Well, it always has to happen, the final, sad day of a film festival, where I of course had to cram in an extra 5 screenings, making a total of 33 glorious films at this year’s festival (and only about 3 certifiable turkeys). The predominant theme this year seemed to circulate around fractured relationships between parents and children, especially that landmine of a relationship between mother and son (of which there were some gloriously weird examples of this year), and the last day was no exception. Films that, for one reason or another, I had to miss that I sorely wish to see: The White Ribbon, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Valhalla Rising, Mother and Child, Precious, Vincere, among others, I hope to see in the future.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Though I avoided Werner Herzog’s other, hot ticket selection at this year’s festival (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) due to my intense dislike of Nicolas Cage, his other strange title, produced by David Lynch, stands as my favorite film at this year’s fest. Delightfully wacky, bizarre, and weird, I laughed my ass off. Featuring Willem Dafoe (the third of his four films at the fest this year) and Michael Pena as two detectives called into the midst of a very bizarre murder case (apparently based on a true story), we enter a familiar Lynchian world about a very disturbed young man, played by Michael Shannon. Though I enjoy Shannon and his performance here, I have yet to see him in a film where he isn’t severely cuckoo. Having murdered his mother with a sword at the neighbor’s, Shannon is holed up next door while the detectives attempt to coax him outside. When his fiancee and the director of a stage production of a greek tragedy he was supposed to be in (in which he played Orestes, who kills his mother) show up at the scene, we get a flashback narrative to the weeks leading up to the present. Grace Zabriskie, a creepy actress anyway, is delightfully weird here. Chloe Sevigny plays Shannon’s fiancee, Brad Dourif as his uncle that runs an ostrich farm and is featured in two of the film’s best scenes (one involving a midget, of course, who happens to be Vern Troyer) and my favorite player of all, Udo Kier, as the strange (I know, he’s always strange) and befuddled director of the play, that for reasons unknown to everyone thinks Shannon’s character was talented enought to cast. Of course, I’m one to fall in love with eccentric films, and between the ostriches and Shannon’s two pet flamingos, I fell in love with this movie. Thank you Werner Herzog—may this not be your last production with David Lynch.

Life During Wartime

A loose followup to Todd Solondz’s controversial and celebrated 1998 film, Happiness, we are thrown back into the lives of the three sisters from that film, while all characters are played by different people. Sad sack Joy is played by the squeaky Shirley Henderson, Trish (the one married to the pedophile in the previous film) is Allison Janney, and the other sister is a camped up Ally Sheedy here. While I think character actor Ciaran Hinds is an excellent screen presence, I didn’t find him realistic as the recently released pedophile. While the film tries hard to circle around the theme of forgiveness and what it means to forgive or forget, the actors do their best, but I found that most of the film felt like a gruesome (but hilarious) caricature—whereas the brilliance of Happiness was the inherent realism, Life During Wartime feels more like an all out raunchy joke. While I enjoyed the film, it just doesn’t compare to the greatness of Solondz’s past film. The best moment belongs to a scene involving Charlotte Rampling and Ciaran Hinds, the most genuine and tragic sequence in the film.

The Hole

Picking up an award for best 3D film in Venice, Joe Dante’s latest offering is a goofy, fun throwback to simple plotted, yet scary family adventure films from the 80’s. I don’t know how much I really felt it needed to be in 3D, but the plot concerns a woman (Teri Polo) who constantly moves her two sons around, for reasons that are at first mysterious. Opening with the three characters moving into a small, rural town, the boys discover a mysterious, and seemingly bottomless hole in the basement, that once unlocked, leaks some strange and terrifying things out. As the plot is a bit simple, I will stop here—but I will say, I was impressed with an incredibly creepy and scary clown toy that comes to life to terrorize the young boy. While The Hole kind of fizzles out towards the end, it’s a decent return for Dante.

Applause

I have long admired Danish actress Paprika Steen, so there was no question about me seeing her latest film which sees the actress in a virtuoso perfromance as an actress battling alcoholism. Between shots of her playing Martha in a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” we catch glimpses of Thea’s mess of a personal life. Just out of rehab, she’s trying to get her life on track and see her children more often, but her ex-husband doesn’t think she’s ready. Obviously, she loves her children, but when she was drinking she was a physically and verbally abusive monster. Thea’s relation to the alcoholic character Martha is a bit close for comfort, and the finale is indeed a bit eerie and thought provoking if you’re familiar with the happenings in “Woolf.”

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

I am so joyously happy that this is the film I got to end the festival with. From first time director J Blakeson comes a ransom film you won’t easily forget, and as the program organizer announced, the less you know, the better. Gemma Arterton plays Alice Creed, a rich girl abducted for ransom by the marvelous Eddie Marsan (Happy Go Lucky, 2008) and Martin Compston (Red Road, 2006, Doomsday, 2008). And events, as is apt to happen in these situations, do not go as planned. Along the way, there are two surprising twists that had the audience howling, and had me falling in love with it. The “big” twist is reminiscent of an early 80’s American film (which is really only remembered for this “big” twist) and I will not spoil it here. All three players are excellent, and the film clips along at a fast pace. After seeing 33 films in 10 days, I left wanting more. That’s a testament to a damn good film.

The Ape

The sophomore feature from Swedish director Jesper Ganslandt, The Ape is one of those films where the less you know about the plot, the better. Opening with our lead character, Krister (Olle Sarri in an excellent performance) waking up on the bathroom floor covered in blood, we follow Krister throughout his morning as he picks up his vehicle in the shop, goes to work late (he’s a driving instructor) and freak out on a student driver. And then Krister’s world becomes a kittywampus delirium when we discover why exactly he woke up covered in blood. Shot in a style that’s been compared to that of the Dardenne’s, we slowly sink into Krister’s hellish reality, the title reminding one of Eugene O’Neill’s famous play, “The Hairy Ape.” The less you know before going in, the better.

I Killed My Mother

Every now and then you happen upon a movie that’s fresh, vibrant and exhilirating. I wasn’t sure what to expect walkng into I Killed My Mother, the feature debut of French Canadian Xavier Dolan, who wrote, directed and stars in this semi-autobiographical tale about growing up gay with his mom. And he’s only 20 years old. In truth, I was blown away by Dolan’s film, which picked up 3 awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s one of those movies that reminds us why we get excited about movies—it truly is a vibrant film. It will make you excited, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it will make you admire it as an outstanding film. I’m curious to see what Dolan goes on to accomplish, but even if this were to remain his only film, he’s already created a cinematic masterpiece. Of course, he’s helped by an astoundingly awesome actress playing mother–Anne Dorval—who I would love to see receive an Oscar nod for her stellar performance as a mother who doesn’t always make the best choices in communicating with her son, but loves him nonetheless. A beautiful film. I am so thankful I was able to see it.

Spring Fever

I’m not entirely certain why this received the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Cannes, but I’m guessing it was to honor the overall importance of a film like this being made. Yes, director Lou Ye made this film in secret, as he’s currently been banned from filming in China due to the infamous Summer Palace (2006). While I found Ye’s previous film to be quite messy and all over the place, I was happy to see a tighter narrative with Spring Fever, which I found to be a compelling film up until the last 30 minutes or so. A wife discovers her husband is having an affair with another man after having a young male student follow him. Threatening the man to stay away, her husband sinks into a deep depression while her husband’s lover begins an affair with the student that had been following him, along with the student’s girlfriend getting involved in a rather strange way. One cannot overlook the importance of a film dealing this frankly with homosexuality coming out of China, banned or not. High praise to Lou Ye, and may he keep on making films as passionately as he made Spring Fever.

Micmacs

Jean Pierre Jeunet’s latest feature is a whimsical, effervescent tale about what happens to be a dark subject matter–arms dealers. Starring recent French sensation Dany Boon and Cesar winner Yolande Moreau (Seraphine), Micmacs is another entry in Jeunet’s filmography that shows off his usual flairs to make the grotesque beautiful. With touches of Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You thrown in the mix, our protagonist Bazil’s (Boon) father was killed while  a bullet is lodged in his own head, both circumstances due to the machinations of competing arms dealers, who happen to be responsible for supplying weapons contributing to our current state of existence. Joining a motley crew in a junkyard that end up helping Bazil construct a zany plot to pit the arms dealers (Andre Dussollier and Nicolas Marie) against each other, various escapades ensue that are entertaining, and make up an overall, exciting film. However, I don’t particularly find Dany Boon to be the most engaging screen presence—and after seeing 30 odd films at the festival, I think I was hoping for the darker side of Jeunet. Otherwise, whatever the man has to offer, it’s always worthy of a look.

Mother

Bong Joon-ho’s latest masterpiece owes a great deal of its success to a desperate, moving performance by Kim Hye-ja as the mother of a mentally disabled child that may have been framed for murder. Akin to the director’s previous Memories of Murder, his latest is a slow burning thriller that delves into Twin Peaks themes towards the middle of the film when it turns out the dead girl had quite the torrid reputation, and her missing cell phone may hold the answer as to who the killer really is. With the help of her son’s miscreant best friend, she sets out to discover who may have framed her son, with several surprises along the way. A wacky and sometimes weird tale, Mother is an excellent little thriller.

Les Derniers Jours Du Monde

A strange, and perhaps overly long film, I happened to catch the premiere of the Larrieu brothers latest effort, roughly translated as Happy End, a sort of pre-apocalyptic dark comedy. Focusing on our main character, Robinson (Mathieu Amalric) the film is set in what seems to be the last week before a fast approaching apocalypse, and Robinson is alone, documenting the events of a year before when he was married and also carrying on an intense affair with a young escort (a stunning Omahyra Mota, looking a bit like Rihanna) who has abandoned him and may responsible for the loss of his arm, but is certainly responsible for Robinson’s reason to continue living as he hopes to find her again. As we get more and more of Robinson’s back story, he seems to keep running into a woman named Ombeline (the wonderful Catherine Frot) who had an affair with his father–as things get worse, he hooks up with Ombeline and they become lovers on the road. However, as things get worse around them, the narrative becomes darker as well, which also happens to involve Robinson’s gay best friend, an opera singer, and the daughter he has sex with, played by Clotilde Hesme (spending most of her scenes in an awful blonde wig). Though intriguing, the film drags a bit at times, but is an interesting exercise concerning the end times.

To Die Like A Man

The only screening I have been to, thus far, where no one has clapped, (and in fact many people left throughout the screening) was a difficult film to ingest, least of all due to its sometimes pathetic subject matter concerning trannsexuals on the outskirts of gay culture in Lisbon. The story centers on Tonia, a striking but aging transvestitie attempting to erase her past as a male and become a woman. We enter Tonia’s story during the midst of a crisis with her young lover, a drug addicted youth that may or may not be just using her, and also when Tonia’s son re-enters her life after having brutally killed a fellow soldier (the film’s opening sequence). After watching Tonia’s rather hectic and somewhat pathetic life as an aging queen with little or no financial or emotional security, the film becomes an arthouse extravaganza when after finding her implants are leaking into her body, Tonia and her young lover go on a trip to see her lover’s brother, but get lost in a what seems to be a magical jungle, stumbling upon a gracious and enigmatic drag queen at her house in the woods named Maria Bakker. A strange, interesting, and thought provoking film, I’m still uncertain about what everything’s supposed to be in To Die Like a Man (a title born from the fact that Tonia never fully became a woman, so since she lived as a woman, she would die like man—not in drag). Too emotionally distant to be hardhitting or devastating, Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ latest film is an interesting and compelling tale of one down and out trannie. A brave film that will most likely not be talked about, it is another intriguing puzzle from the director of O Fantasma and Two Drifters.

Glorious 39

Not that it’s an unimportant film about a light subject matter, but I couldn’t help thinking of Stephen Poliakoff’s latest film about wicked, aristocratic Brits in 1939 attempting to cut a deal with the Nazis in order to avoid war and save their cherished comfort, as anything more than inconsequential. Starring a hodge-podge of British talent, including Christopher Lee, Julie Christie, Bill Nighy, Jenny Agutter, Hugh Bonneville, etc, the film’s focus is Romola Garai, a young woman adopted into a very rich family—a family that happens to be responsible for the deaths of several of her friends and close ones that support Winston Churchill. While this is extremely compelling subject matter, since the filmmakers choose to stick to the facts (Bravo!) the film is really about a strong willed young woman who resists the temptation of the bourgeoisie and abandons her family rather than supporting their plan to pay the Nazis money to be left alone. The rest of course, is history.

Deliver Us From Evil

The latest from one of my new favorite filmmakers, Danish director Ole Borendal (The Substitute; Just Another Love Story) is rather a striking rehash of Straw Dogs (1971), and at the same time is rather a more pointed judgment of xenophobic attitudes. Set in a small Danish town, the accidental death of an old sergeant’s wife sets off a violent and murderous chain of events when the small town outsider, Alain, is accused. Alain is often referred to with the ‘N’ word as an epithet—which the white trash inhabitants acknowledge is a word that does not signify his skin color, but rather, his outsider, Bosnian status. Though not my favorite Bornedal effort, the film features more than enough unpleasantness and retribution to satisfy genre fans, as well as gorgeous cinematography that lends a rather grotesque air to the happenings on screen. Bornedal, passionate and aggressive about his film, remarked that he hopes the film would be educational after audience members reflected that the Danish are thought of as a rather peaceful people. “We are the enemy,” he stated, “evil is in everyone.” I must say, I am pumped for his next project, which Bornedal stated he was doing with the producers of The Ring, and would be like a cross between Lost in Translation and The Silence of the Lambs.

Le Refuge

As could be expected, it was a great treat to be at the premiere of Francois Ozon’s latest feature, Le Refuge. What a pity he was ill and could not attend. An impressive, powerhouse vehicle for actress Isabelle Carre as a recovering heroin addict, the film opens in a squalid appartment as Carre and Melvil Poupaud get high. Within minutes, the narrative kills off Poupaud, surprisingly, in an overdose, and Carre is alone and pregnant. After being urged to abort the baby by Poupaud’s bitter, estranged mother, we fast forward several months where Carre has set herself up in the countryside, deciding to keep the baby and taking methadone. Poupaud’s brother Paul (newcomer Louis-Ronan Choisey) arrives for a visit and ends up staying to develop a rather close and intriguing relationship with Carre and an intense, sexual relationship with the man that delivers Carre’s groceries. Perhaps a bit predictable, but nevertheless beautiful and exhilirating, Le Refuge is about two people connecting in a sometimes difficult world—and it’s Ozon doing what he does best–showing us real people that aren’t necessarily easy to like or appreciate.

Chloe

Atom Egoyan’s latest effort was surprising in several ways—financed outside of Canada  for once (and produced by Ivan Reitman) the film is Egoyan’s most linear and mainstream effort to date, filmed on the streets of Toronto. Focusing on a well to do couple, Catherine and David (an excellent Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson), the film’s narrative begins almost immediately when David misses his plane home for a surprise birthday party and Catherine suspects he has been cheating on her. Hiring a young escort named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to place herself in David’s way to see if he will give into temptation, the film begins to focus on the rather intense relationship Catherine and Chloe develop—one that ends up being a rather Sapphic affair (like I said, this year is International Queer Cinema). Of course, all is not as it seems, and the tensions turn deadly when it turns out not everyone has been up front about certain details. An excellent, excellent little potboiler scripted by the screenwriter of Secretary (2002), Erin Cressida Wilson, I suppose I was a little disappointed by the fact that Chloe happens to be a reworking of Anne Fontaine’s 2003 film starring Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Beart, Nathalie…I suppose I’m most upset that I’ve owned Fontaine’s film for several years and have yet to watch it. Chloe on the other hand, is a must see. Here’s one for the girls, Julianne.

The Loved Ones

First time director Sean Byrne has made an excellent, nasty little horror film in the vein of the best Ozploitation efforts documented in the recent Not Another Hollywood (2008). If Quentin Tarantino hasn’t seen Byrne’s film, The Loved Ones, I am certain he will want to and he will love it. Brent, a high school student, accidentally kills his father in car crash when he wraps their car around a tree in an attempt to avoid a strange figure in the road. Skip ahead six months, and it’s time for prom. Brent is a bit of an “emotional retard,” as his girlfriend calls him, and as he angrily stalks off into the outback several hours before prom to engage in some ultra healthy angsty cutting, he’s bonked over the head and abducted into one of the most entertaining and campy (aren’t the best ones always a little bit?) plot I’ve seen in most recent tributes to the genre—with shades of Carrie and Misery, Brent is abducted into a dark little world ruled by a vicious young woman named Lola, or perhaps more aptly, Princess. And featuring an Australian hit song by Kasey Chambers called “Am I Not Pretty Enough?” and you have some darkly comic, horrific thrills running throughout The Loved Ones.

White Material

Oh my Isabelle Huppert, how I love thee. And how I wish you would have shown up alongside Claire Denis for the first screening of your newest film, White Material. Featuring the union of two French masters (Denis/Huppert), this latest film is a return to Africa for Denis, focusing on Isabelle Huppert as a fearless woman who has been struggling with her family (which includes Christopher Lambert as her worn out looking husband) to make a success of a coffee plantation in an unspecified part of Africa. A civil war brings us into the last week of the plantation’s existence as Huppert desperately tries to ignore the severe political unrest, attempting to hire new workers for harvest as everyone else has abandoned her. With very little dialogue, we’re invited to watch some pretty brutal, graphic events as Huppert’s stubborn character at least realizes that there is no hope and everything has been lost. It’s a powerful performance, and an interesting addition to her recent turns as a woman struggling to hold onto her property in the face of various dangers, such as Private Property (2006), Home (2008), and The Sea Wall (2008). Also featuring Isaach De Bankole as a wounded rebel soldier known as the Boxer.

Vengeance

Johnnie To’s latest effort is a rocking, excellent noir revenge action film and stars the French king of rock (think the French Elvis), Johnny Hallyday, who is one scary looking mother these days. The plot is simple—in Macau, a Chinese man and his French wife are assassinated, along with their two children. The Frenchwoman happens to be Hallyday’s daughter, himself an assassin turned chef. Hallyday comes to Macau to avenge her, as she survives while her husband and children die. And then you’re in store for some beautiful, stylized shoot out scenes as Hallyday hires three assassins to help him find the perps. A quick and dirty little number, Vengeance was originally meant as a vehicle for Alain Deloin—but Johnny Hallyday is just as curiously effective.

Rec 2

The highly anticipated sequel to Paco Plaza and JaumeBalaguero’s Rec (2007) received its North American premiere last night as part of TIFF’s Midnight Madness lineup. And it does not disappoint. Set nearly 15 minutes after the first Rec has ended, and we’re back with a SWAT team and a doctor from the Ministry of Health all set to enter the same quarantined building. Though I prefer the first film, the second film jumps right into the action and opens up plot elements hinted at in the last five minutes of the first film. I think I preferred the vague insinuations at the end of Rec, for the nature of the sequel demands an explanation, which widens the possession/religious arc for Rec 2. However, several surprises surface in Rec 2’s narrative, and multiple camera perspectives include each SWAT member having their own head camera, and a group of teens that tamper their way into the building. The directors cite Aliens as a model for crafting Rec 2, and it’s evident—but in a good way. Quick and dirty, there’s no shortage of excellent thrills in the same vein as the horrific ending of the first film. While I’m not usually the type to champion sequels, Plaza and Balaguero are more than welcome to attempt a Rec 3 since Rec 2 is definitely a must see.

Trash Humpers

If you happened to be unsettled at all during Harmony Korine’s Gummo (1997) then you most certainly will feel uncomfortable through most of his latest feature, Trash Humpers, in which our four main characters frequently engage in their titular activity. Harmony Korine described the film as a tape you’d find in a ditch, or buried in some senior citizen’s closet—something you stick in the VCR and say, “what the fuck is this?” Focusing on four deformed individuals filmed on a handheld camcorder, that look like burn victims or a family from The Hills Have Eyes, as they wander aimlessly around a small, rural area, humping trash, breaking shit up, bashing dolls heads in with hammers, and other small, horrific instances that happen in those small rural pockets. Making strange bird-like noises, the three male and sole female creature/humans engage in various instances of touching themselves, killing people, and acting like unruly children. It was perhaps too early in the morning for me to fully appreciate Korine’s latest effort—but it was creepy, and I want to see it again.

Ondine

Now, I love Neil Jordan’s films (even if Interview with the Vampire, 1993, hasn’t quite held up) and I appreciate his curiosity with transsexuals, which he seems to have in everything from The Crying Game (1992), The Good Thief (2002), and my personal favorite, Breakfast on Pluto (2005). So I was all excited for the various interpretations I thought I’d be able to glean from his latest film, Ondine, which tells the story of an Irish fisherman (Colin Farrell) who discovers a woman in his fishing net who may or may not be a mermaid. I was all set to use my new made up term, transspecies. And though it was exciting to be at the world premiere and listen to Jordan and Farrell talk about the film, I wasn’t completely impressed. Ondine looks beautiful (Jordan acquired Christopher Doyle as cinematographer) but about mid-way through the film, I became so irritated with the overly precocious daughter of Farrell’s character (not to mention Farrell in full force puppy dog simpleton mode) that I found myself checking my watch about every ten minutes. While Ondine is not a bad film, it certainly has nowhere to go. Farrell described the film’s main theme about hope, and about how the presence of this mysterious woman returns hope to him. However, I found this to be also lacking in the film. While a majority of the audience didn’t seem to mind being spoonfed cuteness (lots of praise went to what I thought was a heavy-handed over the top performance by the child actress) the only hope I felt was for Jordan’s next effort.

A Single Man

Based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel and the feature debut of designer Tom Ford, A Single Man received its North American premiere here in Toronto last night. Colin Firth (who just won Best Actor in Venice for this performance) stars as George, a man who has just lost his partner of 16 years (Matthew Goode) and has been having some difficulty picking up the pieces. Set in LA in the early 60’s (a gorgeous shot in a scene prominently features a poster of Janet Leigh in Psycho). The heartbreak evident in Firth’s face, and his actions, make this an extremely emotional film to sit through as the main action of the film takes place on the day George chooses to be his last. Julianne Moore is Charly, an old flame and best friend, who knew George back in their native Britain. Moore looks fabulous in 60’s regalia as she swills gin with Firth during dinner on what could be their last evening together. A touching and deeply meaningful film, I’m certain Firth will receive Oscar recognition in this adaptation of a classic gay text that may finally get more recognition.

Daybreakers

I wasn’t planning on seeing this film in Toronto, especially since it’s receiving a wide release this January, but it appeared to be an exciting vampire action flick, with a not very original plot that reminded me of Blade (1998). The year is 2019, and for the past ten years the world has been ruled by vampires due to a plague that transformed all the humans from the bite of a bat. However, humans are fast becoming extinct, and the vampires are scrambling to make a blood substitute (I use Karo oil and red food coloring, myself) since the vampires seem to be mutating into a strange, bat like sub species when forced to go without blood for long periods of time. Thankfully, eating wild animals isn’t presented as a rational substitute akin to the “vegan” vampires in the world’s latest curse known as the Twilight series. Enter our protagonist, Edward, a kindly vampire hematologist tasked with developing a substitute when all he really wants to do is find a cure. He hates being a vampire, and has a tendency to be anorexic. Edward reports to Charles Bromley (Sam Neill—looking a little puffy and eerily similar to Udo Kier) who seems to run the vampire world and Bromley is an evil, corporate vampire. Throw in some conflict with Edward’s marine brother Frankie (Michael Dorman) and things begin to get a little cheesy, even with some sufficiently delightful gory scenes to please the masses. Willem Dafoe is thrown into the mix as a man who accidently cures himself of the vampire disease and happens to be the worst written, throw away part of the whole film. I guess if you need a Willem fix, be sure to catch AntiChrist and maybe wait for this on DVD. I won’t go into what the “cure” ends up being, but if UV rays are indeed deadly for vampires, I don’t see how the “cure” ended up being anything different than a tanning bed. But hey, the Spierig Brothers seemed to have secured a grand budget, so with their second feature, who cares if it’s all style over substance?

A Prophet

Master filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s latest film, Grand Jury Prize winner at this year’s Cannes film festival (second place), is being touted as a masterpiece. And it is. Focusing on a young Arab named Malik (Tahar Rahim in an exceptional performance) and his six years in prison as he moves from nothing to a powerful force with mafia connections (dealing with both sides, hailed as the “prophet”), Audiard’s film is at times brutal, moving, and never overly sentimental. Audiard claims the importance of this film is that it is an image for people in France that don’t quite have a cinematic image, that being the Arab population. (Between this and Mathiew Kassovitz’s La Haine, 1995, I wonder when a more positive image will be committed to screen). Not to say that Malik is an awful character—he’s a survivor, but as far as prison dramas go, this compelling piece of cinema will certainly widen Audiard’s reputation on this side of the globe.  The other standout performance in A Prophet is that of Niels Arestrup, the Corsican kingpin that ends up recruiting Malik out of circumstance, a man that turns Malik into the ruthless survivor he becomes, a man you can’t quite hate, but can’t pity either.

Accident

Receiving lots of positive buzz after its premiere in Venice earlier this month, Soi Cheang’s latest film, produced by Johnnie To, was more of a so-so effort for my taste. Concerning a group of assassins led by a paranoid man named Brain (Louis Koo), Accident contains some expertly executed sequences involving how these assassins dispose of targets in various seemingly “accidental” ways—that is until one mission is accidentally bungled and Brain loses ones of his men as an out of control bus runs him down. Convinced that this accident was planned, Brain focuses his sights on an insurance agent also at the scene and makes moves to take the insurance agent down before he can strike again. But was it just an accident? Brain, whose wife died in a mysterious accident in the film’s opening, may very well be suffering from acute paranoia. As this is the only tension that glides us into the second half of the film, pertaining to whether it’s all just in Brain’s head or not, I found the film to be a little tedious and at times, farfetched. Nonetheless, an interesting effort with some exceptional ideas.

Broken Embraces

Though I felt extremely grateful getting into the final sold out screening of Pedro Almodovar’s latest effort, Broken Embraces, sadly, the effort was more than what it was worth. A humorous and sometimes sinister first half, promising to follow in the vein of Bad Education (2004), the film fizzles out in its latter half, as if unsure of where to go. The plot consists of several story lines and stories within stories, as is typical of Almodovar’s previous works. Our protagonist is famed screenwriter Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar) who has changed is name to Harry Caine after an awful accident where he lost the love of his life and his vision. When an aspiring filmmaker named Ray X attempts to contact Harry, some skeletons start rattling the closet doors and we find that Ray X is actually the son of Ernesto Martel, a powerful man whose mistress, Lena, had been the aforementioned love of Mateo’s past, with whom he had attempted to direct in a film called Girls and Suitcases, which actually looks a lot like Almodovar’s own Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). While Broken Embraces tries to be a thriller, all the thrills fizzle out in the second half, and instead we’re left with what seems to be an homage to several other auteurs and films all at the same time (instances which are always fun to catch—like noticing in the beginning of the film when Cruz’s character moonlights as a prostitute for extra cash, she goes by the name Severine, which is the real name of the character Catherine Deneuve plays in Belle De Jour – 1967). But doppelganger story lines (the Arthur Miller reference/Diego’s revealed father) make this story within a story feel like a movie Almodovar himself has already made. Cruz is gorgeous with all her costumes and wigs, but in the end, her characterization seems as hollow as the rest. Like a “noir-light,” the film was completely enjoyable, and worthy of another look. However, it’s far from his best, even though several key scenes are gorgeously shot, such as Cruz’s speech about leaving Ernesto which is shown in real time and on a television set within the same room.

The Vintner’s Luck

Receiving its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival is New Zealand director Niki Caro’s latest offering, based upon Elizabeth’s Knox’s novel centering on a peasant winemaker in 19^th century France whose personal passion is to create the perfect vintage wine. Jeremie Renier (muse of the Dardennes) stars as Sobran, our peasant winemaker who scoffs at the chateau winemakers. Derided as a fool upstart, Sobran gets wasted and wanders through the vineyard, stumbling upon an angel (played by Gaspard Ulliel, whose wings and pectoral muscles eclipse his performance) names Xas. Xas directs Sobran to grow grapes in a seemingly barren area and the two strike a deal to meet at that exact same spot next year. Meanwhile, Sobran marries the girl he’s had his eye on, a peasant girl named Celeste (Keisha Castle-Hughes, the breakout star from Caro’s Whale Rider, 2002), of which there is some minor misgivings from Sobran’s father as Celeste’s father was infamously cuckoo. Of course, a family is underway when Xas again visits, who gives Sobran further advice, etc, they decide to meet there everyday for the rest of Sobran’s life. Through successes and failures, we spend a lot of time watching grapes being plucked, eaten and stomped before we get the introduction of Vera Farmiga, a Baroness that happens to be the niece of Sobran’s chateau competition. The Baroness is taken with Sobran’s passion and after her uncle dies, she hires him to produce wine with her. Of course, it turns out there is some sexual tension with the angel, who treats us to a brief scene of mid-air copulation with Sobran. But Xas has some dark secrets of his own. After sleeping with all three other main characters, I couldn’t help but wondering what was supposed to be so magnetic about Sobran? He does have a passion to create good wine, but why? What’s not translated to the screen in Caro’s adaptation is why we should give a damn in the first place. Farmiga fares alright, as she often does, and while Renier is a fine actor, I found him to be quite dull. Castle-Hughes has even less to do as the hot-headed wife of Sobran, and it’s difficult to make her age like the rest of the cast when decades have supposedly passed. While not a failure of a film, at a running time of two hours without a lot of evident passion, sexual or otherwise, the end product left me wanting there to have been more.

Enter the Void

In attendance for a screening of his latest infamous film, Gaspar Noe announced that this was indeed the real world premiere of Enter the Void, as it screened in Cannes as a work in progress. With a running time of about 3 hours still, the only way I can describe this amazing film is to say that if Hell on earth exists, Noe has captured it on film. The film centers around Oskar (Nathaniel Brown), a drug addled youth in Tokyo who has recently reunited with his younger sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta), as they had been separated as children when their parents died in a horrible car accident. And basically, the film circles around the fact that Oskar promised to always look after her. An act of vengeance catches Oskar in a drug bust in which he is killed. And then we spend the rest of the film with Oskar’s disembodied spirit floating around Tokyo, mostly following his sister. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is referenced several times before Oskar dies, which claims that spirits are basically recycled—they leave dead bodies and then attach themselves to a developing fetus inside a woman’s womb—or a process similar to that, you get the gist. Noe basically outlines succinctly the progression of the simple plot—but the journey there is like floating through a dark, hellish pit. Noe chose Tokyo for its similarities to Las Vegas, the lights, the hedonism, etc. While “Enter” and “The Void” are the names of two bars in Tokyo, the grand finale gives us a better idea of another void we’re entering, as we see a penis ejaculate inside a vagina, while the semen flows to its assigned destination. I don’t think I’ve felt this down and dirty watching a film since Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream (2000), as I recall feeling as eerily disturbed after viewing that for the first time. Paz de la Huerta gives a heartbreaking and excellent performance as Oskar’s broken sister, who had taken a job as a stripper soon before Oskar gets killed. Whatever the reaction is to Noe’s latest offering, I hope that more people take note of her performance and that’s it not lost in the din. A very seedy, sexual film, one of the crew commented that after the Cannes screening, young women came up to them stating that Enter the Void made them feel like fucking, as the film ends with a giant orgy scene that’s beautiful and intense, and reminiscent of what Kubrick might have liked to do with Eyes Wide Shut (1999). But what I felt afterwards was sadness and that grateful feeling you have when you wake up from a nightmare. But the scene where Oskar’s spirit is leaving his body, and his mind is reeling that it’s only a bad trip (and since the film is exploring another major theme, that death is the ultimate trip) I couldn’t help but feel haunted. Like I said, this ranks up their with Requiem For A Dream as one of the more gritty, depressing and hellish films I’ve ever seen. I loved it.

International Queer Cinema

B. Ruby Rich, film critic, coined the phrase New Queer Cinema, attached to a film movement rooted in the 1991 Sundance Film Festival, as a response to multiple films depicting daring and multi-faceted depictions of an LGBT community. That year, we saw the rise of Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and several others. Several critics, looking beyond the dark, bloody themes dominating Cannes this year, also pointed to an abundant number of new films depicting diverse LGBT stories as well. As many of the films at Cannes are screening in Toronto, as well as additional premieres, I would affectionately like to refer to Toronto 2009 as giving rise to an International Queer Cinema movement. Upcoming screenings as the festival progresses that I offer as evidence of a wide ranging plethora of homosexual thematics in an international sense: Eyes Wide Open (Israel); The Vintner’s Luck (Australia); A Single Man (US); To Die Like a Man (Portugal); Spring Fever (China); I Am Love (Italy); The Bubble (Israel); as well as new films from Pedro Almodovar, Broken Embraces (Spain), and Francois Ozon, Le Refuge (France) and other films featuring alternate sexualities like Dogtooth (Greece).

Eyes Wide Open

First on the docket on my second day in Toronto was Haim Tabakman’s Eyes Wide Open, set in the conservative and sexually repressed world of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, Israel (and I am not biting off more than I can chew with that statement) which tells the story of Aaron, whose father has recently died and so he has been tasked with taking over his father’s butcher shop. A tired, worn looking man, he places a “Help Wanted” sign in the window only to have a young drifter, already a social outcast, named Ezri, comes sauntering in from the pouring rain. Ezri, an extremely handsome young man and having the demeanor of an abused puppy, is taken under Aaron’s wing and is allowed to work in the butcher shop and live in an adjoining loft. Ezri, of course, is discreetly gay, and the man he has come to Jerusalem for has decided to break it off with Ezri. Awakening a lust in Aaron, the two are soon lovers, but as is often depicted in films from this part of the world, the community keeps a close watch on each other, and almost as soon as Ezri blows into town, people are suspicious of Aaron’s relationship to him, and almost immediately denounce Ezri as “impure,” threatening to castigate the butcher shop as un-kosher unless he is driven from town. As Aaron himself tells a similar heterosexual couple, the “straight” mirror of this community’s other restrictions, “You can’t do what you want here.” The father of four children, Aaron is a good man, and his wife is smart, she knows what’s going on in the loft. As you can imagine, there’s no way this could end happily, not unless it wanted to become a science fiction film during the finale. Striking, moving, and important, Eyes Wide Open is at least as important, if not more so, than Ang Lee’s revolutionary Brokeback Mountain (2005). Its subject matter and cultural setting make Tabakman’s film important, controversial and significant. Gay people exist even in the most culturally repressed and regressive areas of the world, and Israel is not exempt. Hopefully this excellently crafted and relevant drama will get distribution stateside.  As Aaron states, “I was dead. Now I’m alive,” his eyes now open to what it means to be in love and to be alive. Excellent, nuanced performances from Zohar Shtrauss as Aaron, Ran Danker as Ezri, and an actress known as Tinkerbell as Rivka, Aaron’s wife.

I Am Love

All three screenings of this new film from Italy, starring Tilda Swinton and directed by her close friend, Luca Guadagnino, sold out immediately. Happening to secure a ticket to its opening night, Tilda Swinton was in attendance (looking like a very regal and fabulously blonde Ziggy Stardust) and explained that this film was nearly 11 years in the making, a project she had discussed with her friend and director centering around the theory of emotion driven cinema, a style long thought to be dead in this medium. To its credit, the film feels like a vintage Visconti as the film opens in the midst of a birthday party for an aging patriarch of a haute bourgeoisie family. However, the socio-political climate in modern Italy isn’t leering its ugly head in the background, and so it’s almost a bit difficult to decide who we’re supposed to be focusing on in this sprawling Italian clan, the Recchi’s. Are we to focus on the clueless and pampered eldest son of Tilda’s character Emma, Edo Jr., who has just inherited half of the family textile company, shared with his mostly absent father? Or how about Emma’s daughter, Elisabetta, whom Emma discovers in an intercepted love note, is a lesbian? Or is it Edo’s close friend, Antonio, a chef that beat Edo in a highly competitive footrace, with whom he shares what appears to be some extremely intense feelings for? Upon Antonio’s introduction in the narrative (he brings a cake to Edo’s house, feeling bad for beating him in the race) he stands in the Recchi’s doorway and shares an intense and curious exchange with both Edo and Emma. Not surprisingly, the film chugs full speed ahead when Emma and Antonio start a passionate love affair, and as is often the case with locked up wives of the haute beourgeoise, she feels love for the first time, and so we are introduced to the driving emotion of the narrative that tears the Recchi clan apart—but not exactly as you think. Curiously, another audience member asked if Louis Malle’s 1992 film Damage had any influence on the film (which I had wondered myself) as some eerie comparisons could be drawn between these two films. While the film may seemingly gloss languorously over the Recchi’s beautiful mansion and its beautiful inhabitants, the last quarter of the film makes up for any slow pacing, including the final climactic moments that had me on the edge of my seat with it’s glorious melodramatic, but classic cinematic finale. And every little lesbian needs a mom as wonderful as Tilda Swinton’s character was in this film. Tilda, by the way, looked absolutely ravishing as a chic and sleek member of the Italian upper class (though her character is actually supposed to be Russian). If you’re a fan of any of the New Wave Italian artists, but especially Visconti, I Am Love is an excellent throwback.

Dogtooth

What may end up being my favorite film from this year’s selections also stands as one of the funniest, most grotesque and downright horrific films I’ve seen in a while. And I mean horrific in its affect, its implications. From Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Kinetta, 2005), Dogtooth focuses on an unnamed family in an isolated country state. In this family, there is a mother, a father, and three children, two perhaps being in their early twenties. The children have been kept isolated on the estate, it seems, infantile and naive prisoners to whatever their parents have told them. For instance, mom and pop have taught the kids a homegrown vocabulary, which the children learn from homemade tapes. “Zombie” means a small, yellow flower. “Carbine” means a beautiful white bird. To go outside is dangerous, and cats are some of the most dangerous animals on the planet that must be killed on sight. The implication is that this husband and wife have gone to extreme lengths to keep their nuclear family private from the outside world. Only the husband leaves to work in factory (his coworkers think his wife is in a wheelchair) while the wife stays at home to watch the children and engage them in activities that enforce dependence. For the boy child, the father brings a security guard from work (blindfolding her) to moonlight as prostitute for his son. However, her presence causes problems amongst the children. For instance, after uninspiring sex with the son, Christine (the prostitute) goes to get her jollies off by asking the eldest daughter to go down on her for various gifts in exchange. When circumstances no longer permit Christine to come over, the father lets the son decide which sister will continue to complete this “task.” How long will these “children” be subject to this? Well, apparently they aren’t allowed to leave the premises until one of their canine teeth falls out, i.e., dogtooth. In other words, never. This film had me laughing uncomfortably (it’s really quite alarmingly funny) and cringing in more spots than I did at all the gruesomeness of AntiChrist. And in lieu of recent world events involving the Fritzl family in Austria and the Jaycee Dugard case in California, the reality and plausibility of Dogtooth is all the more chilling, with a grand, compelling climax that will haunt you.

“Let chaos reign,” the festival organizer tells us while introducing Lars Von Trier’s already infamous latest film, AntiChrist. And chaotic it did feel, although opening night at TIFF is usually so, and this being my third year in attendance, I braved the intense atmosphere for the first time to attend a much awaited screening of Von Trier’s film, which caused such a scandal at Cannes in May. (Quite a jolt for the first fest film, as previously firsts for me were Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears (2007) and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys (2008). Screening at the Ryerson, which seats around 1,600, the line was around the block an hour before show time. Irritatingly, much of these denizens were ornery, owly-eyed, pretentious festival goers—and they were up past their bed time. Praise for Von Trier buzzed around my ears, as well as several damning epithets, but overall, a certain curiosity about just how much his new film would affect us seemed to invigorate us all. As the line began to move into the theater, a lovely heterosexual couple decided it was just the right moment to step in line several people in front of me, taking advantage of a feeble old woman’s slow pace that I’d had half a mind to cut in front of myself. Though several feet ahead, I was treated to a pretentious young female’s rant about how excellent and “real” Von Trier’s work was, referencing Dancer In the Dark (2000), “That really happens to people!” she exclaimed. The remark was meant as a juxtaposition for the work of Michael Haneke, whom this young woman did not like. “He just wants to fuck with the audience. He’s playing God,” she quipped, I assume having conveniently plucked this verbiage from some such better versed critic of Haneke’s work. Does Haneke want to fuck with us? Hell yes. But his films often depict very realistic scenarios that also happen to people (Funny Games is horrifyingly realistic)—but Von Trier also wants to fuck with us and is also the man that called himself the “best director in the world.” And every director is trying to play God. I didn’t get to hear, thankfully, what she thought of AntiChrist, which felt much like a Haneke film.

The film opens with a black and white, slow motion montage, with classical music playing while Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg have passionate sex in the bathroom shower and their young son falls to his death out of an open window. Gainsbourg doesn’t take this too well and ends up in the hospital for a month, heavily medicated. Dafoe happens to be a therapist and takes it upon himself to treat his wife, since he apparently knows better than anyone else how to treat her. Taking his wife off meds, her behavior becomes increasingly violent and erratic while he tries to discover what’s causing her guilt and fear—what she’s afraid of. Claiming there’s nothing specific, he tries a different tactic. “Where are you afraid? Where are you most exposed?” “The woods,” she says. The couple happens to have a remote cabin deep in the woods where Gainsbourg had previously brought her son to complete her thesis on gynocide. Oh, yeah—the cabin happens to be named Eden. If we’re to draw comparisons to this allusion to Genesis, then this Eve ate a really bad fucking apple—Gainsbourg goes completely off her rocker, and as everyone already knows, bashes Dafoe’s testicles in and masturbates his erect penis until he orgasms blood; drills a hole through his leg and secures him to a concrete weight, throwing the wrench under the cabin in case she changes her mind; and most brutally, gives herself cinema’s most famous cliterectdomy with a rusty pair of scissors. Along the way, we’re treated to three anthropomorphous figures representing grief, despair, and guilt, embodied in the shape of a bird, a fox, and a doe. The fox’s womb is torn out of her, the doe gets startled by Dafoe and begins to run while in the midst of giving birth, a fetus flopping all over behind her, and a dead baby bird falls out of a tree, covered in ants and viciously snatched and torn apart by a hawk. Good stuff—heavy symbolism, deserving a careful second and third viewing to begin to put together religious and mythological explanations of any sort. As has also been reported, the fox growls at Dafoe in a demonic voice “Chaos reigns,” which caused a few titters in the audience, but which I found truly creepy. Having tried to avoid spoilers concerning this film, I won’t give away the creepiest part of the film, (at least to me), having to do with a minor detail concerning their dead child, indicating that Gainsbourg was seriously, seriously disturbed long before their child died. Charlotte Gainsbourg, child of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, throws out a beautiful, grandiose, hysterical performance. She deserved her Best Actress award at Cannes; and in fact, I’m reminded of when Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress at Cannes for a thematically similar trip down disturbia lane for Possession (1980). Willem Dafoe is charged with the less flashy role, a husband blinded by his feelings. I mean, when your wife complains that the ground is burning on your walk to the cabin, don’t you think something might be wrong besides grief? Foxes talking and icky fetuses aside, Dafoe’s character had plenty of warning. While the audience gasped, groaned, or made gagging noises around me, I found the film to be scandalously brilliant. From the opening, foreboding music alerts us that trouble is on the way, and the camera distorts the images in front of us, as if we’re seeing a perspective from Gainsbourg.

And while I’m still wrapping my head around what the film may be saying about women, about men, about God, about Satan, and who or what indeed is the embodiment of the Anti-Christ, the film most obviously shows us that therapists shouldn’t treat their loved ones, and maybe there is something that happens to us when we’re isolated with morbid thoughts—something that can change us over time. What do most film critics hate? Film that is challenging to write about, much less wrap one’s head around—several possible thesis projects are brewing in this new film from Lars Von Trier—it is indeed a moving piece of art, one that will be praised and hated, and most importantly, forever discussed.