Festival Coverage - Toronto 09
![Feature by Sam C. Mac & Luke Gorham: This is my third year (Luke’s second) attending the Toronto International Film Festival, and though the other majors have various things going for them (the overwhelming prestige of Cannes, Tribeca’s...well, I’m sure it’s got something), to me Toronto is the big one, and the one I always look forward to the most. Once you get your tickets (and make it past the “lottery” stage which thoroughly screwed over Luke this year, as any gambling proposition can) and make all the necessary reservations (flight expenses were way down this year, so cheers to that), navigating the festival is relatively easy, and its organization certainly impresses me more than *sigh* that of Tribeca.
More importantly, Toronto almost always has a great lineup: Cannes may trot out enough high-profile names each year to make the paparazzi say grazie, but Toronto grabs only the best from that group, and adds to their schedule a host of films not completed at the time Cannes entries are due. To me, the most exciting name on that list this year is Claire Denis, whose latest film has had Venice-bound journalists like Guy Lodge calling it a “masterpiece.” Not necessarily a surprise since Denis already has one of those and two that are close enough. This will be the French auteur’s second film at the festival in as many years, a distinction she shares with (among others) Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose odd-sounding Cannes carryover “Air Doll” premiered on the Croisette less than 12 months after his “Still Walking” had its premiere in Toronto.
Then there’s the bigger, awards-baiting stuff which will certainly get the lion's share of blog coverage; this year that includes Jason Reitman's latest, slick-talking seriocomic George Clooney vehicle "Up in the Air" (already getting raves out of Telluride, so probably not one to sneeze at), more Clooney action in "The Men Who Stare At Goats," and that poor, unfortunate and much delayed Harvey Weinstein acquisition "The Road," which hasn't faired as well with critics in Venice as Weinstein probably hoped it would. Speaking of Cormac McCarthy adaptations, the Coen Brothers have a new film in Toronto too, which is perhaps a bit more anticipated than “Burn After Reading” was this time last year. However, both Luke and I are missing that one because a.) it opens not too long after we get back, and we like to see things that don't; and b.) Toronto denied us a ticket (damn lottery), as they did to the latest Pedro Almodóvar as well, which I'm destined to miss just as I did in Cannes.
Obviously there are more Oscar hopefuls, some less hopeful than others I would assume, and some so far under-the-radar (comparatively) that it will take an audience award and we-are-the-world schmaltz to propel them to a Best Picture victory. Y'know, like that Bollywood movie that wasn't a Bollywood movie. In any case, there's no denying the bearing Toronto has on the awards race, so if you happen to be interested in that kind of thing, prick up your ears and read along. --Sam C. Mac
Note: As per usual, we’ve teamed with Rodrigo Perez and The Playlist to bring you our combined coverage of the festival. So for more on the happenings in Toronto, including Rodrigo’s festival daily and news as we hear about it, be sure to check out The Playlist.

ENTER THE VOID (Gaspar Noe)
In retrospect, it seems that Gaspar Noe's unwieldy and tripped-out epic "Enter the Void" may have caused more of a stir at Cannes (instead of just off-handed dismissal) had it premiered before Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist." By the time 'Void' lumbered onto the screen at the tail end of Cannes, the aborted fetuses, excessive drug use, endless, explicit sex (including one scene made to look like it was filmed inside a vagina) and ambient visual passages akin to those in the Von Trier provocation, may have had less impact due to collective numbness.
Or maybe the journalists were all just sick of being shocked, having kicked up enough dust over the genital mutilation and bloody ejaculations in "Antichrist" to hold them over for the next few festivals, let alone bother storming about this new film nobody much liked anyway. There's another explanation though: "Antichrist" runs under two hours, one of the shorter films in competition at Cannes this year, while "Enter the Void" is a monstrous, near-three hour odyssey that saves the really disturbing stuff for its back nine – when half its audience has already walked out.
It's such a challenging and structurally rigorous work (if also formless and plodding) that one almost has to admire both Noe's audacity and his commitment. But what begins as a "Memento"-esque rewind narrative, leading to a seemingly perfect point of conclusion, trucks on into tedium for over an hour more, eventually descending into dime store David Lynch mind-fuckery, only to reveal its vaguely redeemable ends. It's a roller-coaster ride – both because the camera swoops, dives and pirouettes, and because there's an actual roller-coaster in the film – but any kind of tension or even attention it hopes to hold is nullified by Noe's own persistence and an infuriating (even ingratiating) sense that the director is sitting behind the screen, dropping LSD and whispering to himself, 'Hold on guys, I'm getting to the point.'
"Enter the Void" revolves completely around a skin-headed 20-something drug dealer named Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), whose perspective the film is told from both before and after the young man's death (hold on a tick). Following a barrage of neon-lit credits flashing furiously against a black screen (epileptics, beware) we see, through Oscar's eyes ("Diving Bell and the Butterfly"-style), his sister, leaning over a balcony overlooking a bustling Tokyo street. She is Lisa, played by "The Limits of Control's" nude temptress Paz De La Huerta, and she's warning her brother about the dangers of his drug habit. Oscar ignores her concern however, and after she leaves smokes up. It's at this point – that is, if the first person POV wasn't enough – that we come to realize what a trip we're headed on, as Noe makes manifest Oscar's drug-induced haze through MacBook screensaver-worthy visuals of twisting, rainbow-colored strands weaving and wiggling through darkness. This is also the first hint that Noe kinda sorta maybe doesn't mind taking his time a bit.
Oscar is jolted out of his dreamscape by a phone call commanding him to bring some of his drug stash to a local club, The Void, and then interrupted again by a knock at the door from his friend Alex (Cyril Roy). In the film's most grounded and literal passage, Oscar and Alex walk the stretch of road from the former's apartment to The Void; and along the way Noe plants hints and plot details pertaining to the lives of Oscar and Lisa (and to the director's own thematic intents) that will later be referenced again and again, as the film transitions to a more elliptical structure. But first, inside The Void, Oscar discovers that the man on the phone set him up, and as the cops rush him, Oscar ducks into a bathroom to flush his gear. When he realizes the toilet's busted, he yells to the cops, who are aggressively pounding on the door, that he has a gun, to which one of the officers responds by shooting and killing Oscar.
Then things get weird. Noe slowly – oh so very slowly – establishes the process of Oscar's soul leaving his body just as the camera breaks free of Oscar's POV. His soul travels through walls and down the street to where Lisa does striptease in a club, following her as she heads back stage and has sex with her Japanese boss, Mario (Masato Tanno). Meanwhile, outside The Void Alex has been waiting for Oscar to finish his dealings, and when he discovers he's been shot and killed by the police, he calls Lisa to tell her the bad news. Oscar watches silently from above as his sister cries hysterically. Then, with one swift motion, he dives headlong (the camera with him) into the glowing red surface of a lamp.
Pause and rewind. Noe sets his spiritual journeyman on an odyssey through his own life, from infancy to the present. It's here that Noe turns in his best work, effectively humanizing his characters and providing context for Oscar's death. He makes a curious accident into something of a tragedy, and even establishes a touching, almost harrowing relationship between Oscar and Lisa, two children who lost their parents in a devastating car wreck (here depicted as abrasive and haunting as a similar sequence in Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro," and just as impacting on the life of its protagonist). Noe intricately weaves the relationships as they develop between each of the principal characters and believably depicts Oscar's descent into the underworld of Tokyo's drug scene. Most crucially, the director establishes the necessary role Oscar's chosen path had in reuniting him with his sister after years of living in separate foster homes.
There's a point in "Enter the Void" where the narrative folds back on itself, where we find Oscar and Lisa back on that balcony, her warning about his addiction resonating more now than it did earlier, since we know what comes next. Noe could end his film here, and though it would still have its flaws and dragging moments, it would seem a more successful than unsuccessful experiment in elliptical storytelling – albeit with added abstract-psychedelic verve. Instead, Noe persists, and 'Void' goes from being an uneven curiosity to a train wreck of a train wreck, an indulgent mess of simulated camera movement as our view zooms in and out through surfaces, acting like one of those MTV videos where you see a TV set on a TV set on a TV set. The filmmaker does have a goal, as he makes explicit in the “Enter the Void's” final moments; and probably before that too, but I wasn't all there in the last hour. Still, Noe pushes and pushes for us to give up on his film, as it follows one strange, ill-informed tangent after another. And, eventually, we do just that. [The Playlist] –Sam C. Mac
THE SUNSHINE BOY (Fridrik Thor Fridriksson)
I take no pleasure in tearing down a documentary that so obviously benefited everyone involved and could substantially promote awareness. But Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's "The Sunshine Boy," about one mother's exploration of autism, its effects and her intention to help her own developmentally challenged son, simply doesn't hold up as good cinema. Fridriksson is from Iceland, and that being the case, he's enlisted the alien choral wails of Sigur Ros (and the groan-inducing obviousness of Bjork's "Human Behavior") to flood through the soundtrack and score overwrought scenes of a family traversing the gorgeous Icelandic countryside, peeking into caves and over cliffs at the abyss of darkness below, heavy-handedly suggesting the family's own uncertain future. The artifice in moments like these is only enforced by the filmmaker's decision to overdub the aforementioned mother, Margaret, with the voice of Kate Winslet, even as Margaret travels to the United States and clearly engages in English language conversations. This is in keeping with Fredriksson's decision to have Winslet provide a narration, also a dubious choice since said narration is scripted from Margaret's perspective. All this is in the service of bringing in a larger audience, as the director put it, and though that's understandable, it does give the film an awkward vibe, as it essentially lacks Margaret's personality, and thus her journey is harder to engage with. Also, don't forget that this is a documentary; bringing in the big numbers is an unlikely goal no matter how many Academy Award winning voices you recruit – at least unless the film being made has to do with polar bears or penguins or something. [The Playlist] –Sam C. Mac
AIR DOLL (Hirokazu Koreeda)
Hirokazu Koreeda’s seventh feature is a more sociological and psychological (not to mention fantastical) spin on recent hit “Lars and the Real Girl,” centering on the titular sex toy who, in her words, “found a heart.” What may at first appear to be a slightly bizarre dramedy becomes much more as Koreeda employs his deft craft. Both whimsical and bleak, “Air Doll” explores the emptiness and disconnect that more and more frequently seem to define our lives in an increasingly globalized and technologically-driven world. Nozomi (played by Du-Na Bae), the titular near-human, acts as the heart of the film. She is the thread that connects the despairing lives of a handful of peripheral characters, exploring the heartaches, hang-ups and helplessness that too often lead us toward an isolated existence. However, Koreeda’s film is also hopeful, a feat accomplished by infusing its considerable emotional heft with a buoyant and fanciful sense of humor that culminates in a mostly enchanting tone. The film’s best moments come when Nozomi is reunited with her birth father of sorts, a wonderful couple of scenes that run the gamut of emotional extremes with minimal dialogue and screen time. Although the film’s penchant towards the overly cutesy is sometimes a tonal hindrance, as is its long-windedness at various points in Nozomi’s development, Koreeda’s wonderful, breezy direction as well as his creative insight and a fantastic lead performance by Bae turn “Air Doll” into a strangely compelling charmer; a film built upon despondent themes that still manages to elate even the most sensitive souls out there. [The Playlist] –Luke Gorham
BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (Werner Herzog)
MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE (Werner Herzog)
Never let it be said that Werner Herzog isn't ambitious. He's pulled boats over mountains ("Fitzcarraldo"), documented his exploration of every kind of environment imaginable (see: the contrast between his documentaries "The White Diamond" and "Encounters at the End of the World," just for one example) and somehow made me not hate Christian Bale ("Rescue Dawn"). Now, he's challenged us all again, dropping two bizarre concoctions of comedy and violence during the course of one film festival. Both attempt to defy expectation: "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" looks to utilize the deadpan humor and quiet intensity of star Nicolas Cage in a way few director's have, while "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done" (no question mark, curiously) teams the veteran German master with Producer David Lynch, and looks to channel the off-kilter melodrama and psychological-horror of the latter's most elusive films.
'Bad Lieutenant' succeeds brilliantly, offering not only Cage's stellar performance (quite possibly the best the actor has given, as Herzog has said), but also a dynamite script that revels in coal-black humor and tempers its nihilism with just enough sincerity and emotion to give the picture a surprising gravity. This manifests in the relationship between coke snorting, hard drinking Lieutenant Terrence McDonagh (Cage) and his "pros" [prostitute] girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes). Terrence deprives old women of their oxygen tubes and blackmails athletes to throw games so he can rig bets with his bookie, but when it comes to Frankie, Terrence is nothing less than loving, and Herzog gives the two a moment (reportedly not in the original screenplay) that is so loopy and lovesick it almost doesn't work. But it does. Likewise the picture's titular setting, and its reputation as the birthplace of jazz, which lends itself to Herzog's willingness to let his actors improvise and "riff," a process which yields some of the film's most indelible moments ("You're the reason this country is going down the drain!" an angry Cage ad-libs, yelling at a pair of elderly citizens). The end result is more akin to "L.A. Confidential" on mescaline than the Abel Ferrara film of which this shares a name and a predilection toward law-busting cops, but really nothing more. Instead, if it's not a wholly original work, it's a wholly original work in the oeuvre of Herzog, and one of the flat-out funniest films at Toronto this year.
Unfortunately, Herzog breaks his streak with 'My Son,' which plays like a parody of a David Lynch film; it has many Lynchian characteristics in tone and performance, but with Herzog's own fascination with nature as an added conflict, here regarding a young man's decent into madness and paranoia. Sounds pretty great from that description, but I assure you it's not, and in fact with this pedigree and considering what mess this is, 'My Son' should probably be considered the biggest disappointment of the festival this year. It's all intriguing in theory: Two cops (Willem Dafoe, Michael Peña) negotiate a possible hostage situation when Brad (Michael Shannon, crazier than in "Revolutionary Road" but not quite as delirious as he was in "Bug") kills his mother (the immortal Grace Zabriskie) with a sword during morning coffee at the neighbor's, and then holes up in his pink house, barking orders for pizza and proclaiming he's keeping company with God from behind drawn shutters. The film also features Chloë Sevigny and Udo Kier as Brad's fiance and former theater director, respectively, who tell the cops of Brad's inexplicable behavior, originating when he returned from a fated kayaking trip in Peru. But instead of getting an unhinged, down-the-rabbit-hole experiment like "Inland Empire," we get a flashback-heavy melodrama (haphazardly linked to the Greek tragedy "Orestes," discussed and rehearsed for during the film) that plays like a tamer, stilted and altogether less coherent take on "Blue Velvet's" suburban madness. There's lots of ideas here, and maybe some of them will stick more on a second viewing, but so much of this is just poorly acted and scripted that it can't be seen as anything less than a misstep in the career of a great and ambitious filmmaker. [The Playlist] –Sam C. Mac
MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS (Grant Heslov)
The debut feature from George Clooney’s writing and producing partner Grant Heslov is one of the unexpected triumphs at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. "The Men Who Stare At Goats" stars George Clooney and Ewan McGregor, along with Jeff Bridges and the eternally sour Kevin Spacey, and is an uproarious, ludicrous and unforgettable bizzaro comedy about a special psychic ops branch of the US Army. The division has been disbanded, and Clooney plays one of its former all-stars; a self-titled "Jedi warrior" who may have caused his team's collapse. McGregor, meanwhile, flexes his comedic chops as the journalist who uncovers this strange story. The film delivers some of the most gut-busting and consistent laughs since “Bad Santa,” and carries a bit of that film's memorable self-deprecation. It also provides us with a much needed reminder that Judd Apatow isn’t the only one making Hollywood-approved comedies that can put us in hysterics, even if no one probably would have guessed such a film would come from the co-writer of "Good Night, and Good Luck." Thankfully, any sort of Iraqi war commentary or seemingly obligatory insight on today’s global climate is discarded in favor of pure absurdist entertainment, much more on par with the Coen brothers’ style. And if for no other reason, the film is worth seeing for Clooney’s ballsy, ego-free performance, reminding us that he's as much a chameleonic actor as he is a movie star. [The Playlist] –Luke Gorham
ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLOND HAIR GIRL (Manoel de Oliveira)
"Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl," 100 year-old Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira's latest and quite likely last directorial effort (how much work do you think you'll be doing following your first centennial?), unfurls briskly and delicately, like a great short story, over the course of an economic 64 minute runtime during which not a frame is wasted and each sequence is impeccably composed and choreographed. The film is adapted from a short story of the same name by 19th century realist author Eca de Queiroz ("The Crime of Padre Amaro"), and is considered by Oliveira to be an homage to the writer, updating the material to present day, but composing the film in a very classical way, with Oliveira's trademark long takes and minimalist plotting.
The film begins on a train, as young and handsome Macario (Ricardo Trepa) engages in a conversation with the woman sitting to his right. He tells her of his life as an accountant, working at his father's clothing store, and of the titular blond, Luisa (Caterina Wallenstein), who beguiled him with her exotic Chinese fan as she sat temptingly in the window adjacent to his own. In the story, it takes a mutual friend to finally introduce Macario to Luisa who, it turns out, returns his affection. They meet at a party, where a man recites a poem and his words will resonate throughout 'Eccentricities.' His verse concerns a man of virtue, who wants only what he needs and knows that to desire more is to be unhappy. Shortly after the party, Macario decides to wed Luisa, but when his uncle gives him an ultimatum – stay single, or lose your job and home – Macario chooses his lover, and must look for work elsewhere; and when he's unable to find any, he becomes impoverished and too ashamed to ask for Luisa's hand. Finally, Macario is offered an undisclosed assignment in Cape Verde, where he's promised he can make a small fortune. That's roughly 40 minutes of the film's 64. The last 20 or so brings some surprises and while revealing them certainly wouldn't ruin the film, to experience 'Eccentricities' unexpected conclusion and utterly haunting, soon-to-be-legendary final shot yourself is something I wouldn't deprive you of.
Leave it to a director from another era to so well capture ours; this socioeconomic fable is so in tune with the current global climate that it's a wonder it seems so vintage. Oliveira is able to infuse class tension and the pressures of familial expectation, themes very much linked to his own generation, and modernize them, finding the role they play today. Further, he bests Jason Reitman's similarly themed Toronto favorite "Up in the Air," which uses the slimming job market largely as window-dressing for its otherwise straightforward rom-com template. Here, Oliveira gives his commentaries a weight visible in the characters eyes, the weight of financial instability and the gravity of its consequences. It's no wonder why Oliveira is so revered among devoted arthouse audiences, and though that's party because of his status as the only living filmmaker from the silent era, the less novel reason is that he's a disciplined and intelligent formalist who deserves to be mentioned with Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette as one of the last living masters of their era. His latest is one of his best that I’ve seen, and my favorite film at this year’s festival. [The Playlist] –Sam C. Mac
CHLOE (Atom Egoyan)
Canadian Atom Egoyan’s latest, the Toronto set “Chloe,” unsurprisingly generated a smattering of applause and roughly two-thirds of a standing ovation. The remaining third must be determined cinephiles or born-and-bred Yankees like myself, who recognize "Chloe" as one of the worst films at this festival. Tonally, it resembles an arthouse adaptation of a trashy dime novel romance, starring Julianne Moore as an unhappy and paranoid housewife whose once vibrant marriage has considerably chilled. After her latest bout of mistrust causes her to hire the titular escort (Amanda Seyfried) to attempt to seduce her supposedly philandering hunk of a husband (Liam Neeson), things escalate quickly with unexpected and damaging familial consequences. Reminiscent of Richard Eyre's arthouse wannabe "The Other Man," which premiered in Toronto last year, “Chloe” uses its directorial restraint to engage us at first, but delivers nothing. The final third completely devolves into the typical stalker-thriller territory of the many “Basic Instinct” knock-offs, conveniently utilizing the psychotic character as catalyst for the events that take place. And while Julianne Moore is quite good in her role, and Amanda Seyfried is effectively sexy (Liam Neeson is so inconsequential it's hardly worth mentioning), the most arresting scene for many will be a lesbian make-out which, somewhat understandably, will be enough for some. Not for me though. [The Playlist] –Luke Gorham
THE DAMNED UNITED (Tom Hooper)
Essentially a love letter to England’s grand soccer tradition and one of the most exciting period’s in the sport’s past century, “The Damned United” is a minor film, but nonetheless a solid one of its genre. Unassuming and minimalist in scope, it follows promising young manager Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) during his six week stint with then-worldclass soccer team Leeds United. And although its celebration of the sport and England’s dominance at the time will attract many to the film, “The Damned United” works much better as a character study. Its central theme – the distortion of ones character as a repercussion of fame – may be familiar to this genre, but Sheen’s performance and the film's consistently witty and humorous script help to generate enthusiasm and translate the excitement the characters feel to the audience. “The Damned United” charges forward with the same intensity and heart of a great soccer match, and while the film can become derivative and predictable at times, it's nonetheless an enjoyable, unpretentious celebration of the sport and its fandom. Profound? No. Good, inspiring fun? Absolutely. [The Playlist] –Luke Gorham
SOUL KITCHEN (Faith Akin)
Turkish/German filmmaker Fatih Akin is quickly becoming one of the fastest rising international auteurs out there and at the age of 36, is already amassing an excellent body of work. His nihilistic love story "Head On" is thoroughly charged and last year's penetrating and powerful Kieslowski-esque chance and fate drama "The Edge of Heaven" is one of that year's best. Akin's been around for years and made his first feature back in 1998, but has only slowly been gaining worldwide recognition. "Soul Kitchen" is his 6th feature-length film, but the prolific director is always cranking out short films, documentaries, vignettes and he even acts on occasion. This fall we'll also see one of this shorts in the omnibus film, "New York I Love You." But, with "Soul Kitchen," which stars notable German actors Moritz Bleibtreu ("Run Lola Run"), Birol Ünel ("Head On") and Adam Bousdoukos, Akin takes a breather from his heavy dramas and goes for a lighter, ensemble-driven comedy about a restaurant owner. "Soul Kitchen" has a diverting, winning premise – a bungled restaurant between brothers, friends and lovers – and starts out very auspiciously, but slowly devolves into silly, near cornball laughs and even a few odd moments of ill-conceived slapstick in between scenes of real, poignant drama. Tonally challenged would be too harsh, but slightly confused in tenor is not far off.
Adam Bousdoukos plays Zinos, a well-meaning, but flaky and underachieving German Turk who can't get his shit together. He makes ends meet with his makeshift, dingy, seat-of-its-pants restaurant, built in a health-inspection code nightmare of a warehouse. The restaurateur also doubles as chef of what is essentially glorified bar food, but the hip music, house party hangout vibe and atmosphere keep the clientele happy and Zinos in business. However there must be zaniness in order to challenge the protagonist, no? And it rains down on him fairly predictably; you can pretty much time your watch to its beats. Trouble comes in many forms: an impatient girlfriend (Pheline Roggan) who, sick of Zino's ineffective business sense, takes off to Hong Kong for six months, a random bad back accident that prompts the need for a real chef (weak plotting to be sure), a jailbird brother on a Euro-lenient work release program (an excellent Moritz Bleibtreu), prying health inspectors and an oily Aryan businessman (seemingly from the Hitler youth brigade) eyeing the land. These surmounting obstacles, plus an impossibly difficult new chef who only wants to cook frou frou food much to the chagrin of the culturally bereft laymen, add up in calculable fashion.
Yet, for the first 45 minutes (even an hour), the picture is largely enjoyable and amusing, if a bit of a trifle. The bond between Zinos and his hooligan, hustler brother is heartfelt and genuine and the budding romance that springs between the semi-ex-con and the "Soul Kitchen" waitress (the beautiful Anna Bederke) is an endearing. But the construction seems at odds with itself. The dramatic moments, perhaps where Akin feels most at home, feel and read very natural and affecting, the actors are solid in these zones though perhaps a little one dimensional at times (mostly the fussy chef played by "Head On" star Birol Ünel). Yet the comedy, especially in the second half, just disagrees with those who don't want to see buffoonery. One particular madcap-y funeral scene is just egregious and sticks out like an eyesore in a film that is, otherwise, mostly capable up to that point. The last third especially goes far too loosey-goosey, and the sweet mood just curdles cloyingly.
Its strange to think this picture recently won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival, but it does have a distinct crowd-pleasing element (and the Toronto crowd ate up every little soufflé-deep moment). Akin's film does successfully straddle the line between pandering feel good and celebratory joyfulness — at first anyhow. But as the picture progresses it becomes increasingly ingratiating and erratic in tone, practically fumbling into screwball comedy that just doesn't work alongside the more solemn moments. A bit of a shame considering the great cast of characters and the affable, likable initial pitch, not to mention the breath of fresh air a comedy brings to Akin's sometimes soul-draining, existential dramas, but this simpatico picture veers off wildly, taking you out of the moments that do feel initially believable. There is, however, an excellent, tastefully curated soul-funk soundtrack throughout, but enjoyable cuts from Kool and the Gang, Quincy Jones and Curtis Mayfield can't salvage this uneven picture. Comedy is all about timing and calibration and perhaps a dramedy with less disorderly humor might have served this filmmaker a little better. [The Playlist] –Rodrigo Perez
A SINGLE MAN (Tom Ford)
The buzz is clearly humming loudly behind Tom Ford's deeply engaging, visually exquisite and emotionally rich "A Single Man" – and for good reason. If there was an Oscar category for Best First Feature, Ford, the fashion magnate/Gucci director turned filmmaker, would easily be a shoo-in. For now though, the director will have to be content with The Weinstein Company going whole hog during Oscar season: step aside campaigns are likely in the cards for 'Inglourious,' "The Road," "Nowhere Boy," and possibly even "Nine," which is being rumored as a potential film bumped into 2010. "A Single Man" is the Weinsteins' real Oscar meal ticket, and it'll be interesting to see if/when these other pictures get neglected by the reportedly cash-strapped company (seriously, if "Nine" is pushed back to next year this is essentially telling us Ford's picture is way better).
The expressive, immaculately shot and impeccably well-groomed film (Tom Ford is here for a reason; the costuming, set design and camerawork is the the epitome of detail and precision) stars Colin Firth as George, an English professor who desperately struggles to get on with life in early '60s Los Angeles after the sudden death of his life partner, Jim (Matthew Goode). Julianne Moore plays Charlotte, George's booze-sozzled, pill-popping and depressed neighbor/best friend, even ex-lover from his younger, confused days in London when he thought he might be straight (or, like many closeted young men, tried to be straight). One could go on all day about the stylishness and the aesthetics of this striking and tragic picture – a lyrical and allusive quality sometimes reminiscent of "The Diving Bell & The Butterfly" – but, in a sense, to do so would be a disservice to the wonderful actors: the incredible performances Ford coaches out of everyone (Firth has never been this commanding and spectacular) and the deep emotional gravitas seemingly effortlessly channeled by the director. It's an adapted story from a Christopher Isherwood novel, but it bleeds genuine anguish from loss and quietly devastated sadness. Perhaps these emotions and feelings are all too universal and this is why the picture is such a bold knock-out.
Firth's George lives in his pallid, ashen world of depression and mourning, the blood from his cheeks seemingly evaporated with the death of his longtime love. The teacher attempts to sleepwalk through the day, lecturing like a hollow, sullen ghost in his classes, but all he can do is barely manage, sometimes with the aid of alcohol. While not flashback-burdened, the past is used as a framing device for George to reminisce and daydream about his lover, yet every instance feels genuine with white-hot verisimilitude and of course always looks like a dream sequence – lovely. Firth's vacant and steely facade belies the quivering heartache that lies beneath and the way he subtly conveys his soul-crushing hurt is masterful – his deeply felt yet near subterranean heartbreak is devastating.
Ford has worked with the world's greatest photographers – Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts – and it shows; the texture-rich lensing by Spanish cinematographer Eduard Grau is incredible, deftly using color, contour and well-defined camera arrangement, further underscoring the somber, but never dour tenor. Likewise Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski's score must be given high plaudits; it's gorgeous, heartrending and hopefully will earn him as well an Oscar nomination. I've never really cared for Colin Firth before – he always seemed able and serviceable, but nothing more – yet Oscar and awards surely await his near future, because he is terrific in every moment onscreen.
Homophobes shouldn't worry either; though Ford does capture the chiseled male form in flawless and admirable beauty, the ultimately life-affirming picture is largely chaste and benign in terms of sex scenes. What he does express elegantly and hungrily is masculine desire and lust, and it is really something to watch. While the closeted themes might draw some comparisons to Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls," and there are some vague similarities, "A Single Man" is largely its own film with its own distinct voice. The identity issues are never about conflict. George, while closeted, only does so out of the concern for the fear and intolerance of others, but he is acutely aware of who he is. At the end of the day, if you've ever deeply longed for someone, straight, gay or otherwise, "A Single Man," should prove to be penetrating and immensely moving. It's an extraordinary first film and a thing of beauty. [The Playlist] –Rodrigo Perez
GET LOW (Aaron Schneider)
Hollywood adolescent Aaron Schneider’s debut feature, “Get Low,” is a throwback to the classical character driven frontier dramas of Hollywood’s golden age. It stars Robert Duvall as Felix Bush, a backwoods recluse who finally reenters society in his twilight years to plan a funeral party for himself – while he’s still alive. A feared man who has generated more disquieting rumors than actual truths during his seclusion, Bush’s goal in this undertaking is for everyone with a story to tell to gather ‘round and share it. Whenever a local admits to having heard a story about him, Bush replies, with a demand rather than a request, “Like what?” While his aims are clear, his motivations are a slowly unraveling puzzle of secrets, lies and unrevealed guilt. Duvall is strong as always, completely transforming into his character as only a handful of working actors can. Surprising here, however, is Bill Murray’s turn as a money-motivated funeral director struggling between his untapped humanism and his pecuniary pursuits, fulfilling the requisite role of the morally ambiguous ally to the protagonist. And while the film at times suffers from the predictable tropes of the traditional redemptive tale, the earnestness of the young filmmaker, the committed performances of the exceptional cast (including Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black), and the purity of the heartfelt story make for a crowd-pleasing and solid, if unexceptional film. [The Playlist] –Luke Gorham
DOGTOOTH (Giorgos Lanthimos)
A stark and unsettling mixture of physical violence and mental abuse, Greek filmmaker Giorgos Lanthimos' "Dogtooth" is one of the most striking and memorable features at this year's Toronto Film Festival. The sinewy concoction of impressionistic visuals and austere formalism makes for astonishingly assured cinema, especially surprising considering this is a very new director, with only two prior, lesser known features to his name.
The craft is near-flawless here, but it's the provocative subject matter that makes "Dogtooth" really impressive: A study in perverse domesticity, Lanthimos depicts a married couple with three young-adult children (one boy, two girls) and their struggle to keep their family sheltered from the outside world. Their property is surrounded by a tall wooden fence and only the father is allowed to venture outside each day for work, regaling his children with made-up stories about the dangers that lurk beyond the borders of their home.
But the parents' aim is less one of protection and more a social experiment: can they raise slavishly obedient children by limiting their worldview and assuring they only learn what their parents' want them too? Scheduled exercise sessions are encouraged, as is a strong sense of competition – the opening scene of the film introduces us to the children as they test their individual endurance under a faucet running hot water – and reward good behavior with stickers, with which the children decorate the backboards of their beds and further compete to see who can earn the most.
The only outside intrusion the family allows manifests in the form of a woman hired to sex-up the son, and it's this chink in the the family's armor that ends up opening the flood gates to knowledge and material from the outside world. The woman gifts the eldest girl of the family with headbands, specialized shampoo and finally video cassettes in exchange for sexual favors. And when the parents find out about this, they retaliate with strict disciplinary action: the father discovers the video of "Rocky" his daughter has been watching after she recites endless quotes from the film, and when he does he duct tapes the cassette to his hand and beats the girl with it until it splinters into pieces.
"Dogtooth" puts to shame similar, far more manipulative studies in domestic violence like Austrian conversion-starter Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" (doesn't matter which version), by putting the violence onscreen and allowing us to judge it and respond to it in whatever way is natural to us. Will we be entertained by it (there were audible chuckles in the audience during some of the more excruciating moments)? Will it provoke Janet Maslin-worthy trips to the bathroom to cope? Or will over-eager journalists decry it as nothing more than nihilistic and perverse? Lanthimos acknowledges that's beyond his control and up to the individual to decide.
Crucially, the director doesn't play anything here for laughs, nor does he temper the tone with an oppressive and stylized stoicism, as found in a film like Carlos Reygadas' "Silent Light." "Dogtooth" has the same kind of raw and uncompromising realism of Catherine Breillat's "Fat Girl" or Bruno Dumont's "Twentynine Palms." In fact, the only thing keeping the Greek filmmaker's achievement from the high-mark set by those two films is its somewhat anti-climactic ending. Whereas as both Breillat's and Dumont's films build upon a steadily mounting tension to a sort-of provocatively cathartic release of abrasive brutality, "Dogtooth" – forgive me for this – ends with a whimper when it should bark.
However, perhaps my reaction to Lanthimos' somewhat ambiguous conclusion is itself something that should be looked at as the response of one individual. My desire for a more jolting end has in effect caused me to reflect on those expectations with the same kind of personal examination Haneke hopes to provoke. So it's yet another virtue of the film that it can cause such analytical thinking about a person's reactions to violence without the manipulation usually necessary to facilitate it. [The Playlist] –Sam C. Mac
BROKEN EMBRACES (Pedro Almodóvar)
The weakest of Pedro Almodóvar's four films this decade, the oddly muted melodrama "Broken Embraces" is also something no other work from the Spanish master has ever been: it's frankly kind of a slog. The story pivots around two parallel plots that will of course eventually run together and form a pretty underwhelming 'big reveal' in the last act that doesn't carry half the emotional weight one has to believe Almodóvar thinks it does.
The first story is set in 2008, and concerns a blind screenwriter who goes by the pseudonym Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), and who's visited by a young gay man who wishes to coauthor a screenplay with him. When Harry refuses, his agent and ex-lover Judit (Blanca Portillo) pries, and discovers that the man is someone from both their pasts. Soon, Judit's son Diego (Tamar Novas) is victim to an unfortunate accident at the club he DJs at and he convinces Harry, whom he treats like a father, to go into more detail about the past he and his mother shared, and about why they feel the need to avoid this stranger and his proposition.
The second story is set in 1992 and 94. During these years, Harry went by his birth name, Mateo. He still had his sight and he was a moderately famous director. He had an affair with one of his actresses, Elena (Penelope Cruz), the mistress of big-business magnate Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez), and was stalked by his son, Ernesto Jr. (Rubén Ochandiano), who captured the cheating couple's escapades on his video camera by order of his father, under the guise of shooting a documentary about the production of the film Harry and Elena were making together.
This film within a film, "Girls and Suitcases," is seen in fragments throughout "Broken Embraces." It's a screwball comedy starring Cruz's Elena, and it recalls Almodovar's 1988 gem "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." The meta narrative and back-and-forth chronological conceit here also recalls 2004's audacious and layered "Bad Education"; and other elements of "Broken Embraces" (especially Harry's occupation as a writer, and the later involvement of an obsessed stalker) evoke similarities to Almodóvar's 1987 career-peak "Law of Desire." All this to say that the Spanish master's latest is most interesting when you ignore its half-baked plot and consider it as a culminating work for this filmmaker, mashing up all the different ideas he's explored in the past into one uneven, self-referential melange.
There's been a few films like this one on the festival circuit this year. Both Taiwanese maverick Tsai Ming-Liang's "Face" and Korean social-satirist Hong Sang-Soo's "Like You Know it All" reference the themes developed over the course of their respective director's careers, and use them as a jumping off point for some of their most ambitious work yet. In contrast, "Broken Embraces" more closely resembles Terry Gilliam's similarly inert "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," as both feel like films that could only be made by their respective creators but suffer from a going-through-the-motions listlessness that makes them equally a drag—like a compilation of familiar moments without the passion and purpose that would make them memorable.
Almodóvar earns some brownie points in "Broken Embraces" by using his aesthetic to explore the power invested in a captured images. It's an appropriate theme for the director to explore considering what a visual filmmaker he is, and how meticulous each detail of set, costume and performance is rigorously tended to in every frame. This is enforced by the way photographs summon memories and how video footage captures people in time, seemingly giving one deceased character in the film a second life. The recurring theme also well-compliments the film's most stunning sequence, in which Harry's hands eclipse a TV screen slowly playing out the last few moments before a fatal car crash. And the many visual pleasures in the film lend a cruel irony to the blindness of the lead character.
Also impressive here—as is always the case in Almodóvar's films—are the performances. Cruz has less screen time than she was given in 2006's star-making "Volver" (in fact she's really a secondary character here, despite the first-billing she's received), but she pulls off an impressive dual role and tries her best to bring depth to an underwritten character. Still, the real standout here is Blanca Portillo, who likewise collaborated with Almodóvar in "Volver" and was quite good in that picture as well. Though she's really something here, tasked with the emotionally demanding role of Judit, a woman burdened with guilt and a myriad of secrets which bubble up inside her and come spilling out during the film's climactic confession sequence.
It's a scene which Portillo brings some amount of gravity to despite a lack of it in the script. Unfortunately, as is the case with much of this film, the emotions just don't resonate, as Almodóvar spends far too much time in "Broken Embraces" weaving together his elaborate plot devices and practicing his studied cinematic techniques, and not enough time developing his characters and making us care about what they emotional trials they're put through. The end result is a rare misstep from a master filmmaker, but not a major one. –Sam C. Mac
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (Terry Gilliam)
While Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" acts as synthesis of all the director's previous work superficially — the trashbag aesthetics of "The Fischer King," the whimsy and creativity of "Baron von Munchausen" — the end result here is still something of a haphazard mashing of elements rather than a coherent whole. It was made under extreme duress; limited budget, a deceased star (Heath Ledger, in his last performance), and thus a troubled production and a rush to find new, worthy actors who were available — most significantly Johhny Depp, who they borrowed from the set of Michael Mann's "Public Enemies" for a couple days. But what most hampers 'Parnassus,' other than its goofy tone, are its cheap, "Candyland"-reminiscent CGI-effects, which look like something you would tolerate if only watching a kids movie – in fact, this whole thing isn't far off from the broad and wacky mood of Tim Burton's "Charlie & The Chocolate Factory."
Set in modern day London, 'Parnassus' is essentially a Faustian tale about the titular sage (Christopher Plummer) who centuries ago made a deal with the devil, aka Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), in exchange for everlasting life. The price was to be his firstborn daughter (a quite good Lily Cole) once she reaches the age of 16. As that day approaches, Parnassus bemoans the predicament he's gotten himself into, as he still hasn't told his daughter about her tragic fate. Meanwhile, he puts on a happy, or more appropriately, booze-sozzled face for his troupe of performers, and serves as the main attraction of his magical traveling circus, the Imaginarium of the film's title, which, as far as we can tell, is meant to entice people to enter and live out all their wildest fantasies, only to emerge afterwards as cleansed and happy, full of vigor and a sense of youth lost somewhere along the way. (So, kinda the effect one would assume Gilliam hopes his 'Imaginarium' will have on audiences.)
Unfortunately, those who take an interest to the shoddy display tend to be amused drunks and the police officers who want to know where these chavy goons have disappeared to — that being the magical Imaginarium mirror (looking like it cost about five dollars of set design) which transports people into a day-glo dreamscape controlled by Parnassus' mind. It takes the coincidental arrival of a charlatan (Ledger) being hanged under a bridge (it's been suggested to some that seeing Ledger with a noose around his neck is disturbing, but in this context, it's not anything to get shocked or outraged about), whose presence is predicted by Parnassus' tarot cards, to overhaul the Imaginarium's showmanship — add a little confident razzle dazzle — and who, in the process, Parnassus deems as his last-ditch hope to rescue his daughter from her terrible fate.
Then, the gambling-happy Devil reappears to remind the good Doctor that he has about three days to settle up on his bet and hand over his daughter. Desperately, another wager is made as a hail-mary attempt to save her life: "The first to five souls," the Devil purrrs slyly, which Parnassus quickly realizes means enticing innocents with his own imagined dreamworlds over those that the devil uses to tempt unsuspecting victims. (It's all pretty silly and doesn't make much sense, especially since the devil doesn't even really "compete" at first.)
So the game is on. Ledger's mysterious Tony amps up the spectacle and relocates the caravan to a more crowd-friendly location, luring civilians (mostly plump, pearl-wearing women) into the mirror. His first customer drags Tony in with her, and since it's her imagination that takes precedence, Tony's image is warped to look like what she wants it to (hence the first switcharoo, and Johnny Depp's appearance). So when Andrew Cole (who's a great actor, but doesn't really have the chance to flex his muscles here), playing the young Parnassus apprentice enamored with Lily Cole, enters the mirror with Ledger, out pops Jude Law, and when Lily enters the mirror with Ledger, we get Colin Farrell. Or something like that. Given that logic, we're not sure why the drunk who enters the mirror solo at the beginning of the film has his face transformed much to his aghast astonishment (other than it sets up the fact that people's faces change when they enter the mirror). However, reason isn't key in the Imaginarium, and it's certainly not a deal-breaker, but it does indicate the sort of convoluted and incoherent plotting throughout.
Many have asked which Ledger stand-in has the most screentime and that's easily Farrell, who is also the best of the Ledgers, playing his character with more malice and with less broad, wide-angle-lens kookiness. Depp is onscreen for all of three minutes and Law maybe has about 10 (Farrell is closer to 15-20 minutes onscreen). As the story's challenge progresses, it ascends to its typical feverish, clownish pitch and Tony's charlatan ways are exposed. But it's a a shame that it's not Ledger himself who is able to perform the grand finale, and the fact that the actor is not around for the comeuppance does undermine and detract from the overall narrative impact.
To call 'Imaginarium' incomprehensible seems too harsh and unfair (though several critics from Cannes used the word to describe the film), but the half-baked, nonsensical picture, which awkwardly mixes the worst, zany tendencies of Salvador Dali with Nickelodeon with added heaps of cornball humor, just isn't very cogent or sharp. And at two hours plus, it's also far too long to sustain the disjointed flights of fancy. The film is not valueless and those sympathetic to Gilliam's plight and Ledger's death will likely give it a pass, but those who have no vested interest either way could easily become annoyed with the tiresome, fantastical conceits. In fact, the whole thing might have just worked a lot better as a kids movie.
The repartee between Plummer and Waits is amusing, but no one really shines in this thing aside from Lily Cole and Farrell. Even Ledger relatively underwhelms, but then again, his screentime is truncated. It would have been fascinating to see him have a chance to navigate the full extent of changes his characters undergoes, but sadly, we're stuck with what the filmmakers had to work with (and it is an admirable effort, just one that's honestly not very successful). Gilliam hopefully has another brilliant "Brazil" level masterwork in him and perhaps mounting the belated "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" will put him on that path, but 'Parnassus' is a mostly lackluster effort and a goofy bauble that's a far cry from even Gilliam's fourth or fifth best work. [The Playlist] –Rodrigo Perez
UP IN THE AIR (Jason Reitman)
Jason Reitman's third film follows narcissistic, emotionally disconnected Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a professional bearer of bad news who's hired by various companies to fire their employees so their pussy-footing bosses don't have to. Ryan also happens to exhibit the requisite quirk required of a Reitman film, namely his penchant for collecting frequent flier miles (his goal is ten million) without any intention of ever using them. But “Up in the Air” really kicks into gear when young, overachieving Cornell grad Natalie (Anna Kendrick) is hired to revolutionize the operation of Ryan's company by eliminating the relevance of his job, and creating a system in which firing can be done from the comfort of the office, via video chat. Ryan is a man who prefers his 322 days of traveling to any time spent at home, and thus resents Natalie's proposal. Still, his boss (Jason Bateman) insists he and Natalie do some bonding, and sends Ryan on his final trip with the task of educating Natalie in hopes that she can glean some wisdom from her elder's experience, in order to perfect the system she's developed. Meanwhile, Ryan also attempts to maintain a no-strings-attached hotel/airport romance with fellow frequent flier Alex (Vera Farmiga), Ryan’s female equivalent, as someone who shares his love of elite status.
"Up in the Air" is at its best when it enters its second half and we realize that Ryan, as much as the workers he lays off, is in a transitional period of his life. Throughout the film, we see the consequences of his sabotaged relationships and cringe as we see him continuously botch things up with the friends and family in his life. His interactions with those he's firing seem in fact more vulnerable and honest, and it quickly becomes clear that these stilted emotional connections are the most human kind of relationships Ryan can maintain with his stunted maturity level. Clooney’s performance reaches a peak as we see his Ryan finally beginning to take to heart the rehearsed words he's been spouting for so many years (a keynote address about 'unpacking life's backpack'), when his limited view of life begins to expand; and the script manages to prevent any kind of unbelievable character arc, allowing Ryan to take only small steps in the direction of reform. Likewise, both Kendrick and Farmiga well capture their characters' similar state of transition as women on the verge. Reitman couldn't have possibly anticipated how timely this film would find itself at the moment of its release, but "Up in the Air" does an excellent job at humanizing the economic crisis our country now faces, and it's this reverence which thwarts most of the cuteness that tends to pepper Reitman's work, and does again here. The end result is funny, touching and even a little profound. –Luke Gorham
THE YOUNG VICTORIA (Jean-Marc Vallee)
Jean-Marc Vallee’s “The Young Victoria” features the predictable power struggle that accompanies every regal British drama, as well as the forbidden or ill-advised romance. It does very little to distinguish itself as a film of merit except that, well, it does little wrong. In fact, once the technical checklist of British period film staples and the thematic checklist of the British imperialist study are established, the film settles into a nice little groove with a particularly strong romance at its center between the young, newly-ascended Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) and her future husband, Prince Albert (Rupert Friend). The performances in the film are its major asset, with very good turns by the lovely Blunt and veteran Paul Bettany, while Friend steals the show and continues to establish himself as a rising British star and as an actor of unnaturally strong screen presence. While there is little else to praise as exceptional in the film and the narrative arc is a bit stilted, “The Young Victoria” works thanks to its simple, earnest British-ness and its refusal to compromise that British-ness with Hollywood sensibilities, as similarly-themed and lesser works such as “The Other Boleyn Girl” have recently succumb to. –Luke Gorham
A PROPHET (Jacques Audiard)
Rising French auteur Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" (which won the Grand Prix award at Cannes and is probably the favorite at this point to take the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture) is first notable for the way it differentiates from the director's previous two films. Both 2005's soulful, Bressonian "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," which traces a man's internal struggle between his masculine and feminine parental influences, and 2002's Hitchockian thriller "Read My Lips," about a deaf woman's resistance to the lure of sin as embodied by a man she lusts for, center around wrenching, human tensions, and find the filmmaker fascinated by the pressures and persuasions that drive people to criminal action. In "A Prophet," our protagonist, at the outset, is condemned to six years in jail, acting as a spiritual heir to the characters from Audiard's previous films: he's a young man whose time of indecision has passed, and we're never shown what led him to his criminal path nor what crime he committed, in part perhaps because Audiard has shown us that story before.
What we're given is essentially a blank slate. We know the man's name is Malik, that he's 20 years old (at least at the beginning) and that he's an Arab in a jail block full of Arab-hating French mobsters. And that's it. In the lead, Tahar Rahim enables as much insight into the mind of his character as the script allows, and the actor particularly shines in the early stages of the film, communicating Malik's devastating moral decay, which gives "A Prophet's" first half hour at least some momentum. What Audiard hopes is that we'll invest our sympathies in Malik because of his extreme circumstances, not because of any individual personality, and that we'll root for him as he negotiates his way through the jail's criminal hierarchy. But what Audiard somehow manages to misunderstand is that a man who sacrifices is not necessarily a martyr – or a prophet – and, as evidenced in the overwrought Alexander Desplat score and some painfully obtuse symbolism, the aggrandizement of this criminal borders on the egregious. What's worse, there's just no reason for this kind of treatment of the character beyond winning the sympathies of more conservative audience members, and in doing so the filmmaker drowns what works on at least some level as a tense procedural.
If "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" is Audiard's take on the solitary, prideful criminality of Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket," then "A Prophet" could be seen as his stab at "A Man Escaped," the Bresson classic about an imprisoned French Resistance activist whose escape plan is compromised with the arrival of a new cellmate, one who may or may not be a Nazi informer. The conflict in that film becomes whether or not to kill this other man, and it mirrors the struggle in "A Prophet's" best stretch, when Malik is confronted with the ultimatum of killing at the order of the prison's reigning godfather, and earning his protection, or to risk being killed himself. Audiard and Rahim nail the moral and emotional weight of these scenes, doing Bresson proud, but the rest of the film lacks that urgency as well as the strength of "A Man Escaped's" politically-charged premise. And somewhere towards the end of "A Prophet's" bloated two and half hour runtime, the film reaches its 'big moment.' So as not to spoil anything, I'll just say this series of scenes rings completely false, and is so heavy-handedly executed that it's just all the more frustrating that one has to sit through such a drawn-out affair to get there. [The Playlist] –Sam C. Mac
SPRING FEVER (Lou Ye)
Lou Ye began his career on a bum note – the gorgeously shot but emotionally hollow Wong Kar-Wai riff "Purple Butterfly" – but his second feature, last year's "Summer Palace," was seen by most as a vast improvement; it's a bold and explicit work that was banned by the Chinese government, and led to Lou himself being barred from making further films for a duration of five years. Its decades-long story of a young girl coming of age and eventually navigating the travails of adulthood, parallels a sexual and political revolution in modern China, evoking the latter during a memorable, appropriately frenetic scene set during the 1988 Tiananmen Square riots. At two hours and 20 minutes, it can seem a bit unwieldy and even long winded, but its potent subject matter and the harrowing, fearless performance of Lei Hao in the lead – not to mention Lou's newfound individualist aesthetic, a swooning mixture of gritty imagery and roving, fluid camerawork that served to divorce Lou from those earlier Wong comparisons – make just about all of "Summer Palace's" largely minor shortcomings (it's over-extending final third, the level of focus given to secondary characters) easy to overlook. As such, Lou's film can be put in a class with Jia Zhang-ke's phenomenal, similarly themed 2002 epic "Platform" as a work of politically-charged, socially-conscious and deeply human filmmaking, depicting the complex adjustment period young people faced in a heavily western-influenced era of China, as the country turned toward consumer capitalism.
So, on the heels of "Summer Palace," Lou's uneven and oddly aloof season-centric follow-up, "Spring Fever," should be seen as a disappointment. It's about 20 minutes shorter than Lou's previous film and yet feels 20 minutes longer. It's scope is decidedly less ambitious and the the minor issues Lou had in the development of characters in 'Palace' are increased ten-fold here. First and foremost, the circumstances of its production are worth mention, as Lou disobeyed his state mandate and shot 'Fever' on the sly during a very short filming period. His defiance is emblematic of his latest film's content, as he once again throws a middle finger to the Chinese government, depicting explicit sex as an act of rebellion against an oppressive and unsympathetic social and political climate. The problem is that the film is far more interesting for its extenuating circumstances, and when you consider its aims and ambitions, than it is as a compelling piece of narrative fiction. And this wasn't the case with "Summer Palace." For 'Fever,' Lou once again sets out to capture the restless spirit of China's marginalized youth, this time in present day, but like the director's debut, this film never catches fire emotionally, and with mostly nondescript, unengaging performances, it can be difficult to follow exactly what's going on.
"Spring Fever" revolves around two gay men (one closeted, one not), seen at the start of the film sneaking off to a secluded retreat for a romantic rendezvous, and engaging in the kind of passionate, uninhibited sex that lent such vigor and emotional complexity to "Summer Palace." (Here, there's that same feeling of Lou's enthusiastic want for provocation, but, and perhaps just do to desensitization, it's not as effective.) Of the two men, the "out" one is essentially our central character, seen in long, handheld takes, cruising gay bars and drifting aimlessly from one dive to the next, often concealing his eyes behind a pair of dark glasses and striding through crowds with the kind of contagious confidence of one of Quentin Tarantino's macho tough guys. His closeted lover is softer spoken, living with his wife and doing his best to maintain an ordinary public appearance, compartmentalizing his two lives. Eventually, the man's wife begins to suspect him of cheating, and when she discovers it's with another man, her tireless disapproval and her own personal devastation fill the weak-spirited man with guilt and confusion. Things become more complex when a third gay man, with a girlfriend of his own, enters the picture, his arrival completing a loose love quadrangle.
What should vibrate with the same intensity and verve of "Summer Palace's" every scene, feels both awkwardly staid and on occasion melodramatic and contrived. The plot here is way too complex for being so uninteresting, and the relationships feel fractured in a way that makes it difficult to invest in these characters. Still, the aesthetic pleasures are just as rich and rewarding as those of 'Palace,' with the cinematography this time around being even more gritty and abrasive, helping the film escape inevitable comparisons to – again – Wong Kar-Wai, specifically his seminal 1997 contentious gay romance "Happy Together." Whereas Wong chose a more opulent, woozy visual pallet, Lou gravitates further toward the unaffected, bare-bones realism of early Jia Zhang-ke, but differentiates in his preference toward handheld over the static formalism Jia and many other mainland Chinese filmmakers tend to favor. This makes Lou one of the more exciting names in a new generation of Chinese filmmakers, and also makes "Spring Fever" look better in retrospect.
The major difference though between Wong and Lou's two films is not aesthetic, but stems from Wong's ability to find a powerful emotional center beneath the surface sheen, and "Happy Together" is most memorable for the affecting relationship at its core, as portrayed by Leslie Cheung in a legendary performance as the brash loner, and Tony Leung as his more grounded and emotional foil. Both archetypes are seen again in "Spring Fever," but the characters which embody them are also defined by them, and we never get a great sense as to who they are, as evidenced in this writer's decision to not designate any of them by name. This is perhaps a byproduct of Lou's purposefully subdued approach, which avoids the lyrical romanticism of "Happy Together's" most transcendent passages (such as a long, breathtaking pan of a waterfall) in favor of stark observation. And that can work, as Lou proved in "Summer Palace" and as Jia proved with "Platform," two films which are less about characters and more about the times they live in; but "Spring Fever" doesn't carry the same sociopolitical heft as those films, and thus the same treatment proves bland rather than serving to place focus on the broader themes at work. Still, "Spring Fever" is essentially only a minor misstep in the career of one of mainland China's most talented new filmmakers, so Lou Ye will hopefully disobey his state mandate again very soon. [The Playlist] –Sam C. Mac
VALHALLA RISING (Nicolas Winding Refn)
“Valhalla Rising” is a subtle, multilayered and meditative film exploring the madness and evil caged, to varying degrees of visibility, within ourselves. Though the plot is only a starting point here, it's worth noting: a former Viking slave, One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen), and his adolescent companion, join up with Scottish Crusaders headed for the Holy Land. Delivering a completely silent performance of both authority and surprising depth, Mikkelsen allows One-Eye’s motivations to remain unclear and his morals ambiguous. After enduring a puzzling, seemingly endless mist while at sea, the crusaders, along with One-Eye and the boy, reach an unfamiliar land rife with intrigue and danger. It's here that the film shoots for the moon and successfully realizes its great ambition, as the characters endure uncertainty and their own personal brand of madness in this new world. A wonderfully dark and imaginative twist on classical Viking sagas, “Valhalla Rising” evinces the birth of a new land as the people who discover it endure physical, mental and spiritual hardships. Playing like a horror film directed by Terrence Malick, with a Herzog-eqsue view of an uncaring and destructive, though undeniably beautiful natural world, it's enriched through some understated religious allegory very much akin to Old Testament sensibilities, aided by sumptuous cinematography, a fantastic score (mostly sparse but with moments of tremendous and affecting power), and Nicolas Winding Refn’s audacious direction, full of wonderful contrasts between tense silence and thundering force, stillness and violence. “Valhalla Rising” is absolutely one of the finest films of this year's festival and a great introduction to a visionary new filmmaker. –Luke Gorham
BRIGHT STAR (Jane Campion)
”Bright Star,” Jane Campion’s visually luscious period romance, tells the story of poet John Keats, played by impish British actor Ben Whishaw, and his immortalized love affair with one-time neighbor and muse Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). The film, which derives its title from a poem Keats dedicated to Brawne, succeeds, on one level, due to Campion’s decision to avoid biopic tropes. Rather than including Keats’ life prior to and even apart from Brawne – specifically his medical training, his relationship with his tuberculosis-stricken brother, and even (with few minor exceptions) his specific literary pursuits – Campion's focus is placed squarely on the love story that became motivation for the work of one of the most celebrated romantic writers of all time.
Campion sets the film inside the house of Keats’ dearest friend and poetic peer, Charles Armitage Brown (Paul Schneider), and inside the neighboring home of Fanny Brawne’s mother, never allowing the framework of her narrative to leave this established setting even when central characters do. When Keats visits the city, the film remains in Hampstead with the Brawnes and Brown. From this, it becomes clear that “Bright Star” is not your typical biopic as the camera abandons its most notable character during his absences, and the exploration of Brawne's character goes little further than her love for Keats. During these stretches, the couple's mutual adoration is realized through letters read like narrations, a beautifully affecting touch to a romance primarily built upon – and certainly immortalized through – these expressions of love. This technique also allows the film to become a pure love story, one unburdened by the typical contextualization of many period pieces or made more grandiose by the celebrated status of its characters.
Much of the success of the film lies in Campion’s handling of its themes. What she seems to prize and what shines through in the film is the reflective beauty of such an innocent and pure affection. In one of his most beloved poems, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats expresses his belief that the best and most emotive moments in life are those immediately preceding the attainment of desire. In Keats eyes, to stay frozen in these moments would be Heaven. Campion understands this completely, and her vision of this doomed love is one rife with unadulterated moments of heartwarming, and sometimes heartbreaking purity. Brawne and Keates never consummate their love, but indulge themselves in the first signs of their affections so freely and so openly as to border on naiveté. And yet, the film avoids cynical condemnations of their relationship as Campion meticulously recreates the moments and the minutiae of her lovers' romance, perfectly capturing the philosophy of the final words in Keats’ 'Ode': "Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
The actors and various technical achievements of the film compliment Campion’s vision and sensibilities well. Abbie Cornish delivers a phenomenal performance of mixed determination and vulnerability, establishing Brawne (only 18 in the film) as a true force. The actor perfectly portrays her as an intelligent and somewhat cynical proto-feminist, particularly during her interactions with Brown where her pride fights against her desire to impress a man so arrogant and sexist. Brawne is defiantly ambitious and progressive, making the dissolution of her exterior callousness when she's with Keats all the more touching. Likewise, Whishaw is pitch-perfect as Keats, abandoning all hints of ego or overreaching for a much subtler exploration of the king of romantic poetry. He plays the author not as a man assured in love, but as a man scared and unsettled by the power it holds over him - Whishaw’s Keats is a man slowly discovering that everything he thought he knew amounts to little in the face of the new, incomprehensible emotional turmoil waging inside of him. It’s the perfect complement to Paul Schneider’s fantastic turn as poet Charles Armitage Brown, whose character is built upon confidence and intellectual superiority (the film’s most showy performance, and executed with only the occasional misstep).
In terms of technical achievements, “Bright Star” is flawless. The score throughout is one of the most beautiful in recent years, whether it be the repeated background melodies of an early a cappella choir or the sparse, nonintrusive splendor of the film’s more emotionally heightened second half. Equally as beautiful are David Hindle’s art direction and D.P. Greig Fraser’s close-up heavy camerawork, knowingly pulling back at all the right moments to emphasize the film’s emotional breadth and exquisite beauty. In fact, Campion’s handling of all the technical elements is impressive, particularly during the very Malickian midsection of the film, one that captures the intimacy of budding love through dialogue-free, score-driven sequences of deftly paced languor, capturing moments of human communion with nature’s beauty.
A film built upon intelligent consideration, “Bright Star” is more than just a career rebirth for Jane Campion – it's a high mark in her career. The perfect complementation of the film’s technical achievements and Campion’s remarkable thematic understanding of Keats’ work makes for a film rich in tone and pure in heart without falling prey to cliché. And with a literary thoughtfulness that will appeal to Keats enthusiasts, an incredible love story at the film’s center that will appeal to romantics, the filmmaking aesthetics that will appeal to the art crowd, and the period details and “based-upon truth” story that will appeal to fans of historical drama, it's hard to imagine that “Bright Star” will fail in satiating a diverse demographic of viewers. For me, it is simply the best film of the year so far. –Luke Gorham
Feature By:
Sam C. Mac, Editor-in-Chief
Luke Gorham, Film Editor
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September 30, 2009
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