NIGHTLIFE in Toronto: 5 films bound for glory & other assorted festival bits

One week in, and it's already time to pack up, bid adieu to the international film community that has temporarily set up in Toronto's entertainment district and hop on a VIA train back to Montreal. And while the festival won't wrap for another few days, certain things can already be considered undisputed facts.

– Black Swan is the love-it-or-hate-it title of 2010. Almost all encounters with fellow journalists begin with the question: “So what did you think of Black Swan?” It makes for heated debates while you wait in line for press screenings, and it's a shrewd way for journalists to weed out peers they'd rather not whittle time way speaking with. For the record, I'm staunchly on the side of Black Swan advocates – though I won't dismiss you for hating it.

– People apparently still faint in movie theatres. It's not just The Exorcist or the Saw franchise that brings the most sensitive filmgoers to a state of black out. A number of ticketholders lost consciousness during screenings of Danny Boyle's masterful (though not frightening by any means) 127 Hours. Had they not read the synopsis blurb beforehand?

– A week's worth of poor nutrition, sleep deprivation and lack of exercise actually do take their toll on the human body, it would seem. But you won't hear this guy complain, as the whirlwind festival experience gave me the opportunity to speak with bright lights like Ondi Timoner and François Ozon (look out for those interviews in NIGHTLIFE's print edition later this year), to screen some of the boldest, most powerful filmmaking out there (see list below) and to share the experience with a bevy of like-minded cinephiles, for whom the annual trek to Toronto is nothing short of a silver screen pilgrimage. The director Q&As, audiences' intellectual investment in the event, the post-screening debates that trickled into the city's drinkeries: the festival's commitment to “break the fourth wall” and bring artists and public closer together is one of TIFF's greatest strengths. Even though the metal barricades at red carpet premieres wouldn't necessarily give you that impression.

So while you all already know that The King's Speech is bound to be a serious Oscar charmer and that Buried is another manipulative and cliché-ridden addition to Ryan Reynolds' irksome body of work (well, at least now you know), here are a few films that struck a serious chord and which I still remember one week later (quite a feat). Cross your fingers to see many of these at Festival du Nouveau Cinéma next month!  

 

A soldier gets shot in Armadillo

 

The war movie that'll put all the others to shame
ARMADILLO
Forget about Redacted, Restrepo, The Hurt Locker and other recent films to chronicle the pitfalls of modern warfare in the Middle East. Director Janus Metz and his crew embed themselves with the Danish army's forward base of operations on a six-month stint in Afghanistan, and the resulting doc is the most visceral, nuanced and powerful account of war I've ever seen. Brave camera crews risk their lives to get up close and personal with the soldiers, and they're right there during key battles with Taliban insurgents to capture, for instance, the look on a young man's face as he realizes he has just been shot. This is as harrowing as war gets.

Armadillo raises timeless questions about the ethics of war without ever pandering to its audience, and shines a light on many little-known realities of conflict zones, like a scene that reveals how translators are often ill-equipped to convey the profound sorrow of local citizens. The craftsmanship here is equal (or greater) to any scripted account of war ever made. What's more, the main character's quiet resolve and the camera's tendency to linger on faces and places with dreamlike abandon recall Malick's The Thin Red Line, with its meditative take on a grim reality. This is your must-see doc of the fall.

 

Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman have a heart-to-heart in Black Swan

 

The one that'll make you rethink ballet school
BLACK SWAN
It's the talk of the town, and with good reason. Darren Aronofsky's latest is a psychological thriller set in the suffocating, hyper-cutthroat studios of a prominent New York ballet company. 'Tour de force' doesn't come close to describing what Natalie Portman pulls off here – she owns the film as an innocent, deeply anxious prima ballerina whose sanity takes a big hit the moment she scores her big break: the lead role in a revamped version of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, in which she must play both the White Swan and Black Swan parts. 

Aronofsky's bombastic tendencies work wonders in Black Swan as the film terrifyingly peers into the abyss of mental illness. In fact, the director's unrestrained excess hasn't been used this convincingly since Requiem for a Dream. When you add it all up, Portman's overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey), sleazy director (Vincent Cassel) and sexually emancipated and ambitious understudy (Mila Kunis) make for a most intimidating threesome. The film justifies the erotic delusions, the repressed bad girl histrionics and the obsessive fits of jealousy with the crutch of maintaining a sheltered childhood innocence as a full-fledged woman. This is one hell of a dark pas de deux, but one brilliantly executed by a director at the top of his game. 

 

Molly Parker and Tracy Wright in Trigger

 

The one that'll ring true to rock stars the world over
TRIGGER
A stirring love letter to Toronto's music scene, Bruce McDonald's Trigger got a standing ovation at the official TIFF Bell Lightbox launch last Friday. The Canuck helmer's story of two estranged riot-grrrl bandmates and former best friends (Molly Parker and the late Tracy Wright) who reunite after 10 years apart revisits many of the elements that had made his previous incursion into rock band terrain (Hard Core Logo) ring so true: selling out, a reckless disregard for everything, the stigma surrounding ‘the reunion', addiction et al.

Screenwriter Daniel MacIvor keeps things moving along at a brisk pace with clever dialogue that testifies to the rock-hard bond that forever unites aging post-punkers (and friends, for that matter). The chemistry between Parker and Wright (who died of cancer shortly after shooting was completed, making this her final cinematic appearance) feels so effortless that I found myself forgetting it was fiction on more than one occasion. There couldn't have been a better tribute to the invaluable talent of Canadian actress Tracy Wright.  

 

Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine

 

The one that'll leave you with lingering relationship doubts
BLUE VALENTINE
Quite possibly the worst date movie ever made. Nevertheless, a truly worthwhile cinematic experience. Director Derek Cianfrance took 11 years to get his film off the ground, refusing to compromise on the casting. His vision has paid off, as the raw chemistry between hopeless romantic Dean (Ryan Gosling) and his girl-next-door Cindy (Michelle Williams) will haunt you for days as you try to make sense of their heartbreaking undoing. 

If you thought 500 Days of Summer was brutal in how it slowly revealed inescapable cracks in the young couple's relationship with frequent timeline shifts, Blue Valentine takes things one notch further. This tale of love found and love lost doesn't rely on any cheap scriptwriting gimmick in which a character is suddenly revealed to be ‘bad' via an extramarital relation or an incomprehensible string of violent behaviour. No, it prefers to leave you wondering: what were the signs? Could this have been avoided? Could they have seen it coming? As their marriage reaches its breaking point, you get the sense that neither one of them understands how they've come to live such an unhappy, suffocating life together. A poignant, distressing moviegoing experience, but one you'll leave with newfound wisdom. Or lots of relationship baggage.

 

Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor in Beginners

 

The little indie flick that could – and should – pick up steam
BEGINNERS
A partly autobiographical tale by L.A. director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker), Beginners tells the story of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), who falls for a charming French actress (Mélanie Laurent) mere months after his dad (a brilliant Christopher Plummer) dies of cancer. As the film shifts back in time to five years prior to his dad's passing, we're acquainted with a 70-year-old man who comes out of the closet to live a fully emancipated gay life, to the surprise – but also the blessing – of his son.

Mills, who spent many years refining his script after losing his father, injects inspired humour and hope to a story about overcoming one's many hang-ups amd living a fulfilling life that makes room for the myriad possibilities of love. The father-son bond that develops in Beginners explores a dynamic seldom seen in film, with Oliver looking to his father's newfound bravery and applying some of that thirst for life to his own relationship. A truly moving and well-written film that deserves to find a distributor, stat!

 

Toronto International Film Festival
Until September 19 | tiff.net