Toronto International Film Festival, 2003.
This year's crop films was generally excellent. Naturally, seeing less than
ten percent of what's shown means I've had an incomplete sampling but if the
rest were up to the standard of the ones I did see, it had to be among the
best. I've written up my reviews in the order in which I saw the films. I hope
you enjoy the films you do see and find the reviews helpful.
The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
This is a documentary which permits two of the only seven survivors of a
Khmer Rouge prison in which tens of thousands of Cambodians were systematically
tortured and murdered by their countrymen during the seventies to confront some
of their torturers and jailers. The director is also a survivor (and escapee)
of another prison who managed to get to Paris and safety. In this low-key
but powerful film, you learn of the unlikely survival of these two men, one an
artist whose paintings were admired by his captors and who thus survived the
terrible purges of the time. The jailors demonstrate their activities of
torture, beatings and eventually killing of their male and female prisoners as well
as of children and their only defense is the Nazi-like "following orders" even
when one of the survivors directly asks them "and what did little children
possibly do to deserve killing?" They all simply state that they were
indoctrinated to believe that the prisoners were "the enemy" and that they, also
terrified (and one must believe them) were afraid to do other than what they did.
The sang froid of these murderers is astounding. The film is important,
chilling.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
The film from the novel by Mordecai Richler was first released in the early
seventies, one of Canada's first smash-hit feature length films. I saw it at
that time and saw it again at the retrospective of the Film Festival and was
amazed and pleased at how well it stood up. It is a coming of age film about a
Jewish young man in Montreal who has nothing and wants everything. His Zayde
(grandfather) tells him that without land, a man is nothing and Duddy at
nineteen starts to put together his portfolio, beginning by accumulating the land
around a lake. His methods are original, to understate the case and he is an
interesting mix of coldhearted chiseler and finagler and warmhearted young man
trying to keep his friends and family prospering. In the end he gets his way
and makes his fortune, leaving some damage behind and disillusioning some,
including his grandfather. It would be a good thing if this retrospective
brought new life to this marvelous film.
Bon Voyage
This is a French film about a difficult period in French history - the
beginning of the German occupation and the damage done to France by Petain with his
surrender to the German forces. The story is complex and the film runs from
serious to farcical, without pause for breath. The story is complex with turns
at every step, with murder, romance, espionage and courage by some unexpected
and sudden heroes. Just to tempt you, there is a beautiful movie actress who
kills her lover, then calls upon an admirer to help her dispose of the
corpse. En route to depositing the body in a canal, there is an automobile accident
and the trunk pops open, leaving the protagonist with a body to account for.
He ends up in jail, escapes when prisoners are being moved out of Paris
because of the imminent invasion by the Germans… well, that's just the first twenty
minutes of the film. You can only imagine what two hours will bring.
Fabulous performances by a stellar cast, last-minute escapes and rescues enough for
five films and yet it all fits together perfectly. The choreography of this
film is impeccable and you will scarcely pause for breath until it all comes to
a happy but unexpected ending (what else?). Don't be sleepy when you see
this one - you don't want to miss a single twist of the plot.
The Story of the Weeping Camel
I told my companion that I expected we'd be practically alone in this film,
which I chose because I'd seen a one-day-old camel in Morocco many years ago.
What a pleasant surprise to find that the film was sold out and that there
were 150 more people on line hoping for seats to come and see it. The hype was
that this is a great film and that's also the truth of it. Made by three young
German filmmakers (their first and student effort), it is a 90 minute
combination documentary and feature film.
Imagine you are in a nomadic tribe for which camels are of the utmost
importance. Now imagine that a camel has a very difficult birth and then rejects her
calf. This is in fact what has happened and we are fortunate to join this
extended family in the Gobi desert in southern Mongolia as they live their lives
and solve the problem of the rejected calf. In the access to the family,
this is a pure documentary and we are invited into their tents and along on their
rides, sharing their lives and the incredible scenery where they live. Shots
of desert with snow capped mountains behind them abound and the beautiful
people with their interesting lore are ours for a time to behold. It is amusing
to see the twentieth century mixing with the very primitive lives and customs
of these people as they put on glasses, use an obviously commercial needle to
sew hides but also weave camel hair into ropes and ride on camels to get to a
larger village when they need to. And eventually they obtain a satellite dish
and a TV!!
The Fog of War
This expression is a turn of phrase by Robert McNamara and this documentary
film is an extended interview with the mid-eighties man who was a power figure
in the sixties, acting as Secretary of Defense for JFK as well as for LBJ. He
holds back very little (except for private family material at which he hints)
about the wars and near wars of those years, making it abundantly clear how
very close we were to nuclear war on more than one occasion but in particular
being very clear on that point during the Cuban missile crisis. For someone
who remembers weeping with fear in her car during President Kennedy's speech at
that time, this was a very powerful film indeed. Just as a taste of what is
in it, McNamara remembers asking Castro three questions after the crisis was
resolved: Were the missiles in Cuba ("Yes"). Did Castro recommend to
Khrushchev that they be used? ("Yes"). And did Castro believe that if they had been
used, Cuba would have been destroyed ("Absolutely yes"). I strongly recommend
that anyone who lived in those times or finds them as interesting as I do make
a point of seeing this important film.
The Human Stain
This is an unfortunate interpretation of what I can only assume is an
unfortunate novel by Philip Roth with the concomitant of very unfortunate casting.
Try to imagine if you can Sir Anthony Hopkins playing a light-skinned black man
originally from New Jersey who is passing as a white, Jewish philosophy
professor. Does it sound like a mismatch - well, that's only the beginning of the
poor choices exhibited by the filmmakers. Nicole Kidman, with her perfect
skin and incredibly expensive and perfect teeth plays the beaten-up divorced wife
of a physically abusive man. Huh? It doesn't improve at any point, with the
rest of the cast seemingly somewhat embarrassed by the whole business. I
could not get past the incredible amount of suspension of disbelief required for
the eminently British Hopkins to be imagined to be black and passing for
Jewish. Let us draw a veil over the rest of the film. It's kinder that way.
The Event
The Event is Danny's goodbye party. Danny is a young New Yorker with AIDS.
Since he has started to have brain tumors, he has decided that he, not nature,
will determine the time of his exit from the world. Danny's friends and
family support him in this with only the exception of his older sister The
outcome of this Event is astounding, however; a District Attorney hears of it from
the older sister and an investigation with the possibility of criminal charges
is begun. The film traces all the events surrounding the Event and the
investigation. It is a well-plotted and very well realized film with only two weak
links; the woman who plays the DA and the woman who plays the younger sister.
Olympia Dukakis, as the Jewish mother of the young man, is simply
magnificent. Hers is an Academy Award performance and despite the fact that this theme
has been explored perhaps too often in film, for her performance alone, you
should see this film.
Touching the Void
This is a true story, a documentary about perhaps the single most amazing
rescue in the history of mountain climbing. Two climbers were attempting a
first, a climb up a very difficult face of an Andes cliff in Peru when one slipped
and severely broke his leg. This would normally spell death for one or both
of the climbers but his partner made an incredible series of descents, paying
out rope for him to drop 150 feet at a time and then descending to meet him and
begin again. This worked well until once there was nowhere to land - the
injured climber was suspended over a crevasse and there was simply nothing for
the rescuer to do once this became apparent but cut him loose lest they both be
dragged to their deaths. Then began, for the injured climber, an incredible
journey, where, with a leg so badly broken that merely touching it to the
ground spelled agony, he dropped to the bottom of the chasm, then climbed out and
followed the footsteps of his companion back to their camp. This has been
documented in a book by the same name. The film goes way beyond the book,
incorporating the inner thoughts of the two men (they are there on film) as well as
two actors who reenact the events. It is, for anyone like me who finds
mountain climbing endlessly fascinating, a film definitely not to miss.
Alila
This is a slice of life film about assorted tenants in a decidedly slummy
apartment building in Tel Aviv. The stories are thin but the characters are
interesting and well realized. It just didn't offer enough of a story line (it's
done in the Love Boat tradition, skipping from story to story, all finishing
at the end) to hold my interest. I judge a film partly by whether I care
passionately about what happens to the characters in it and this one failed that
test absolutely.
Girl With a Pearl Earring
This thin period piece is from a thin novel of the same name. The story
refers to a Vermeer painting and how it came to be. The cinematography is
magnificent, with incredible lighting to create the conditions for Vermeer to produce
his wonderful art. The protagonist is virtually silent for the entire film,
perhaps as servants in the seventeenth century were required to be but an
actress simply being still and looking at a camera soulfully does very little for
me. Even if she is a beautiful actress, Scarlett Johansson, with bee-stung
lips that I am sure put men in mind of a particular variant of lovemaking (are
they natural or enhanced with collagen - your guess is as good as mine).
Out of Time
This thriller, starring the marvelous Denzel Washington, has a new and
different story (no, I won't tell) and is choreographed incredibly well, a must in
this case. There is a good mix of romance (beware!!), greed, danger and great
detective work. If it had presented itself as a novel, I'm sure I would not
have put it down after the first paragraph and I was exactly that gripped by it
as a film. Excellent cast, terrific direction, what more could you ask for?
Veronica Guerin
This eponymous film is about an Irish newspaper reporter (wonderfully
realized by the wonderful Cate Blanchette), who gets herself committed to breaking a
story about dope dealers at the very top levels. It is from a true story with
a tragic ending. In classic rapportage style, the story is told as it
happened and it is a gripping story, very well told indeed. The acting is
sensational. It leaves us with the question of why some people are willing to risk all
knowing that the probable outcome will be to substantially shorten their
lives in aid of an obsession. This woman was well and truly warned of what would
(and did) happen. The only good outcome was that the Irish government, once
she died in the line of duty, did in fact act to bring these people to
justice. If only it hadn't taken such a terrible loss to do it.
The Company
This Robert Altman film left me breathless. There is virtually no plot but
the theme, played by members of the Joffrey Ballet, including the marvelous
Neve Campbell, is how ballets go from rehearsal to performance. Don't think
there's anything smooth about rehearsals; they are so often marred by temperament
on the part of a dancer, the choreographer, the artistic director The
performances are spectacular, including one which is developed over many rehearsals
and explanations of a completely new ballet, "The Blue Snake." The artistic
director of the Company is a marvelous, temperamental Italian (his meetings are
something to behold) who is also the dancers' most loyal fan, a one-man
claque who shouts "Bravo!!" after each performance to begin the audience's
applause. One performance in particular is simply spectacular as it was done during a
violent thunderstorm with the dancers showing incredible poise. If you love
ballet or even if you like ballet (I'm not really a balletomane) you should
not miss this incredible film.
Les Triplettes de Belleville
This is a marvelous French animated feature. The story is very French, with
three cyclists in the Tour de France being kidnapped by the baddest bad guys
you've ever seen and their eventual rescue by the grandmother of one cyclist
and the aging Triplets, a former Burlesque act. The animation is charming and
the details are fabulously funny, including car licences that read "In Vino
Veritas." You need to see the frog's legs served at dinner when they do their
dance!! I particularly loved the architecture and the wonderful, tall ocean
liners that became involved in the chase along with various other bizarre
conveyances. If this comes to town, make time for it. There's no language issue as
most of the French is minor and unimportant and there are no subtitles.
Pere et Fils
This title translates to "Father and Son" and it is about a father and his
three sons. The father is sick and tired of the sons' feuding and fussing and
decides to trick them into taking a vacation with him by pretending he has a
potentially fatal disease. As you can imagine, this would work only in a comedy
and this one, directed by a French stand-up comedian of 25 years' experience,
is a riot. The timing is perfect, the characters are all flawed but lovable
and the story flows from Paris to Quebec province and keeps you interested and
laughing all the way. The audience agreed with my review - it was obvious by
the sound of belly laughs through the entire film. The French really know
how to do comedy and this film is no exception.
In the Cut
This is a thriller from a novel written by a woman and realized by a woman
director. In this case, the women out-thriller the men!! The murders are
particularly bloody and the sex is particularly frequent and blunt, with lots of
female and some male nudity, a rather graphic scene with a blow job in progress
and even a telephone sex scene that is quite hot. If this is your cup of tea,
then this film will be worth seeing. There are the usual plot twists and a
rather banal "unexpected" ending but it is not for this one would see this film
- it is for the action. And there is plenty of it.
South from Granada
This is a Spanish film, a romance that involves the small-town Spanish
population (with some animosity left over from the Civil War), and an English war
hero who wanders into town seeking a home where he can peacefully read his books
and write his poetry. Unfortunately for the rather weak plot (which goes on
and on and on), the acting with two exceptions is quite weak. All the British
actors (about five) looked surprised to be in a film and acted just that way
- jerkily and poorly. The Spanish cast was much more accomplished and the
second lead male was really wonderful. I doubt this film will get to your town
anytime soon but if it does, only see it if romance is your thing.
Christmas
It wasn't Christmas at the theater where this film showed. The New Zealand
film dealing with a mixed Maori/Caucasian family obviously had had much bad
press and the house was only half full. Within half an hour it was quarter full
and by the end only the stubborn few remained. It is a home brewed extremely
low budget ($12,000 U.S.) effort that has no sparkle whatsoever. Lots of
fecal matter, though, with many scenes filmed in the bathroom of the house
borrowed from the director's family. A scatological wonder, there was little enough
of redeeming value offered in the film that I left quite early, not eager to
see what wonders would supplant the ones I had already suffered through.
Rosenstrasse
This is a film about a true story from the Holocaust. It relates to a former
synagogue on Rosenstrasse in Berlin which was changed to a men's prison. The
Jewish husbands of Aryan women were at first protected from deportation but
at some point, the Nazis changed their minds and began arresting and deporting
such men. What happened after that is the subject matter of this flawless
film. The action begins in New York City, where the husband of a survivor has
died. She has never told her daughter the story of her survival after her
parents were taken by the Nazis. The daughter determines now to go to Germany and
pursue that story, which she manages to do by pretending to be writing an
article about Aryan wives of Jewish men at that time. Eventually it becomes clear
to the savior of her mother, such a wife, that there is more to this than the
collecting of a story and it all comes out. This film was simply perfection
from start to finish and despite my concern about seeing yet another film
about the Holocaust, I came away knowing that this was one of the best films of
this or any other year.
A Talking Picture
The director of this film is Portugal's great Manoel de Oliveira, now in his
nineties. The film starts out very interesting. A Portuguese mother and her
daughter are on a cruise ship, headed to Bombay where they are meeting her
husband. The cruise gives the mother, a history professor at a university, an
opportunity to visit places she has only read and taught about and to teach her
daughter about these places. They meet several men, an actor, a priest, who
are able to further explain things the mother doesn't know and this part of the
film, while langorous, is quite entertaining as you see sights in Greece,
Egypt, etc.. Then we segue to a second part, really rather strange, where the
Captain of the cruise liner, played by John Malkevich, along with three great
women of the day, played by Catherine Deneuve, Irene Papas and Stefania
Sandrelli, engage in a dialogue (in four languages, each speaking his or her own
language) about philosophy. Malkevich's Captain is a nelly gay man and he simply
does not fit with these other three sophisticated women. So the long scenes
with those four are confusing and weird. Then, as if the director had run out
of time and money, there is a totally bizarre ending and that's it. I've
always said that they don't know how to end movies - this is a classic example of
that failing. The Captain is called away and returns, telling his women
companions that they must get their lifejackets because a terrorist has left a bomb
on the ship. And off they all go except for the mother and daughter who are
delayed because the daughter has left her doll in the cabin. Boom!!
Dying at Grace
Grace refers to Toronto's Salvation Army Grace Hospital which has a very
well-known hospice unit. The director, Alan King, took his cameras to the
hospital and, with the permission of five patients, attended the ends of their
lives. There is no voice over and no subtitles, the scenes simply speak for
themselves. Interspersed with views of the patients and their families and friends
are short scenes where the nurses, at night, record on tape the events of the
day vis-à-vis the medical progress of the patients. It is a fascinating look
into death and dying, at how we die. My only issue with the film was that it
is simply too long; at two hours, fifty minutes, it is in the end simply
difficult to watch straight through.
Nathalie
The French have a way of writing excellent films on love in all its aspects.
This one explores infidelity, with a very new twist. A woman discovers, by
listening to the voicemail on her husband's cell phone, that he has been
unfaithful to her. He insists it was only once and meaningless. She is untrusting
and she hires a prostitute to flirt with him and lure him into an affair. She
and the prostitute meet often to allow her to have all the details of this
affair. How it ends is the twist and I'll leave you to see the film and find
out. Beautiful performances by Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart and Gerard
Depardieu complete this film.
The Republic of Love
This is, as the title suggests, a romantic comedy. It is directed by the
very talented Deepa Mehta, who has had numerous films at the Festival over the
years including one I missed last year, Hollywood, Bollywood. The story takes
place in Toronto (appealing for me) and the story is typical for the genre, boy
meets girl, boy loses girl, all forgiven. What was interesting was the
identities of the boy (a midnight disc jockey-cum-talk host) and the girl (a museum
curator) and what was simply wonderful was the music, by an Indian composer.
Good Morning, Night
This is a docudrama about the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the Italian Prime
Minister, by the Red Brigades in 1978. The kidnappers are young people; Moro is
quite old at the time. The interest revolves around dialogues between the
kidnappers and Moro, done in a very even-handed way by the director, Marco
Bellocchio, so that you never know where his sympathies lie. There is only one of
the Red Brigades who begins to doubt the validity of the kidnapping and
assassination of the Prime Minister and her concerns provide the strong voice the film
needs for a direction.
Kamchatka
Kamchatka is a country on the board of a game of Risk (or the Spanish
equivalent) The game is played by a father and his older son during their period of
hiding out from the Argentinian Junta which destroyed so much of the
intellectual classes in that country during the tenure of that military regime. The
father is a lawyer, the mother a laboratory scientist, the boys, about eight and
six years old. The children are aware of some of the dangers to their family
because they have to change their names, stay in an unfamiliar house and
avoid contact with their old friends. What turns the tide against the family is
when the older boy, desperately missing his friends, goes into town and visits
a friend's home After this event, the net closes even tighter and eventually,
the children are left with the grandparents while the parents attempt to
escape. You won't want to miss this gripping film.
The Snow Walker
This excellent film is made from a story (in a collection by that name)
written by Canada's Farley Mowat. The story revolves around a bush pilot, Charlie
Halliday, who flies from Yellowknife to make a delivery of oil tanks. He
encounters an Inuit family with a sick, tubercular, young woman. He is persuaded
(by a bribe of walrus tusks, very valuable ivory) to take her to the hospital
in Yellowknife. The plane crashes and Charlie and Kanaalaq are stranded on
the tundra. He leaves the plane to attempt a walk to a village some 200 miles
away. When he doesn't return, the woman seeks and finds him at the brink of
death. Her knowledge of survival cures him and her hunting skills allow her to
make winter garments for him of the fur of animals they kill for food.
The scenery is bleak (it was filmed around Churchill, Manitoba and other
arctic locations) the music wonderful and the acting by Barry Pepper as Charlie
and a young, new Inuit actress, Annabella Piugattuk, is simply incredible. A
must-see.
The Boys From County Clare
John Irvin's charming romantic comedy about love between musicians in rival
Irish ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) bands led by feuding brothers is a delight
from start to finish. The Irish take their music very seriously (not to
mention their love affairs) and the music fair, a competition, is as much a player
in this film as any of the actors. You'll be tapping your toes throughout this
film, enjoying the singing, dancing and romancing that make it a winner.
Easy
This is another romantic comedy but it is about half an hour too long and
five subplots too complicated. The heroine is serially promiscuous and we meet
several of her boyfriends with the usual formula for romance. Problem is there
are so many boy-meets-loses-regains-girl episodes in the film that after a
while you simply cease to care. Not recommended.
Shattered Glass
In light of the recent New York Times Jayson Blair scandal, this is a very
timely story. It is a docudrama about a very real event, the fabrication of
stories in The New Republic magazine by Stephen Glass. Glass, indeed, has
recently published a book about his exploits. Although stories are typically very
carefully vetted by the editorial staff to assure that the facts are accurate
and the stories are true, the writer's notes are (or were) accepted as proof of
veracity especially when they are fleshed out with phone numbers, web page
addresses and the like. Glass probably spent more effort preparing his fake
materials than would have been required had he actually researched stories. It
is eternally fascinating how brilliant people can be lured into spending more
energy on criminal activity than would get them equivalent or better rewards by
legitimate effort. The film is very well acted and definitely worth seeing.
Danny Deckchair
This Australian romantic comedy, a first feature film by American expatriate,
Jeff Balsmeyer, is totally charming and very well realized. Danny is a
dreamer, a quirky construction worker married to Trudy, an ambitious real estate
agent. When his vacation camping trip is canceled because Trudy has to work
(not the first lie she has told him), he gives a "barby" and decides to try out
his latest invention, a flying chair. He blows up balloons with helium until
the chair lurches and jumps up with him in it. He's having an interesting time
flying a great distance from home until he's hit by fireworks and the chair
quickly descends, dropping Danny into a (naturally beautiful) woman's front
yard. Turns out she's a spinster policewoman (well, she tickets parked cars) and
Danny is adopted into a new life in a new town. You'll enjoy this one - I
did, start to finish.
Karen
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