Feature by Kathie Smith: Although the Vancouver International Film Festival could feasibly be described as the neighboring Toronto Fest’s kid brother, it touts its own share of high-profile screenings. After taking in close to 50 of these films, I emerged from the flickering lights of the Hollywood North trying to discern between the good, the bad, and the weird. Digesting everything took time, and so did writing this feature—which will be presented in two installments for In Review Online. Ultimately, many films at VIFF left me with the impression that the sum of their parts were greater than the whole (Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” and Catherine Breillat’s “The Sleeping Beauty"), while others (Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” and Michael Rowe’s “Leap Year”) have just as immaculate moments, but impress even more for what they cumulatively accomplish. As for Raul Ruiz's epic 4-hour-plus “Mysteries of Lisbon,” both the parts and the whole are too overwhelming to compare. Check out my take on these below, and check back later this week for my thoughts on the Asian highlights of the festival.

Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami

After spending nearly a decade away from narrative features, Abbas Kiarostami returns in a big way with a film that's engaging both intellectually and emotionally. Under the auspices of exploring artifice, “Certified Copy” explores esoteric notions of love, life and art on the coattails of a wandering Tuscan tête-à-tête. In this case, the two wanderers are the beautiful and charismatic Juliette Binoche (Best Actress winner at Cannes this year) and the handsome and stately William Shimell (a British opera star more than holding his own in his first film appearance). The couple's relaxed and poignant conversations (which recall Kiarostami's “Ten”) delicately skirt philosophy in order to tackle more volatile affairs of the heart. The film opens as author James Miller (Shimell) holds a lecture on his book, “Certified Copy.” In the audience is Elle (Binoche), looking the part of an enamored fan but distracted by her petulant son. Elle owns a gallery and has a vested interest in James’s research into the nature of authenticity in art. James and Elle soon embark on a friendly but professional afternoon excursion to a nearby village. Their ever-shifting debate flows and stutters with the awkwardness of unfamiliarity and the defiance of middle-age. But are we mistaking the awkwardness between strangers for more complex emotions shared by former companions?

Midway through "Certified Copy" the nature of James and Elle’s relationship is called into question. Throwing the literal structure of the film out the window has the effect of freeing up every other aspect of this loose yet very grounded narrative. Under the premise of James’s essay, “Certified Copy” becomes a hall of mirrors where James and Elle’s ambiguous relationship—or more accurately, Shimell and Binoche’s ambiguous relationship—is grounds for something far more fallible and beautiful than a mechanical reproduction. By using the components of a European art film, Kiarostami has elegantly replicated while pointing out the replication. “Certified Copy” is Kiarostami at his best, and perhaps better than we have ever seen him before. He writes dialogue in three languages and casts an operatic baritone as the individual who can’t speak Italian. He builds an aura of mystery as he simultaneously points out there is really no mystery. He meditates on classic Italian art while polishing the tarnished halo of film-as-art. He takes an academic subject and fills it with the pulse of life. He casts the biggest star in Europe and allows her to playfully explore a range of emotions found in herself as well as his script. And he casts us, the audience—his audience—as the mirror, the ultimate reflection of his film. “Certified Copy” opens in the U.S. in March, and it’s already one of the best films of next year.

Mysteries of Lisbon / Raúl Ruiz

Raúl Ruiz’s richly detailed adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco’s novel is a swoon-worthy brocade epic that immediately takes hold and doesn't let go for its mammoth 272-minute runtime. A patchwork of narrative yarns that sprawl out like pastoral landscapes, “Mysteries of Lisbon” magically sustains its intrigue throughout. (So much so that I'm envious of an even longer version set to appear on Portuguese TV.) It's a kaleidoscopic dream of a film, with young João at its center—an orphan plagued with not knowing the identity of his mother and father. João's personal mystery is the catalyst that sets the narrative in motion, spawning one character after another and their individual tapestries of misfortune and mystery. Father Dinis is one of these characters, a messiah-like figure who turns out to be something of a master of disguise. Dinis is mentor, teacher, caretaker and savior, not only to João but (if you are to believe the implications of this story) to many others as well. He's also our narrator, and his vocal intonation carries the secrecy and scandal implicit in this story—you never have to look far beyond the frame for a symbolic gaggle of eavesdroppers or peeping toms. It's one of many story-telling devices; there's also a handmade miniature stage for puppets, a prized possession of João’s and a means for creating clever visual interludes. Ruiz, 69-years old and reportedly in poor health, has outwardly admitted that “Mysteries of Lisbon” may be his last film. In this context, one can’t help but see its final scenes as a personal statement from Ruiz. Finality, a harsh sever between film and audience, is announced with yet another mystery, this one more metaphysical, resting on the conscience of the viewer.

Leap Year / Michael Rowe

Michael Rowe’s “Leap Year” is the bravest film I saw at VIFF, and also one of the toughest. Watching a young, emotionally placid woman subject herself to untold degradation is divisive, disconcerting and understandably not everyone’s cup of tea. But Rowe, a Mexican transplant via Australia, orchestrates an austere character study with one of the most fearless performances I've ever seen. Laura is a young freelance writer whose solitude is punctuated by one night stands. As the film opens, she turns her calendar to February and colors the 29th day in red. Her past is at this point unknown to us, but her activities seem to anticipate the elusive date of the film's title. Laura also carries with her a strange confidence and complacency toward her somewhat oppressive isolation. It's only when she meets Arturo—a man of sadistic verve—that her damaged but dominant psyche is exposed. The path that “Leap Year” starts to travel down is horrifying, but allows for complex ruminations that rarely grace the screen. Laura’s character challenges the meanings of terms like "victim" and "survivor" by seizing a perverse control over her own fate. Rowe is careful not to tip his hand, allowing Laura to define herself through her unpredictable actions. Shot entirely within the confines of Laura’s apartment, the film has an alarming intimacy that intensifies its feelings of claustrophobia. There's no escape from our curiosity or our dread. A likely successor to Breillat-like bravado, Rowe defies both his gender and nationality through uncommon sympathy and tough love of the most unsettling kind.

The Sleeping Beauty / Catherine Breillat

Catherine Breillat tackles her second fairytale in as many years with surreal and abstract panache. While her previous film, “Bluebeard,” wore its sinister connotations on its sleeve, “The Sleeping Beauty” is more sublimely whimsical. Coming at this film with only Disney as your context isn't going to help anyone; even full knowledge of Charles Perrault's original tale may not help to navigate Breillat's obscure intentions. Lavishly detailed but highly deviant, “The Sleeping Beauty” is a conceptual minefield that will leave few interested in traversing it more than once. As in the original text, Breillat portrays a young princess with a cursed destiny to fall into a 100-year slumber. But the film parts ways with Perrault’s text when Breillat begins to freely improvise a surreal world that feels merely inspired by the fairytale, not faithful to it. The film opens with the abrupt cut of an umbilical cord (the first of three I witnessed at VIFF), and quickly juxtaposes this with three nude vixens playing in a pool of water (a sequence that could only be crafted by Breillat). The fate of princess Anastasia is decided the moment she impales her hand on a spindle: she falls into a deep sleep, which bleeds into a mythical dreamworld. Anastasia’s often elusive journey is either a rite of passage or simply the product of a young girl’s imagination. The film makes use of the innate charms and charisma of Carla Besainou, the actress who plays the young Anastasia and whom also played one of the sisters in “Bluebeard.” Her presence is delicately tied together with some striking images, especially one in which she rides a deer through a snowy landscape. Unfortunately, the meaning of all this is confounding and tedious, and the story too ambiguous. Fairytales, and their perverse subtexts, seem the perfect match for Breillat's socio-sexual themes, but this one is too drawn out, even for this fan.

Heartbeats / Xavier Dolan

Xavier Dolan emerges from his Cannes wunderkind spacesuit to reveal he’s no rocket scientist, but just another up-and-coming filmmaker. “Heartbeats,” his sophomore effort, is both incredibly self-assured and painfully self-conscious, buckling under the enormous weight of its superficiality. Best friends Francis (Dolan) and Marie platonically fall for the Dionysian Nicolas from across the room. Denying their feelings to each other, they both attempt to cultivate a friendship with the aloof Nicolas, risking their own. “Heartbeats”—with its perfect hair, smart outfits and cooler-than-thou soundtrack—aims to swoon, and it may have won me were it not for the absence of sincere affection. The only hints of passion-beyond-preening are portrayed through oblique portrayals of mornings-after and a desperate but honest fit of masturbation. The tenderest moment in the film is when Francis and Marie fly into a catfight, like a necessary mutual catharsis for their frustration and regret—and the first and only glimpse of honesty behind the characters’ composed façades. The pains of being pure at heart are written in code with little or no substance to decipher them with. Rejection and heartbreak linger but with little gravity. Dolan’s camera, however, certainly doesn’t shy away from intimacy, leaving me not only with a lasting impression of the shape of Francis’s neck and the curve of Marie’s hips, but also with glimpses of their more mortal qualities, such as chewed fingernails and clotted mascara. Dolan undersells his generation as shallow scenesters looking for love in all the wrong places, but chances are he doesn’t want to be a generational spokesman. “Heartbeats” is a portrait of the fragile and the fashionable where, for better and for worse, beauty and infatuation truly only runs skin-deep.

Feature By:
Kathie Smith