Tuesday, September 15, 2015

#TIFF15 Reviews: Landscapes of the Heart


Agyness Deyn in Terence Davies' deeply felt Sunset Song

At the half-way mark, so far my TIFF15 has been marked by stunningly gorgeous cinematography, beautiful images that surround and coax and comfort protagonists in the tumultuous voyages of life and uphold them in the best sense of cinema: illuminating their joys and sorrows and decisions and losses in the most cinematic way. The big star at TIFF this year is.... the landscape camera. 

Sunset Song
The sweeping hills of Aberdeenshire are soaked in violets and blues in Terence Davies' very harsh and beautiful Sunset Song. Based on a Scottish classic novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, its tremendous scope (and Terence Malick-style length) are worth every moment. I missed the very first and the very last minutes of the movie but everything inbetween lived into what we can come to expect from Davies, whose early film Distant Voices, Still Lives, remains one of my most vivid memories of the early days of the festival. Often preoccupied with family dynamics and fatally flawed vicious patriarchs, Davies seems to have met his metier in Gibbon's novel about a young woman whose passionate attachment to the land she grew up on prevents her from leaving a tyranical father and a deeply unhealthy and dysfunctional family. Instead, by the end, she is its sole survivor, whose capacity for happiness is unleashed all at once but we sense will not necessarily be here for long. Peter Mullan is devastating as the horrible father - he has had enough practice playing such brutally etched characters but he is always able to make us see something of the lost soul buried within.

Agyness Deyn is lovely as Chris, whose deep attachment to Blawearie, her homestead and the small region of Kinraddie prevent her from taking opportunities she could easily win with her bright mind and her passion for books, to get away from it all. But getting away would be to tear the heart out of her. This double-edged reality walks the line of credibility at times but Davies helps us by often figuring Chris in relation to the countryside and even in the most horrific of family times, she appears to have a towering strength within her slim lass frame and eyes wet with grief. I love the sounds of Davies films: in this one the feet in wet mud, the sounds of the wheels turning on carts, the shuffling of animals in stalls and the wet air being sucked in on cold mornings. And of course, always, the songs. It wouldn't be a Davies film without singing songs in their entirety, lustily, releasing the soul.
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Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl by Tom Hooper

The Danish Girl
A languid lake and six tall skinny feathery trees are figured first in their natural setting and then in the painting by Einar Wegener, later Lilli Elbe, a Danish post-impressionist artist and landscape painter of the 1920s whose journey from man to woman marks the first known instance of sex-reassignment surgery. As Einar, her marriage to painter Gerda Gottlieb was originally threaded on their common commitment to their art and the movie presents a soulmate connection that would continue and help to uphold the events to come. The solemn and smokey landscapes of Danish hills and lakes set the mood for our journey with not only an artist of intense sobriety, but one who peers into his own paintings as if hoping to find himself there. Instead, it is in the work of his wife that Lili first finds herself. Sitting for her in a ballerina's dress, Lili feels herself stirring within and begins to be born. 

Slowly over the next hour of scenes, Eddie Redmayne transforms before us in the most nuanced and subtly beautiful ways. Lili is wholly feminine as she emerges from the shell of Einar, and the very gentle and gently graded degrees by which she finds her way in the world are so beautifully rendered. Redmayne's choices are so subtle and nuanced that we hardly know they are happening until the culmination of them all arrives and Lili is a masterpiece, a beauty and a whole soul emerging and vibrant. Alicia Vikander as Gerda captures the pain and pleasure of seeing a beloved transform in front of her, though the script sometimes positions her to say platitudes and that grated on me. I often found myself thinking of Xavier Dolan's beautiful and brilliant Laurence Anyways. Both movies focus on a love story more than the transition of identity but Suzanne Clément brought a brittle passion and urgency to the losses and the need and an anger. I sensed that Vikander might have too, if the script had offered her more room for it. She is instead the doting wife, who never quite forgets the husband she has lost, even as she is coaching Lili into life. The last scene of the film veers heavily toward a cliché but I came away very moved by the emotional line of the film. From the first moment she glances at us, Lili never lets us out of her grip.
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Juliette Binoche in Piero Messina's The Wait
The Wait
The brown and black almost lunar-barren landscapes of Sicily make up some of the first spectacular exterior shots of Piero Messina's debut feature. And then there are the interiors: a large stone villa slowly being shuttered and draped in black to mark the beginning of a time of mourning. The beginning of a time of waiting. The slow caress of a crucifix in the opening sequence spirals us toward a grieving mother, whose grief causes us to see only a changing soundless collage of people passing before her and the coffin of one she loves. Messina's intense interest in the physical detail of emotion starts with the glimpse of a wet trickle running down the leg of the woman toward her wobbling pumps. Later, his camera finds shadow and light in everyday objects and those shutters which open and close and open and close like the aching heart of the two souls within, Anna, played by Juliette Binoche, and her son's girlfriend Jeanne, played by Lou de Laâge.

Anyone who understands how paralyzing grief can be will also appreciate Anna's desire to hold onto the possibility of life by clinging to Jeanne, allowing her in and shutting her out simultaneously, but clearly needing the life that courses through her young veins. Reviews of this movie from Venice seem preoccupied by the perceived cruelty of Anna's not revealing to Jeanne the fate of her boyfriend, but I was mesmerized by this tension. This is a movie about faith experience by and for people who get those three days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday when there is only the bleak and desolate silence of the tomb. The wait in the biblical story is not for an expected release. No one expects it to end as it does. To anticipate that this movie might offer something similar is to doubt how much the filmmaker truly understands that the biblical event only happened once. We grieve, we cling to the signs of life, we hope for some sense of resurrection but we are human and inevitable truths come crashing in. My only quarrel with The Wait is that the depiction of religious ritual borders on the creepy to those unfamiliar with it. (It's hard to remove the Klan-like associations that North Americans have with white-hooded figures, even if they are harmless in this expression.) My favourite aspect of The Wait were the conversations between the women, casually pursued in that liminal space where neither one is either asking or telling what seems obvious to share. Liminal space of emotion is so rarely portrayed in movies - so I am grateful to Messina for offering it to us with such grace and careful tenderness. 

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Nanni Moretti and Margherita Buy in Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre (My Mother)


Mia Madre (My Mother)
The landscape is entirely internal in Nanni Moretti's very moving Mia Madre (My Mother). I loved its wistful look at how life catches up to us when we are face to face with the mortality of those we love. But rather than move in three acts toward a character's transformation, this latest vision from the Italian comedy master actually just allows us to witness a woman filmmaker's slow slide into understanding how complexly difficult and hard to be with she's become (foiled by John Turturro as an equally challenging American actor), and that is enough. Moretti and Marguerita Buy hold the vast emotional range of grieving/caring in compelling tension with each other as their characters experience both grief and moments of lovely humour and Guilia Lazzarini as the grandmother/ mother of the title is perfectly poised between submitting to illness and continuing to live into the needs and expectations of her two deeply affected children.

Moretti has given us something both difficult and tender but in very unexpected ways. The undercurrent of the movie is an interest in classical literature which the dying woman instructed in the local university. Margherita's insistence that her daughter pursue and perfect her Latin studies seems controlling at first but leads to gentle scenes between grandmother and granddaughter which make clear how much Margherita has missed in being so obssesed with the near-static continuity problems in her own life and work. I also enjoyed the scenes between Moretti and Buy as they pass grief back and forth. Although we all know the stages of grief well by this point, the movie makes clear that they are constantly in rotation, rather than falling in linear sequence. We move in and out of acceptance and preparation and denial even while the loved one is still with us.

While watching this movie, I had a strange moment of dots connected. I came from a screening of Wim Wenders' Every Thing Will Be Fine into the Moretti. Early in the film, Margherita passes, in a dream/memory sequence, in front of a movie theatre where the non-specific poster nonetheless clearly references Wim Wenders' movie Wings of Desire. An odd passing of the baton from one master to another.  
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Naomi Kawase's An













Splashes of bright yellow and waving masses of cherry blossoms populate the urban landscape of 
Naomi Kawase's beautiful An, a very deeply felt and lovingly observed almost essay-style film about three people who help each other slowly across difficult thresholds in life. The movie has been accused of being sentimental but it is a shame that we have learned to hate that word. No one likes manipulative emotion, but this is sentiment in the best sense, meaning the tenderness and nostalgia are earned through the experience of each character's surrounding darkness. 

Almost experimental in places, and very focused on Japanese culture, An challenges our contemporary (universal?) acceptance of alienation and instead dreams of community, while turning light on the forgotten peoples of Japanese society. Visually rich with its bright canary yellows overtop dreary urban landscapes, it suddenly breathes into lush greens at the end and those perennial cherry blossoms. In a festival which chooses to open with a movie about compulsive destruction, this film is a wise and important call to dwell in our own sadnesses, reach out to others, be nostalgic, tender, and hopeful.

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Miss Sharon Jones!
By far the standout event of my festival so far, however, came without lush cinematography, though Barbara Kopple's documentary Miss Sharon Jones! is beautifully shot and observed. The film's screening last Friday evening opened with the signature beats and strains of the Dap-Kings, those wonderful musicians who back up one of North America's best kept secrets (except she's not - she's been on Ellen!), Sharon Jones. Kopple's doc is a confident and tender portrait of the legendary soul singer's recent fight with cancer. Surrounded by her musicians and boisterously popping with energy, we also see her by turns very quiet and still. Jones reveals all sides of her soulful self under the incredibly assured and masterful lens of Kopple, who shows us what happens when an unstoppable spirit is forced to lie low. The movi
e ends on a high note of comeback performance that is riveting and enlivening. Then, in the post-screening conversation, Jones shared with us that the cancer is back. In the hush that ensued, spontaneously Jones sang for us. Demonstrating the unconquerable spirit that the movie celebrates, she sang a capella, a hymn that she also sings in the movie, an expression of her deep faith. A movie, a woman and a moment of tremendous beauty and grace.

The natural gravitational pull of the exiting crowd caused me to find myself standing side by side with the singer as we made our way out. The few things I said to her reflected my own state more than hers but were my way of expressing solidarity. She responded with a gentle arm at my waist and a declaration to fighting as she has to date. In a gorgeous white dress and pumps, striding purposefully, she seemed every inch capable of exactly that, as determined and resilient as she was in every moment under Kopple's watchful eye.


Ultimately, the most powerful landscape is that of the human heart. Where the soul and the spirit go, the camera follows.

Monday, September 07, 2015

TIFF15 and its Tongue-Twisting Titles

Looking for Grace
Every year at TIFF, there is a strange confluence of movie titles that sound very much alike. It is a real test of the true cinéaste to be able to sort out your syllabic similarities and know your names! Here are some of this year's tongue-twisting titular teasers.

We have Rams and we have Lamb, and be sure to catch the 7 Sheep. There's Bird Hearts, Sparrows and Peacock and The Chickening and Men and Chickens.

Ma Ma,  Maman and My Mother will be there and if you see him, don't forget to Honor Thy Father!

You can find out About Ray, (Otto) and Benjamin. But you're fresh out of luck if you've expected a Carol! And if you're Looking for Grace, you might run into Violet or Victoria. After the screening? Catch the party for Ivy. On 25 April, she'll be 45 Years.

There's The Danish Girl and the Missing GirlThe Final Girls and Girls Lost.  But The Girl in the Photographs just might be Janis: Little Girl Blue.  And those Beeba Boys will tell you the Phantom Boy is just a Boy.

Watch out for The Dressmaker and The Women He's Undressed, and don't let The Assassin, Kill Your Friends or Black will be Black Mass.  

You can be Born to Be Blue or Born to Dance -- and rehearsal is In the Room. And speaking of Room, just so you know, The Forbidden Room is The Green Room.

There's a Beast and Beasts of No Nation, and As I Open My Eyes, I turn my Eye to the Sky. There's The ReminderThe Mind's Eye and A Copy of My Mind.

If you're searching for London Fields, go past London Road to Bleak Street.  And be sure to see Mountain before those Mountains May Depart!

There's Sunset Song and Song of Songs and though This Changes EverythingEvery Thing Will Be FineBeing Ap and Being Charlie are probably Je Suis Charlie's friends.

There's The Wait and The Waiting Room and The Wave and Waves '98 and Wavelengths come in all sizes and shapes. The River of Grass is Downriver from River.

If you see Francofonia in February, you've likely Forsaken Frenzy, Freeheld and Fugue. You could catch up to Jack and James White and a Youth in Young Patriot.

Join those Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers or just Journey to the Shore.  There's Love and Much Loved and if you're needing more, there's A Tale of Love and Darkness and A Tale of Love, Madness and Death.

There's Paradise and Paradise Suite, but when I say I Miss You AlreadyIt's Not You that I mean.


Cemetery of Splendour
Laurie Anderson might tell you the Heart of a Dog is A Heavy Heart and neither of these is Murmur of the Hearts. That Dog kept An Old Dog's Diary: it says don't Starve Your Dog. Remember also that Dogs Don't Breed Cats. 

The White Knights may take you for Five Nights in Maine, or take 3000 Nights to see all those Arabian Nights. When all that is done, May We Sleep Soundly? Sure! But beware the Sleepwalker on the loose out there. Also, just so you know, Eva Doesn't Sleep. Neither does Eva Nova!


Casualties of Modernity
Make sure you don't mix up Families with The Family Fang or you may find yourself afoul of El ClanLolo and Yolo are not really French Blood; it's better to see them as Blood of My Blood.

Fire Song is not Fireworks and if you're starting to be confused, it could be there's A Fire in My Brain that Separates Us. 

What does this all mean? Well... in searching title Truth, settle instead for A Flickering Truth. After all, titles like Cemetery of Splendour may just be one of those Casualties of Modernity.

Saturday, September 05, 2015

80 Films to Watch Out For at TIFF15 Part 4 R - Z

This is Part 4 and the final section of a list begun in Part 1 A-D and Part 2 D-L and Part 3  L - R offering the last twenty titles of eighty movies, given alphabetically, that I am looking forward to seeing at TIFF15.  An  indicates a movie in my top twenty priority list. Titles link to the TIFF profile page and wherever a trailer is available, I have provided it. All still images can be found on the TIFF website at the movie page linked.

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Rams 
Grímur Hákonarson is a relatively new Icelandic cinema voice and Rams is only his second feature. However, this tale of two feuding brothers who are both suddenly subject to the same crisis, which they can only resolve together, won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes. The trailer is extremely promising, both for its gorgeous visuals, but also for the storytelling which combines deadpan humour and everyday ordinary tragic situations. 
Contemporary World Cinema

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Remember



Atom Egoyan's latest follows a holocaust legacy survivor (Christopher Plummer) as he fulfills a long-held promise to avenge family deaths during that unforgettable period of history. The challenge is his failing memory. Egoyan's work has been evolving in interesting ways of late, as he pursues more conventional narratives while retaining his own unique visual style.
Gala

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Right Then, Wrong Now

I have a bizarre history of always really wanting to see the films of Hong Sang-soo and somehow always missing them. I did see Our Sunhi and liked it very much, but regret missing both In Another Country, largely considered his best work, and last year's Hill of Freedom. So this year I am absolutely determined to see this quirky and audience-pleasing film about a filmmaker and a painter who meet and spend a day together, and then meet and spend the same day together .... again. It won the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival. 
Masters

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Rocco and His Brothers 
 

A long-time fan of the Italian neorealist, Luchino Visconti, I am excited to see this significant but rarely screened late work of the master, from 1960. Told in five parts, it follows each of the five sons of an impoverished Italian family as they try to improve their lives. Despite its split screens, the trailer is hypnotic.
Cinematheque

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Room

This is one of those times when I wasn't sure that a good adaptation of a bestseller (by Emma Donoghue) was even possible, given how confined the playing space is. I have never seen the work of Lenny Abrahamson and my track record with this programmer is not great. But the teaser trailer utterly sold me - and that rarely happens for a movie I'm not already interested in. Now I very much hope to see this somehow.  
Special Presentations


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Sleeping Giant


Canadian Andrew Cividino's movie has had a near-perfectly paced emergence as a Canadian feature of significant presence this year. The short film version screened at TIFF14 and the feature bowed in off-competition at Cannes earlier this year. Featuring performances by new actors and locals of the area where the movie was shot, it profiles a trio of teenaged boys coming of age near Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, on the northern shore of Lake Superior. 

Discovery

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Son of Saul
 


This first feature by Hungarian director and Béla Tarr protégé László Nemes was a sleeper hit of Cannes and won the Grand Prix Award. A holocaust drama about a man who is forced to remove the bodies of gassed victims at Auschwitz and in doing so uncovers a man he believes to be his own son, the movie won strong praise despite its very claustrophobic photography and relentlessly single point of view. I have heard the film praised highly but was also given a personal account by someone who saw it at Cannes and found it too weighted morally to the main character. I am curious to see how faith tradition works in the story, since the man spends much of the remainder of the film trying to find a rabbi who can cant a kaddish prayer for the dead. Is this kind of obssession delusion or salvation? 
Special Presentations

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Song of Songs 

Another of the Israel/Palestine films on offer this year made by women. So many reasons I am drawn to this one, from its desire to portray life in a 19th-century Jewish shtetl, to its story of a friendship among a boy and a girl who must stare down the limitations of Orthodox custom, even as they are embracing them. Really looking forward to this new feature from Eva Neymann.
Contemporary World Cinema

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Stonewall


Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall. We hear Obama's voice invoking these milestone locations of uprising for women, blacks and gays, respectively, right at the very beginning of this trailer. When I first read about this feature I was a bit worried that it might glamorize this episode in the history of gay rights in America. But the trailer has put me on track again and I am so glad that director Roland Emmerich wanted to finally give us a dramatic feature version of an event that fostered a courage that every gay person tips their hat to.
Gala


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Story of Judas
(trailer is in French with no subtitles)

So, as a biblical scholar, I have to be interested in this new film from Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche and I am, but I am a bit cautious about its premise. I am not troubled by the idea that Judas was friend and confidante whose role in Jesus' death has been over-simplified. What worries me is the storyline that he was seeking to destroy a gospel record transcribed by another early disciple, because Jesus didn't want his words written down and being distorted. There is so much to challenge in that premise, starting with the fact that the notion of distorting or manipulating scripted text is a very very modern idea and Jewish followers of Jesus in the first century would have understood written texts in a very different way that we do today. But I have to see it! And I am open to the possibility that it will challenge me in the best sense and get me thinking. 
Contemporary World Cinema

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Summertime (La Belle Saison)


It is undoubtedly a banner year for love stories among women and adding to the mix is Catherine Corsini's 1970s story of two Parisian women who meet and fall in love in a context of feminist politics but whose relationship is supremely tested when one of them is forced back to her rural roots to face family expectations there. 
Special Presentations

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Sunset Song

If this gorgeous image isn't enough to compel you, than let me tell you that it's been four years since we've had a new work by Terence Davies and like the beautifully moving films which came before, this meditation on a Scottish classic novel focuses on a dysfunctional family and a woman torn between a desire to leave and her passionate attachment to the land. Davies' earliest and most revered films were based on his own life and the stern, violent patriarchal father figure is present here too. And if you aren't already familiar with the lengthy takes and slow pacing that characterize his movies, keep in mind as you go that the emotional payoff is often profound.
Special Presentations

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The Treasure
 


A simple idea, the search for lost family wealth buried on the property during the Communist rule of Romania, is at the heart of this newest film by 12:08 East of Bucharest director Corneliu Porumboiu. But even in the trailer it's easy to see how much political symbolism may be at work here. As they always do, this treasure hunt requires some investment and putting all at risk in order to find more, is a classic structure of both comedy and tragedy. I have no idea which will govern here, but if the trailer is our clue, I would say we're meant to laugh.
Contemporary World Cinema

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Trapped

Icelandic auteur Baltasar Kormákur moves to television from movies to direct a series about a police chief who becomes trapped on a ferry in a snowstorm with the murderer he is looking for - he just doesn't know who that is. The new programme Primetime has as its strength a chance to preview work like this, which may not make its way on to Netflix for a while to come. There is no trailer, but there are many reasons to trust being put in the hands of this brilliant director, whose 101 Reykjavik has become an international classic.
Primetime


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Trumbo

I am always interested in any story about the blacklist era of Hollywood and its arch nemesis The House UnAmerican Activities Committe. I was very influenced by stories told by my AFI screenwriting mentor, writer Al Leavitt, who was also blacklisted after having had a rising Hollywood career that included scripts for Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant, only to be out of work for a long period, and to also end up writing under an assumed name. Trumbo's story is his own, however, and the trailer gives away most of the essential plot points, including the way in which Trumbo managed to not only continue writing but win Oscars that others accepted for him. Jay Roach (of Austin Powers fame) normally makes lighter fare, and I hope that this doesn't become a comedy-driven piece but anything that has Helen Mirren playing a society columnist is bound to be worth it.
Special Presentations

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Truth
It's hard for me to get excited about any other Cate Blanchett film when this remarkable actress is rumoured to be the reason we don't have Carol at TIFF. (See my addendum to this earlier blog.) And I am not that interested in the scandal that surrounded Dan Rather in breaking the post-millenium story that George W. Bush had once avoided being deployed to Vietnam, even if it did cost the noted CBS anchorman his career. So why is this film on my list? Well, I have always enjoyed movies about American politics and broadcasting, right from All the Presidents' Men, and since Spotlight, the other movie about journalism and scandal coming to TIFF, has had lots of buzz, I prefer to feature this one. Especially since James Vanderbilt's strong credits as a screenwriter should bode well for his feature directing debut.
Special Presentations

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Un Plus Une




I love Elsa Zylberstein, who rarely gets a feature role that we get to see in North America but whose work in Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long) alongside Kristen Scott Thomas and her performance in La Petite Jérusalem have been under-appreciated. I also really enjoyed Jean Dujardin in The Artist. Put them together in a new film by legendary French New Wave filmmaker Claude Lelouche and what's not to be excited about? The premise, two people who meet at a state dinner and together explore India's spiritual pilgrimage sites, makes it even better!
Special Presentations

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Ville-Marie

Several storylines eventually overlap and converge at Ville-Marie Hospital in Montreal in Guy Édoin's new dramatic feature. Starring Monica Bellucci as a European film star shooting in Montreal, the movie apparently also offers us the movie within the movie that she is making. Relationships, distance and unresolved past events populate the movie's themes.
Special Presentations


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The Wait (L'Attesa)
Piero Messina.

See Part 1.

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Women He's Undressed
Gillian Armstrong has given me so many wonderful movie experiences over the last thirty years. Who could forget My Brilliant Career, which helped to move the career of Judy Davis out of Australia and into the world? Mrs. Soffel, High Tide, Little Women, each a gem. Moving to documentaries, Armstrong turns her lens on Orry-Kelly, the Aussie in Hollywood's glory days who was one of the industry's most cherished costume designers. Life as a closeted gay man was not easy, even in a business and a profession highly populated by gay men. Armstrong's caring exploration will likely focus as much on the man behind the legend as the clothes on the screen.
Tiff Docs


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Youth


I have been resisting this movie, ever since reading about it for Cannes, in part because of this kind of image: senior men ogling a naked woman (it's the poster for the film, but does it really need to be the screen still for the trailer as well?). However, this latest from master Sorrentino has had such wonderful reviews and responses, including by women, and the trailer hints at something much more soulful than I had anticipated. So I will take the leap of faith.
Special Presentations



That's it! More coming on Wavelengths and then it will be time for TIFF and the first reviews!

Thursday, September 03, 2015

80 Films to Watch out for at TIFF15 Part 3 L - R

This is Part 3 in the continuation of a list begun in Part 1 A-D and Part 2 D-L, with twenty more titles of an eventual eighty, given alphabetically, that I am looking forward to seeing at TIFF15.  An  indicates a movie in my top twenty priority list. A-L have been previously posted; L - R is here; the rest will follow in one last blog. Titles link to the TIFF profile page and wherever a trailer is available, I have provided it. All still images can be found on the TIFF website at the movie page linked.

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Lolo
(Trailer is in French with no subtitles)

I knew it was a matter of time before Julie Delpy would make her own feature film. The French actress who came to fame as a muse of Krzyzstof Kieslowski in the Three Colours trilogy, has gone on to claim a solid English-language career, most notably in her collaborations with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke in the Before series of films, which she also co-wrote. She has been writing for a long time. So here we are with her first feature and that's exciting. The trailer worries me a little but the (uncredited) TIFF programme notes reassure me that she is aiming for farce. And I am willing to believe in this gifted artist.
Gala


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London Road
 
The entire original National Theatre cast is in this film adaptation by Rufus Norris of the musical starring Tom Hardy and Olivia Coleman as two of the residents of the street made famous by the "Suffolk Strangler" murders of 2006. The musical uses the actual words of the residents found in media interviews as they struggled to adjust to the horror and the presence of media. But rather than sensationalizing it, it uses their witness to show how they managed to regroup and recreate themselves as a community. A very sought-after ticket and an interesting alternative vision to the Hollywood glamourized trauma stories that are otherwise on top show this year.
City to City: London


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Looking for Grace




I'm not generally one for films that are "understated drama turned to crime comedy" but I am drawn here to the premise of a narrative unfolding from changing points of view. It is about a young woman making a long bus trip with a best friend, who encounters a young man on the way when things become complex and even dangerous. I have no experience of the work of Australian Sue Brooks but her appearance in the Platform programme points to someone with conspicuous talent.  No trailer.
Platform


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Mia Madre (My Mother) 


Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre, stars Margherita Buy as a filmmaker trying to make a new feature film while also attending to the deathbed of her mother. John Turturro plays a challenging American star and Moretti a sympathetic family figure connected to the mother. These are the details, but what is most important here is Moretti's incredible gift for understanding how that which gives us life can also be a cause of sadness. I've followed his work ever since the Motorcycle Diaries and have never been disappointed.
Special Presentations


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Miss Sharon Jones!
Oh my goodness! Someone has made a movie about Sharon Jones whom I absolutely adore (playing with her band known as the Dap Kings)! And then, oh my goodness! It's legendary documentary filmmaker, Barbara Kopple, who made Harlan County, USA (playing in the Cinematheque part of the festival this year) and Dixie Chicks, Shut Up and Sing!! Oh no!, I had no idea that Jones had a cancer scare that nearly ended her performing career. What?! No trailer? Well, who needs one? Go!!! But don't get ahead of me in the line!
Tiff Docs


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Mountain
In the first blog, I mentioned that there were a number of very interesting Palestinian and Israeli films at TIFF this year. Alphabetically, the Palestinian came first. But here is the first of the Israeli. Yaelle Kayam's debut feature is set on the Mount of Olives and follows a young Orthodox mother who lives in the only dwelling inside the famous cemetery. As circumstances draw her family further from her, she becomes drawn into the night world of the cemetery, finding comfort and an emerging identity. I am always interested in movies that look at the isolation that is sometimes the experience of orthodox religious women of faith.  No trailer.
Discovery


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Much Loved



Nabil Ayouch reviewed the testimonies of 200 sex trade workers in Marrakesh in preparation for his movie about four women who form their own family as a means of coping with the violence, bribery, crime and general immorality that surround them in the night club world in which they work. The movie participates in the Contemporary World Speakers programme which looks to pair films with speakers, to talk about issues the movie raises. The speaker in this case is Ron Levi from the Munk School of Global Affairs whose specialty is "how we respond to crime and violence in a global context." What's that you say? Why couldn't they find a woman speaker for this film? Hmm.... these speakers seem to be almost always men and always from the Munk School of Global Affairs, whom I suspect helps to subsidize it. This year there is one woman in six speakers. Never mind. Go see the movie and maybe the discussion afterward will be stimulating. No trailer.
Contemporary World Cinema/Contemporary World Speakers

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Murmur of the Hearts 

As I move through the press releases every summer, hana my dog has learned to expect sudden sounds and open commentary. "Sylvia Chang has a feature!!!" was one such moment this summer and there aren't enough exclamation marks. In a year that marks a number of filmmakers offering works after long absences (see Patricia Rozema), this film tells the story of adult siblings long-estranged who are preoccupied by the same childhood memories of their mother and her mystical tales of a magical mermaid who lived off the coast of the island they lived on. I remember first being interested in Chang when she was an actress in The Red Violin and I still remember the last film she brought as a director in 1999, which she also starred in, Tempting Heart. A high seed.
Contemporary World Cinema

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The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble


Yo-Yo Ma formed The Silk Road Ensemble in the early 2000s to help find a way to focus his fame into something constructive for himself that would also fulfill a deeper purpose in the world. The result is a collective of musicians from many cultures and traditions who play together on a wide variety of instruments that you may not have ever seen before.
Morgan Neville, fresh from his Oscar for 2013's Twenty Feet from Stardom, and also showing Keith Richards: Under the Influence at this festival, directs. No trailer.
Tiff Docs


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My Internship in Canada


Refreshing: a Québecois filmmaker who made a US film but prefers to come home and stay in Québec! Bien vous savez quoi?! After last year's moving and funny The Good Lie, which looked at Kenyan immigrants coming to America, the director of Monsieur Lazhar has fashioned a story about a Québecois MP who finds himself in the position of deciding whether the country goes to war. Assisted by his Haitian intern, who seems to know Canada's constitution better than he does, and lobbied by all sides, including within his own family (that includes the amazing Suzanne Clément), this comedy-drama couldn't be better timed in a federal election year.
Contemporary World Cinema


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No Home Movie 

I found this clip very compelling and moving. Legendary feminist filmmaker Chantal Akerman, whose first film screened at the very first Festival of Festivals, has traced the themes of her movies back to her mother, in this affectionate but uncompromising profile. A feminist herself, a survivor of Auschwitz, Akerman's mother emerges before the camera, and Akerman uses the film as an opportunity to hear her finally tell the darker parts of her story. Not to be missed.
Wavelengths


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One Breath
[Updated!: 9/3 Trailer is now here.] Again, this is a filmmaker I don't actually know, despite that his last film Tour de Force played at last year's TIFF, but one of the joys of the festival is gaining a new previously unknown-to-me filmmaker. Christian Zübert's first feature follows a woman who has left Greece for Germany, and immediately discovered she is pregnant. She takes a job as a nanny with a professional woman who is returning to work. The movie splits their narrative following one woman for half the film and the other woman for the other half. There are several movies like that this year, marking an interest in pointing up the problems of traditional narratives in one point of view. I welcome this kind of exploration and am keen to see how well it works. This is another film which will have a speaker afterward from the Munk School of Global Affairs, Robert Austin, who coordinates the Hellenistic studies there.
Contemporary World Cinema/Contemporary World Speakers

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Our Last Tango

I am trying to overcome my disappointment that Carlos Saura's latest film (which has been in the European festivals) didn't come to TIFF, so maybe I will find more than consolation in this film which looks like it may owe something to Saura. German Kral is Argentinian but has worked as an Assistant Director to Wim Wenders but has also made his own movies for many years. The film follows Argentina's premier tango duo, as they tell the stories of their careers and their relationship and perform throughout. This trailer shows an opening that takes its cue from Singing in the RainTiff Docs

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Our Little Sister 


Master Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda's more recent films have focused on what it means to be family (I Wish; Like Father Like Son) and have been among his best works. This story of a death that reunites stepsisters looking to dissolve the tensions and boundaries imposed on them by other family members, appears like it will continue another of Kore-eda's themes: children as resourceful arbiters of peace and wellbeing. A director who never disappoints, a strong favourite at Cannes and my own personal second highest priority of the fest. Masters

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Parched


A number of things interest me about Indian Leena Yadav's feature which follows a widowed woman in India as she fulfills a community and cultural expectation to find a child bride for her fifteen-year old son. The sense of this woman's growing dissatisfaction with cultural values and how her friendships with women stir her into critique feels like it may offer not only an important perspective but an interesting new South Asian filmmaking voice. Apparently gorgeously shot by Russell Carpenter (Titanic.)  No trailer.
Special Presentations

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The Pearl Button

I hesitated to include this one because the last film of renowned Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman, Nostalgia for the Light, I walked out of. The visual life of his films is always gorgeous and moving but I become oppressed by the relentless voiceover narration. However, several trailers this year have convinced me that Terrence Malick's more suggestive, poetic and philosophic use of voiceover has been influential and it seems possible here to. I am very interested in Patagonia and the work of this notable master always deserves a second look.
Masters


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P.S. Jerusalem

Danae Elon is an Israeli who was living in New York when she decided to move back home to Jerusalem with her family. Born to activist parents who were/are critics of Israel she felt a strong call to understand for herself what was true. This documentary, shot over three years, chronicles the family's attempts to integrate not only their ex-patriate selves but the cultural attitudes they were holding as they make a new life in an old familiar place. As programmer Thom Powers notes, "P.S. Jerusalem is a film about navigating the divisions between the individual and the family, the past and the present, and hope and reality. There are no easy answers." Another in a series of interesting views on Israel/Palestine by women filmmakers. 
Tiff Docs

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Paths of the Soul 



Regular attenders of the festival and/or Asian film fans may remember Zhang Yang's beautiful feature Shower from 1999, or even the more recent Full Circle. His thoughtful meditative use of the wide frame and extended shots seems likely to suit this chronicle of Tibetan villagers making a "bowing pilgrimage" to Lhasa, the spiritual center of Tibetan Buddhism. The bowing refers to the practice of stopping every few feet to lay themselves prostrate. Part documentary and part fiction, it considers the reasons why people make such pilgrimages, each individual responding to a deep inner need for healing, cleansing change or preparation for another life. A top ten seed for me. No trailer.
Contemporary World Cinema

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The Promised Land 

He Ping is a filmmaker whose work I've always had an interest in but somehow never seen. So I am determined to view this latest work which looks at Chinese youth torn between family obligation in small villages and new life in the big cities. This is a case where the trailer has affected me strongly too -- I love the split frame (not split screen) and wider compositional shots that remind me a lot of Kieslowski. Hoping to make a great find here.
Platform


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Rabin: The Last Day



I have been following the work of Israeli-American filmmaker Amos Gitaï at TIFF ever since I first found him in the 1999 festival with his brilliantly moving film Kadosh, about the impact of orthodox customs on a childless young couple very much in love. I have since seen everything he has done that has appeared at TIFF and for a while there, there was a new one every year. His 2010 movie Plus Tard Tu Comprendras starring Jeanne Moreau as a French woman who has hid her Jewish past all her life, affected me deeply. Gitai's movies are always a blend of fiction and documentary and this year's offering, which looks at the events of the day that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assissinated, promises to be equally impactful.
Masters



More to come! Stay tuned for the last blog with the final twenty titles, in the next couple of days.