Toronto International Film Festival 2006

A surprisingly modest Toronto International Film Festival took place in 2006, where the emphasis was placed less on giant stars (though the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Brad Pitt could be seen milling about Yorkville) and more on the films themselves. It meant no sorry-ass Elizabethtowns this year but it almost meant muted buzz, as studios seemed afraid to dump their Oscar hopefuls on the fest, probably fearing they’d die a quick death. And smaller films had some trouble seizing the limelight, though a few deals were struck (Werner Herzog’s pro-America war drama Rescue Dawn was snatched up before it even screened.) Hell, the mood was so sedate that Sean Penn and Russell Crowe were even chipper, the latter happily chatting up fans in the street. And sadly, no Nick Nolte hijinks this year: there no reports of him falling asleep during interviews or dropping cocktail glasses on the ground.

What did fall to the ground were a few duds, one of the most resounding being Steven Zaillian’s much-anticipated All the King’s Men, delayed almost a year, and by the looks of the picture, more time might have been needed. While by no means unwatchable, it remains head-scratching in how it contains the greatest actors working today and nobody makes any notable impression. Besides Sean Penn, who at least makes sense on paper, everyone flounders in the drama, ridiculously updated to 1950s Louisiana. The hucksterism of Willie Stark would have made no difference to the inhabitants of this time, just as this film will make no difference to ours.

The flip side of the coin, however, is Emilio Estevez’s soft-headed Bobby, which despite its also-starry cast, contains very few great actors, with a parade of vapid performers looking as if they’re participants in a politically-fused episode of The Love Boat, with even some of the same results, as Estevez’s script is often planted in TV Land. The ultimate bed-wetting liberal movie, which many will eat up, anyone looking for any form of challenging narrative qualities will have to look elsewhere. You can find them in The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky’s wobbly but intriguing time-travel fantasy, but they’re distinctly of the opaque, Solaris-style variety. The surest mainstream bomb that will ever be, and that’s a bit sad, as it isn’t very often you see such a daring Hollywood film. I probably couldn’t even tell you what the hell it all means with a gun to my head, but it proves Aronofsky isn’t a director content to rest on his laurels. This one is in many ways the anti-Requiem for a Dream, sometimes deliberately pulling the rug out from the dopey stoners who only watch the latter for its “trippiness.”

Neil Armfield’s heroin drama Candy is like Aronofsky-lite, filled with scenes of needle injections and sweaty drones with pasty skin writhing around in pleasure and pain. But it’s acted with conviction by leads Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish, and the movie’s more black comic passages have surprising results, even if you’ve seen this story many times before. Same goes for Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration, a wisp of a satire about a crappy indie shilling itself for the almighty Oscar. Basically a weak version of Guest’s own far-superior 1989 film The Big Picture, it represents continued diminishing returns on his projects, but he is to be commended for one thing: giving Catherine O’Hara yet another chance to prove she’s the best and most resourceful member of his repertory, fighting him every step of the way to create a fully fleshed-out character, and netting most of the laughs too.

Thankfully, O’Hara’s co-star Parker Posey reconnected with another past collaborator, deadpan specialist Hal Hartley, for the festival’s most thrillingly original creation, Fay Grim, Hartley’s sequel to his astonishing 1998 film Henry Fool, which finds Fay (the deliciously ironic Posey) coping with motherhood and espionage as her former flame, the foul, charismatic Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan), turns out to be a government pawn, and she finds herself knee-deep in international intrigue, all involving Henry’s notorious notebooks. Virtually everyone from Henry Fool turns up here, and it’s impossible to find a droll indie that’s ever been this much fun; Hartley’s astute observations about America’s international involvement in war (using Fay as his unlikely rook) run circles around the pontificating corniness of virtually every film made that has tried to incorporate the subject lately. Great stuff, a movie that probably needs at least two viewings to fully grasp at all of its considerable ideas.

One viewing seems plenty for Kim Ki-Duk’s Time, one of those lugubrious, mumbo-jumbo offerings critics love to pat themselves on the back for appreciating. A parable about obsessive infatuation and plastic surgery, it never seems to realize that for a parable to work, it needs some root in reality, and when virtually every scene in the film culminates with a callow, screeching lover’s quarrel or various dishware being smashed, you start to wonder what planet these characters reside on. The lovely subtleties of Kim’s past work is nowhere to be found here, just a lot of silliness. (Loved that dirty sculpture park though, more suggestive than anything in the picture.) Another letdown is Joachim Lafosse’s Private Property, a dour, uninteresting French version of House of Sand and Fog where two spoiled siblings (Jeremie and Yannick Renier, real-life brothers) contend with their mother (Isabelle Huppert) on whether to sell their home after her divorce. And can anyone please explain the enduring worship of Huppert? I’ve never seen an actress coast so far on two expressions (both variations on a constipated, hangdog miserableness), and she has exhausted them on dozens of movies now. I can think of about 10 French actresses off the top of my head with more expression in their repertoire than this woman, yet Huppert still seems to eclipse them in notoriety.

France was better exemplified by Alain Resnais’s Coeurs, skillfully adapted from playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s Private Fears in Public Places. A bit of a coot movie, and maybe too genteel, but this pleasant ensemble Parisian dramedy actually feels like it’s made with a strong hand, and the entire cast is commendable. Many loved Patrice Leconte’s My Best Friend, and some hated it, citing it as a slight piece of fluff. Well, it is, but it’s fluff with fervor, and leads Daniel Auteuil and Dany Boon find reserves of feeling in what can be best described as mostly stock characters. I can already see studio execs clamoring for remake rights, and then maybe its naysayers will admit to its simple charms.

We haven’t seen Paul Verhoeven rip up the screen since 2000’s Hollow Man (which didn’t exactly set it ablaze), so it’s a pleasure to report that his WWII thriller Black Book is up to the rousing old perv standards we all love him for. A succinct marriage of his Dutch and American sensibilities, it takes the atrocities of the war and filters them through his deliriously absurdist Hitchcockian sensibility, and produces a truly exciting result. Verhoeven can’t quite escape the more familiar trappings of such films, but for a movie that’s 135 minutes, there aren’t 20 wasted seconds in it, and lead actress Carice van Houten is a stunner and aptly anchors the whole thing. A considerable companion piece is Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, another film that uses WWII atrocities as a backdrop for a director to tell a twisted tale. Except where Verhoeven’s film is joltingly alive, del Toro’s is heavy-handed as many of his films tend to be, with a fanboy overzealousness that always hangs over the proceedings. There are flashes of real invention in it, and some fine performances, but his reliance on graphic violence to illustrate points borders on contempt (one scene of someone getting shot in the face suffices for evil, several of them just seems like masturbation). But this was one of the most praised entries in the fest, so maybe this one is simply a matter of taste.

If your tastes run to vagina territory (and that is meant metaphorically, not literally), then Bonneville, a sort of Divine Secrets of Thelma, Louise and Their Long Lost Pal of the Sisterhood, may be to your liking. I’ll go to critics’ hell for admitting this, but for a movie so contrived and rote, it’s surprisingly easy to take, with warm portrayals by Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Joan Allen—the kind of movie you could catch yourself watching more of than you want to on Channel 11 someday. Expect it to be a big hit with bingo ladies.

Another movie that seems designed for blue-haired maidens, but is way too intelligent and beautifully rendered for that is Sarah Polley’s auspicious debut feature Away From Her. The tale of an older Canadian couple torn by the wife’s development of Alzheimer’s has no Iris-style pandering or disease-of-the-week foolishness. As the central couple, Gordon Pinsent and a shockingly still supernaturally gorgeous Julie Christie find every right note to explore, and there is nothing depressing or off-putting about its exploration of the disease, all the more remarkable coming from a 27-year-old filmmaker. Polley has been invaluable on film for years, and now she can be so in another capacity.

Another moody indie came from Australia in the form of Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne, a haunting take on Raymond Carver’s short story So Much Water So Close to Home, the very same impetus for the fisherman discovering a body in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, though this time with an Aussie bent that shrewdly enhances the story. There is no moment as powerful here as Anne Archer’s pantomimed signing of the deceased girl’s guestbook in Altman’s film, but Lawrence’s effort casts a spell of its own, and showcases the considerable talents of actors such as Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, and a host of terrific Australian talents.

And then there are the weirdo pics, none stranger than Tony Gatlif’s Transylvania, which pairs possibly the looniest actor and actress in current cinema, Head-On’s Birol Ünel and Asia Argento, as a pair of self-destructive gypsies wandering the Romanian countryside finding adventures in the small details of life. A defiant wackjob of a movie, it’s also one that you may find yourself referring back to at the most peculiar moments, which is better than letting it fade from memory. And my festival ended perfectly, with Ana Kokkinos’s The Book of Revelation, one of those completely fucked-up curios where you marvel over how anyone made it with a straight face, and so insanely pretentious it becomes hypnotic. A chiseled dancer (the very brave Tom Long) finds himself abducted, humiliated and molested by three women who, 12 days later, return him to society, where he learns to readapt to society and the fear of being stripped of his masculinity. Throw in Greta Scacchi in shockingly awful cancer make-up and some club sounds scored to sultry sex acts, and you have…what? I have no freakin’ idea, but it occurred to me that this is exactly the kind of movie you can only see at a film festival. And then a smile creeps over your mug…