
THE HURT LOCKER (d. Kathryn Bigelow)
The Hurt Locker is the long awaited sequel to the HBO series Generation Kill.
What? You weren't awaiting such a sequel? Well, I
was. And Bigelow delivers the goods in spades. This is the
film which is going to be looked back on as the definitive Iraq
occupation experience, at least until a little more time brings
additional perspective. It's done from the point of view of a
single Humvee crew of bomb defusers. If there is any audience at
all left for Iraqi war films (and let's not pussyfoot around...this
film is an uncompromising, gung-ho war film about an unpopular war), then this should be a hit; and it
should also make a star at last of Jeremy Renner, who is nothing short
of remarkable as the sergeant who has defused 870 bombs and is ready
for more. He's not crazy, just dedicated in a way beyond
heroics. I saw somebody rate the film a zero in the popular
film ballot. Why someone who would not appreciate this film would
even program it at all is beyond me. ****
A CHRISTMAS TALE (Un conte de Noël) (d. Arnaud Desplechin)
This was a very complex story about a dysfunctional family's Christmas
time get-together. Like all the previous Desplechin films I've
watched, it is smart, talky, emotionally distancing yet
fascinating. It has a large, fantastic cast, headed by Catherine
Deneuve, Mattieu Amalric and (a personal favorite) Melvil
Poupaud. For me, this 2 1/2 hour exercise in family dynamics
capped a great day of filmgoing. But I'll leave it to others to
analyse this film. *** 1/4
VOY A EXPLOTAR (I'm Going to Explode) (d. Gerardo Naranjo)
A
troubled teenage boy, son of privilege in Mexico, convinces a teenage
girl to run away with him (to his parent's rooftop, not all that far),
which starts this disturbing and ultimately disappointing film.
Like the director's previous, and superior film, Drama/Mex
the kids are convincing teenagers. But unlike that film, this one
devolves into shallow melodrama which feels both contrived as Romeo & Juliet and just as unrealistic. ** 3/4
GENOVA (d. Michael Winterbottom)
Winterbottom
is one of my favorite directors; but this family drama and sort-of
ghost story doesn't have his usual cutting edge originality.
Colin Firth plays the single father of two girls, the youngest of whom
is literally haunted by guilty nightmares over the recent death of her
mother. Firth moves the family to Genoa, Italy (which looks
ravishingly beautiful and also faintly menacing the way it is portrayed
in travelogue style). The girls were well played; but Catherine
Keener seemed uncomfortable in the role of tour-guide, mother
surrogate. The film brims with tension; and I found myself
feeling a father's constant angst for the well-being of his daughters
(and thankful that such a control freak as I never had to face that
feeling in real life.) So on one level, emotionally,
Winterbottom worked his usual film magic on me. But it felt
clumsily manipulative. ***
FLAME & CITRON (Flammen & Citronen) (d. Ole Christian Madsen)
This
is a convincing (based on true events) story of two fighters in the
Danish resistance during the final year of WWII. Thure Lindhart
and Mads Mikkelsen (the former steely eyed killer, the latter haunted
by family attachments) are great in these roles. The film looks
authentic for the period. But, for all that it may show a
relatively unfamiliar Danish perspective on the war, the film seems
strongly reminiscent of other films, for instance the French film from
earlier this year, Female Agents; and especially Verhoeven's Black Book, in other words it isn't particularly original. ***
NUIT DE CHIEN (Tonight) (d. Werner Schroeter)
Schroeter's
horror show about the dissolution of some unnamed and unrecognizable,
though certainly Eastern European, society faced with a revolutionary
turnover, for me at least, is not worth the space to write about.
Ugh. *
SOUNDS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT: A POPUMENTARY (d. Jamie Jay Johnson)
This
is a wonderfully edited documentary about the Eurovision junior singing
competition which attracts a huge television audience in Europe and has
cultural import (at least according to the film) which transcends
entertainment. The director chose a few contestants to follow,
and he chose interesting (even fascinating) types. You have to be
lucky to pick winners in a film like this; but even more important you
have to be a fine judge of human interest to get it down on film to
begin with. Johnson succeeds beyond expectations, especially with
his choice of the 10 year old boy who was Cyprus' entry along with his
precocious younger sister. Even though
I might quibble with some of his extraneous choices (for instance using
an opera aria over a key montage), overall I think he did an
outstanding job of presenting the feeling and excitement of the
pageant. This is a big audience pleaser and a nice way to end a
mostly dismal day of films at this festival. *** 1/2
L'HEURE D'ÉTÉ (Summer Hours) (d. Olivier Assayas)
Assayas is in reflective, family mode here: somewhat in the style
of Les destinées sentimental,
only with current day
relevance. Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier and
Juliette Binoche are three siblings whose elderly mother is holding the
flame of rememberance for her uncle, a famed but fading impressionist
painter. This more or less functional family meets every summer
at the mother's country villa, a beautiful house filled with lovely
(and expensive) collectables. On the surface, it's all about
inheritance. But what distinguishes this film is the feeling of
the appreciation for beauty and artistry. Frankly, I was enchanted
by this film. Like Breitman's The Man of My Life
it weaves a tapistry which expresses the French appreciation of life
through the beauty of the land and objects. It also is a story of
generations, how modern life is changing the French sensibility.
This is my favorite film by this masterful director. *** 3/4
ADORATION (d. Atom Egoyan)
Egoyan is essaying something very difficult here: bridging Middle East type terrorism
and family tragedy in a modern Canadian context. The plot is too
complex to summarize. It's about peeling away the layers of lies
and half-truths surrounding a past tragedy. I can only say that I
was stunned by the impact of the gradual accumulation of details, by
the stoic acting of young Devon Bostick as the high school student
whose parents death when he was young remains a mystery needing to be
unmasked. *** 1/2
ONE WEEK (d. Michael McGowan)
McGowan
has composed a love letter to his native Canada, one which resonates
even for a non-Canadian like myself. Joshua Jackson is solid in
the role of a young man who has been given the diagnosis of stage 4
cancer, who asks himself the question if he had one week to live what
would he do? The answer is a fascinating road trip West through
the Canadian countryside to find himself. It's a simple tale; and
it works. McGowan has an eye and ear for the odd and wonderful
quirkiness of the Canadian landscape and people. ***
UNCERTAINTY (d. Scott McGehee, David Siegel)
A
young couple flip a coin in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and run
off in different directions to embark on paired intercut adventures
featuring the same actors in a different borough and a different
story...one a family get-together romance, the other a chase
thriller. The only problem is that neither story is very
interesting (while the chase plot is totally implausible.) The
only possible saving grace here is the acting of the two attractive
principals, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (one of a handful of young actors with
true acting chops) and Lynn Collins. ** 1/4
REVANCHE (d. Götz Spielmann)
This
film was not originally on my schedule; but when it received multiple
raves by friends here at the festival, I moved things around and scored
a ticket. I'm glad I did. Revanche
is the story of a mountain of a man (an impressive turn by Johannes
Krisch) who opens the film working as a bouncer in a whore house in an
Austrian town. He's a petty criminal and secretly in love with
one of the prostitutes. When things go wrong in his life he
escapes to his grandfather's dairy farm and becomes inexorably linked
with a local policeman and that policeman's wife. What raises this script to
extraordinary is Krisch's character's progression, the film's plausible
unpredictability, and a stunning conclusion where a very clever bargain
is struck reminiscent of the Cold War and MAD: mutually assured
destruction. *** 1/2
FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING (d. Kari Skogland)
This is a film about the North Ireland troubles in the late
1990s. It features Jim Sturges (another hot actor to watch) as
the real-life IRA mole secretly working for British intelligence and
his British handler (another great performance by Ben Kingsley who seems to be
in every other quality film this year). I desperately needed
English sub-titles to make sense of great portions of the dialog...but
the action was clear. The film had something of the same look and
pacing of Greengrass's Bloody Sunday or Loach's Wind that Shakes the Barley;
but it was a more polished and risky effort, making a hero out of a morally
questionable character. Mostly this was due to the casting of
Sturges whose soulful eyes make plausible the success of his longtime
treachery. I found the politics to be hard to follow; and
the film is probably too gory for some. ***
WINDS OF SEPTEMBER (Jiu Jiang Feng) (d. Tom Shu-Yu Lin)
This young Taiwanese director admired Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer's Day
when he was 15, which led him to ultimately become a filmmaker.
However Feng is no Yang. This is the story of a clique of seven
high school boys and two girls who initially are a tight group of
friends. They're all into baseball; and their disillusionment
when a famous betting scandal destroys the sport in Taiwan is a
metaphor for the group's falling apart over the course of a
semester. I had trouble keeping the actors straight, and even
more trouble relating to their problems, which were too tied to their
Taiwanese cultural experiences to be clear to me as an American.
**
A PERFECT DAY (Un Giorno perfetto) (d. Ferzan Ozpetek)
The title is ironic, as this was far from a perfect day for the two
families whose story over 24 hours is told in this film. It's
more a straight melodrama than the usual Ozpetek, which is something of
a disappointment. Still, this director has a knack for ratcheting
up the audience's tension while providing interesting insights into
family dynamics. Unfortunately the script was just a little too
predictable, although Ozpetek's skill with actors and his mastery of
the techniques of filmmaking (cinematography, music, etc.) make even
minor Ozpetek worth watching. *** 1/4
PARC (d. Arnaud des Pallières)
This is a moody, stultifyingly pretentious presentation of a John
Cheever story shoveled into a South France milieu of a privileged gated
community. I don't feel like writing much about this film.
Some people will profess to love it because of its symbolism and
blatant intellectual conceits. I was bored, and even more, the
hypnotic music and monotone dialog made it almost impossible for me to
stay awake. The film is undeniably beautiful to look at; but I
could gladly have given it a miss. * 3/4
EMPTY NEST (El Nido Vacio) (d. Daniel Burman)
Daniel
Burman is a young Argentinian director who, as my friend Susan pointed
out to me, focuses on the existential problems of the generation one
step older than himself, which is probably why I usually relate so
readily to his films. The current film is about a long term
married couple (fine performances by Oscar Martinez and Celia Roth)
whose three children have grown and moved far away from the nest.
He is a blocked playwright who adjusts to this next stage of life by
retreating into the
fantasies of memory. She copes by returning to the university
studies that were deferred when she became wife and mother. She
blossoms. The film is Proustian in the way it gets into the
mindset
of the husband. He becomes deeply reflective and
melancholy...maybe a little too
much for me to totally identify. The couple take a trip to visit
their daughter in Israel; and Burman shows his mettle as a director by
making me see that country (which I've never visited) with new
eyes.
***
WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU (d. Brian Goodman)
Mark
Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke play two long time friends from South Boston,
who gravitate into a small Irish gang of truck jackers and perpetrators of various
other minor gangster things. Hawke is playing a character very
similar to the one he played in the superior Lumet film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
But this film belongs to Ruffalo, family man, crack head, loser...who
longs to redeem his life. Ruffalo is great, as usual; and his
deeply felt performance makes the film. ***
WHITE NIGHT WEDDING (Brúdguminn) (d. Baltasar Kormákur)
Kormákur
is in a playful mode in this comedy about a small Icelandic village and
the native son, a college professor, who returns depressed from the
city and his disastrous first marriage to the town only to become the
obsession of a much younger woman determined to save him by marrying
him. The film has its amusements, especially in limning the
quirky villagers. The professor is played by an actor I admire
greatly, Hilmir Snaer Gudnason, so remarkable in Peas at 5:30. But this film dissolves into farce; and it just missed the mark for me. ** 3/4
CONTROL ALT DELETE (d. Cameron Labine)
Tyler
Labine, the director's brother, is an interesting comic actor recently
featured as second banana in the tv series "Reaper". Here he
plays a computer programming whiz working at a company involved in solving the
Y2K, Millennium Bug scare. He deals with the pressure of his job
in a way both depraved and genuinely amusing. The film has
certain similarities to the dreadful Visioneers
I saw earlier in the year. It's also a black comedy about a tech
company staffed by neurotics. But what distinguishes this film is
that it actually is well observed about its computer stuff and the
script is very original and laugh-out-loud funny. It's one
of those little, obscure films which, given the right distribution,
might find broad cult appeal. ** 3/4
KRABAT (d. Marco Kreuzpaintner)
Kreuzpaintner
may be the best unheralded director making films today. I expect
that to change sooner or later, his talent is so gigantic. He
reminds me of another German visionary wunderkind, Tom Tykwer, whose
breakthrough film Lola Rennt,
came in his early 30's. This film is apparently adapted from an
epic German saga for young adults. It's a tale of a 17th century
sorcerer who teaches black arts to 12 boy apprentices during the Thirty
Years War. As Kreuzpaintner imagines it, the film takes on much
of the grand design of the Lord of the Rings series (though on a much smaller, intimate scale) mixed with the youthful affect of the Harry Potter
series. On a much lower budget, and with only one star (Daniel
Brühl) and promising young actor David Kross in the title role,
the director has created an amazingly effective special effects world
similar to and as strange and convincing as the ones that Tim Burton
creates. Only a rather sappy and predictable love story which
fails to spark detracts from the film's triumph. I hate to say
this...but to reach its deserved North American audience this film
needs to be skillfully dubbed into English and given a real
release. It could be a monster hit. *** 1/2
EASY VIRTUE (d. Stephan Elliott)
Elliott is an Australian director who is most famous for Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
He makes films infrequently; but he's no Terrence Malick. Here he
turns to a brittle Noël Coward drawing room comedy from the 20's
as his inspiration, a play which once was made into a silent melodrama
by Alfred Hitchcock, of all people. However, even though the
current film is set among the upper crust in rural England in the
1920's, it has a definite modern feminist tinge which could hardly have
been in the original. I was impressed by Jessica Biel as the
American heroine despised by her snooty, but secretly impoverished,
newly acquired mother-in-law (a curiously subdued Kristen Scott Thomas
who should have eaten this role alive.) Colin Firth is
wonderfully dissipated as Thomas' husband, an aristocrat ruined by the horrors of the Great War. This was his best
recent role, I think. The male ingenue, their son, was played by Ben Barnes,
looking quite different from his recent star turn as Prince Caspian;
but I liked him here. The film looks great, captures the era very
well. Too bad the source material wasn't up to the production
values; although I was quite entertained nevertheless. ***
THE SEA WALL (Un barrage contre le Pacifique) (d. Rithy Panh)
Isabelle
Huppert is the star of this lovely, sad film about a poor French
colonist widow trying to eke out a meager existence from a rice farm in
colonial Cambodia in the 1950s. She has two almost grown children
(played with enormous panache by the supernaturally attractive Gaspard
Ulliel and lovely, young Astrid Berges-Frisbey). The film
is steeped in the political corruption of the colonial period; and
somehow the director managed to imbue the film with authentic sensory
details...the sounds and reeking wetness of the tropics, the beauty of
the rice paddies, the very fabric of the lives of the colonists and
natives in this tinderbox. If only the script were a little more
insightful and original, this would be one of the true highlights of
the festival. *** 1/4
PEDRO (d. Nick Oceano)
Unexpectedly, I
managed to catch a great and important film about a famous gay icon
forever associated with San Francisco, now dead but hardly
forgotten...and it doesn't star Sean Penn. I'm referring to
Pedro Zamora, who may be even more famous than Harvey Milk for
his incendiary stint on "The Real World San Francisco" the pioneering
1994 tv
reality series. And Gus Van Sant is going to have to
really be on his game to make a better film than this simple,
low-budget bio-pic by a first-time, student director. This film
doesn't come out of the blue, however: among the producers are
the team of Glatzer and Westmoreland who made the touching indie Quinceañera.
And the script was written by Dustin Lance Black, talented, committed
gay filmmaker in his own right, who also wrote the script for the
upcoming Milk. I was
particularly pleased with the boy they found to portray Zamora, Alex
Loynaz, who comes close to Zamora in looks and charisma. I can't
even express how much I was emotionally moved by this film, which has
an important story to tell which goes way beyond what was visible on
the tv series (which I missed at the time but caught up with on
re-runs, and which was a milestone of television history.) I can
only hope that this film finds its audience and it breaks out of the
(most likely gay) festival circuit! *** 1/2
THE NARROWS (d. François A. Velle)
This
is a familiar coming-of-age story about a Italian-American young man
who is involved, as is his father, with one small adjunct of the Mob in
New York City. He's also on the cusp of escaping his pre-ordained
life through a talent for photography, aided by an interested college
professor who wants to nurture that talent. Kevin Zegars
continues the upward trajectory of his career with a fine, soulful
performance; and Vincent d'Onofrio does a workmanlike job as the
father. There is enough substance to raise the film above mere
genre. Velle has an almost Sidney Lumet-esque eye and ear for
depicting street life. But ultimately the film is too derivative
of better films to be of more than casual interest. ***
INJU, LA BÊTE DANS L'OMBRES (Inju, the Beast in the Shadow) (d. Barbet Schroeder)
Benoit
Magimel was the draw here, plus Barbet Schroeder's films are usually
worth watching. This is an American style flick about a French
horror/thriller genre author caught up in an intrigue concerning the
identity of a fellow writer who is wildly successful in his home
country of Japan despite, or maybe because of, a
total anonymity of Salinger proportions. Schroeder has gathered
an interesting Japanese cast to surround the very French, very arrogant
character that Magimel plays. The technical elements are all
first class...this looks like a high budget horror genre film.
But I thought there were numerous flaws in the narrative, unlikely
psychology on the part of the main character. However, Schroeder
somehow manages to sustain interest by going just a little bit too far
towards violence and kink...the sex scene involving Magimel's feet was
particularly
salacious and erotic (for me, at least.) An honorable failure.
** 3/4
AFTERWARDS (d. Gilles Bourdos)
The
festival ended on a disappointing note with this potboiler about death
and afterlife and all the points in between. John Malkovich
underplays egregiously the role of a doctor who can "see" the specter
of random people's impending deaths. Romain Duris tries out a
heavy English accent playing a lawyer who almost died as a child, but
"came back" for a reason. It's a lot of hokum, and boring
to boot; but it is just slick enough to be worth sitting through.
** 1/4
Overall, my impression of this
year's TIFF is that it is the best of the three I've attended.
More highs, fewer lows, and not a single projection snafu. The
new AMC theater is quite a fine venue for the festival, even though
they decided to follow the wrong model of crowd control there (massive
outside line-ups instead of managing the attendees in the generous
inside space the way they do at the Scotiabank multiplex. ) I
love Toronto in September, despite the frequent rain this year.
Once again, mostly thanks to my friend Chris who put me up in his
mid-city high-rise condo, I got enough sleep, ate well and managed to
get to every film on time with great seats. That is amazing,
considering the considerable complexity of this festival with its
massive crowds, occasionally overbearing crowd management and spread
out venues (although it never took more than 20 minutes to traverse any
trip between theaters thanks to Toronto's extraordinarily efficient
transit system). But the volunteers make things work here;
and I revel in playing the TIFF game and winning. I saw very few
of the publicized "big" films. Danny Boyle's celebrated Slumdog Millionaire
won the People's Choice award; but I expect to have no trouble catching
it later. TIFF is such an exhilarating, energizing experience
that I hope to be able to come back to Toronto next year.
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