DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: Tiff 2008

Showing posts with label Tiff 2008. Show all posts

Sunday, 14 September 2008

TIFF Report #18: "LOOSE ENDS"

After 10 days of exhaustion, here are the 'leftovers' I just didn't have a chance to do full review for.

Martyrs (2008) dir. Pascal Laugier
Starring: Morjana Alaoui, Mylène Jampanoï, Catherine Begin, Robert Toupin

*1/2

Another extreme French horror film (can I be the first to coin the term F-Horror?). This exercise in shock-value tells the story of a particularly nasty group of scientists who torture innocent girls in hopes of discovering a passageway to ‘the other side’. Gore and shocks trumps true horror and suspense. The final third of the film is intended to be the most grotesque act of torture and mutilation ever put to screen. Without the fundamentals of suspense all the money spend on false arms and fake cadavers is wasted.

The Paranoids (2008) dir. Gabriel Medina
Starring: Daniel Hendler, Jazmín Stuart, Walter Jakob, Martín Feldman, Miguel Dedovich

**

A Spanish drama about a young writer without the confidence to make a career break, nor confess his love to the woman he truly loves. A love triangle is set up and allowed to grow moss thanks to it’s snails pace in plotting. It’s also billed as a comedy, but without the comedy. The final thoroughly satisfying ten minutes saves the film from complete misery.

The Narrows (2008) dir. Francois A. Velle
Starring: Kevin Zegers, Vincent D'Onofrio, Sophia Bush, Eddie Cahill, Titus Welliver, Monica Keena

*

How this film got into TIFF and beat out other superior films is a complete mystery. “The Narrows” is a b-grade Sopranos knock off anchored but appalling mafia clichés. Kevin Zegers plays a young mob driver who yearns to go to school for photography but struggles to separate himself from his gangster connections. Velle’s lame homages to Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” (bad blues cover songs, and pathetic stylistic imitations) makes the film just pathetic.

Birdsong (2008) dir. Albert Serra
Starring: Lluís Carbó, Lluís Serrat Batlle, Lluís Serrat Masanellas, Montse Triola, Mark Peranson

* 1/2

This absurd Spanish comedy is shot in black and white using exclusively long static takes. Some may find the exercise brilliant stylistically, but for others like me, it’s excruciatingly dull and boring. Imagine Bela Tarr, without the tracking shots.

Pr-Ra-Da (2008) dir. Marco Pontecorvo
Starring: Jalil Jespert, Evita Ciri, Gabriel Rauta, Patrice Juiff, Robert Valeanu

**

A noble, socially conscious true story about a young idealist from Paris who travels to Bucharest in the early 90’s to help a group of homeless kids get off the street. Told with the familiar language of social realism, Pontecorvo shows adequate storytelling skills, but the film lacks the cinematic a spark to really score with audiences.

The Stoning of Soraya M (2008) dir. Cyrus Nowrasteh
Starring: Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mozhan Marnò, Jim Caviezel, Navid Negahban, Ali Pourtash

**

Another culturally important film, this time a true story of a Iranian woman who was falsely accused of adultery, but because of the male-centric Muslim laws was unable to stop the men in her village from convicting her to death. Though the story and lessons learned from this black period in Iran’s history are important, Nowrasteh dramatizes the film with the subtlety of a blunt hammer. The lead up to and filming of the brutal stoning death is shown to us without restrain, echoing Mel Gibson’s treatment of the Crucifixion in “Passion of the Christ”, but without the textured imagery and any evidence of cinematic flare or skill.

The Miracle of St. Anna (2008) dir. Spike Lee
Starring: Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller,

*1/2

Spike Lee just went all wrong with this film. Lee attempts to mix humour and sentiment with gritty war realism, which results in a messy oil and water concoction. His political agenda is so in the audience faces, it makes Lee look antiquated.

Saturday, 13 September 2008

TIFF Report #17: UNCERTAINTY

Uncertainty (2008) dir. Scott McGehee, David Siegel
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lynn Collins, Assumpta Serna, Olivia Thirlby

***

“Uncertainty” plays some tricks on the audience and tells two stories through the same characters at the same time. Scott McGehee and David Siegel borrow their concept from Peter Howitt’s “Sliding Doors” with Gwenyth Paltrow. One choice made by a young New York couple results in two completely course of events which follows. Two strong performances anchor this clever film about randomness, fate, and individual responsibility.

The opening scene shows Bobby (Joseph Gordon Levitt) and Kate (Lynn Collins) standing in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge discussing a choice to make. We’re never sure what choice it is, until Bobby flips a coin to make a decision. Suddenly they run off in separate directions with haste – thus jump starting this intriguing twister. The couple meet back up after the sprint, except we get to see two separate courses of action - like a 'Choose Your Own Adventure'. Plot #1 has the couple finding a lost blackberry in a cab. Plot #2 has the couple finding a stray dog on the street.

In Plot #1 (defined to us by the couple’s matching yellow outfits) becomes a thriller as the Bobby and Kate discover the cell phone contains vital information wanted by a group of warring New York gangsters. When the couple is offered a reward of $500,000 for the phone, they find themselves involved in a taut cat-and-mouse life-threatening chase across the city. Plot #2 becomes a relationship drama as the couple visit Kate’s family and discuss their dilemma about her unwanted pregnancy.

We essentially get two movies in one. The thriller is thought out very carefully. The actions of Bobby and Kate are played with noir-like plotting. They are ordinary people caught in a web of extraordinary and dangerous behaviour. The filmmakers are smart enough to keep the couple talking and questioning the minute details of their actions. Inevitably with this type of story the audience is forced to put themselves in the characters’ shoes and ask ‘what would I do in this situation?’ With the exception of a few small plot holes McGehee and Siegel keep it smart, logical and unpredictable.

Meanwhile all the character development is contained in plot #2, a significantly less interesting series of scenes. The majority of the action takes place through dialogue at Kate’s family BBQ. Overt conflict is kept to a minimum which results in some slogging, but Levitt and Collins make such a likeable couple it remains watchable. The central dilemma in this plot is Kate/Bobby’s choice of whether to keep the baby or not. But seeing that the couple are grounded individuals clearly in love, to me the choice is a no-brainer.

What’s missing are the connectors between the two plots. The characters’ choices and actions are completely autonomous to each other they might as well be two sets of characters played by the same actors. McGehee and Siegel aren’t absolutely clear about the rules of their alternative universe concept either. Somehow they wind up wearing different clothes after the initial sprint-off the bridge. Why they decide to flip a coin and run away from each other is never answered. As well, going by the filmmaker’s logic of their dual lives Kate should be pregnant in Plot #1, but it’s never referenced. Perhaps this is where the title of the film comes in, a level of ‘uncertainty’ is meant to exist in the audience’s minds as to how the subplots are related.

The finale brings the two Bobby/Lynns together in the same place, unfortunately without the ‘eureka’ moment that makes everything clear and complete. Uncertainty remains even after the end credits. In this case, a little bit of certainty could have made this good film into a great film. Too bad. Enjoy.

Friday, 12 September 2008

TIFF Report #16: VINYAN

Vinyan (2008) dir. Fabrice du Welz
Starring: Emmanuel Beart, Rufus Sewell

***

What would you do if your child had drowned in the Ocean but you received scant evidence that he was kidnapped and alive somewhere in the Burmese jungle? This is the conundrum faced by Fabrice Du Welz’s characters in this frightening Southeast Asian 'Heart of Darkness' tale.

Paul and Jeanne Belman (Rufus Sewell and Emmanuel Beart) have just been through unimaginable pain and suffering. Their young boy died six months ago in a Tsunami-related drowning accident aboard a boat in Thailand. Because of Paul’s philanthropic work they remained in Thailand. During a corporate presentation Jeanne catches site of what appears to be their child in a grainy video. Despite more evidence against the possibility of her son being alive Jeanne is convinced he was kidnapped.

And so begins the arduous journey to find their son. The Belmans spend all their money bribing local prostitution brokers and riverboat guides to bring them into the remote and dangerous jungles of Thailand and Burma. As their money is depleted and the roadblocks pile up Paul’s doubt resurfaces. Jeanne and Paul’s relationship breaks, but not before they’ve passed the point of no return and are forced to face their demons and own personal responsibility with their predicament.

Du Welz’s film would make a good companion piece to Francis Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” or Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, Wrath of God”. Like these two great films “Vinyan” dramatizes a lengthy psychologically challenging journey into exotic, uncharted lands by boat. All three films explore the effects of the environment and the mystical nature of its native population against the intrusion of the white man into their world.

Labeling “Vinyan” as a ‘horror film’ would be a misidentification. Although there are some scares, the suspense comes from the intensity of the challenges the couple is presented with. Du Welz drops his characters into some of the most harrowing weather and terrain they could be exposed to. There’s one of shot of Rufus Sewell sitting on a rock being pummeled by massive globules of heavy rain. No rain machine could match the authenticity of this real world effect. By the end these physical and emotional beatdowns becomes truly exhausting.

Du Welz employs Benoit Debie who was Gasper Noe’s cinematographer on “Irreversible”. Like Noe’s film Du Welz bombards our eyes and ears with an assaulting visual and sound design. The opening scene is a series of abstract, out of focus water bubbles rising and falling across the frame with an all-encompassing wall of ambient noise blasting through the theatre speakers. The sound mixer cranked the levels to 11 in numerous sequences – so much so I had to plug my ears for relief. It's a warning sign to the audience to prepare for the painful ride.

Du Welz doesn’t give his characters or us relief from their journey. There's a point in the film when we realize whether the Belmans find their child or not ceases to matter. The real dilemma is articulated subtly in the marvelous fire lighting ceremony scene. When Jeanne refuses to participate in the healing ritual she unknowingly seals hers and her husband’s fate.

Rufus Sewell and Emmanuel Beart physically and emotionally pour all their emotions onto the screen in two supremely remarkable performances. “Vinyan” is a difficult and challenging visceral cinematic experience, and most certainly the best film about grieving families I've seen this year at TIFF (and there have been a few). Enjoy.

Thursday, 11 September 2008

TIFF Report #15: SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

Synecdoche, New York (2008) dir. Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Emily Watson, Samantha Morton, Catherin Keener

***

Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is the most idiosyncratic work of all his films – the story of a depressed hypochondriac playwright who literally puts his life into his next play and vice versa. It assembles all the themes, elements, humour and distinctive characteristics of his work with Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry into his first film as director, unfortunately without the discipline of either of these great directors to guide the film toward coherency and accessibility.

Despite the narrative confusion the film has a solid emotion anchor, and it conveys its overarching theme of the introspective artist with surprising clarity. The details in between is constructed like a stream of consciousness writer running wild without an editor - a David Lynchian nightmare from the perspective of Charlie Kaufman. It’s wanders dangerously toward cinematic self-flagellation.

Kaufman’s alter ego in this film is Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a theatre writer with a seemingly loving wife Adele (Catherine Keener) and daughter Olive. Caden appears to suffer from a series of escalating ailments, which has Caden thinking he’s close to death. His wife has a career as a miniature painter – she paints really tiny canvases that can only been seen with a magnifying glass – and suddenly she finds herself becoming more famous as a bohemian contemporary artist. When fame calls she quickly dumps Caden and leaves for Europe with Olive. With his heart shattered Caden puts his life into his work to create his true masterpiece of the theatre.

Caden decides to hire an actor Sammy (Tom Noonan) to play himself who is writing and playing the production of this ultimate play. Except the ultimate play is a real time dramatization of his life. Even his assistant Hazal (Samantha Morton) gets in the act and casts an actress, Tammy (Emily Watson) to play herself. Since Sammy is playing Caden, like a true method actor Sammy wants to hire someone to play him, and so another version of Caden appears. Get it?? The real Caden falls in love with his assistant Hazal, but is confused when he develops an attraction to her alter-ego Tammy – same goes with Caden’s double. Get it??

“Synecdoche, New York” is just too complex an undertaking for Kaufman to handle for his first feature. There’s little consistency across the film, and a general feeling like it’s being made up as the film goes along. At the beginning, it’s a relative straightforward introduction to Caden’s family life. Humour is played with the same quiet absurdity as in “Being John Malkovich”. The dialogue is played very quiet, so quiet in fact, jokes and gags are missed because they’re often said under a character’s breath or over top of another line.

Kaufman’s time frame is erratic. With little warning, the film moves forward years in time without any traditional transitions to bridge the gap. The second half of the film has a snowball effect of the temporal paradoxes of the character and time shifting. The closest metaphor to use is one of those MC Escher paintings of a man walking down a set of stairs without moving anywhere. Though the film takes places over 17 years, with Hoffman gradually getting older via prosthetic face make-up the film doesn’t appear to move anywhere.

There are some truly wonderful Kaufman-esque moments. Caden’s wife Adele disappears early in the film after she moves to Germany, but her burgeoning career is referenced in numerous subtle ways. Adele is given a parallel existence alongside Caden’s, which we see in various media coverage placed innocuously in the background. I was reminded of that dramatic shift in “Being John Malkovich” when Craig Schwartz suddenly becomes a star puppeteer with a skyrocketing career.

I’m convinced somewhere in the film there is a masterpiece, one which requires constant attention, but for me it will likely take two or three more viewings to find it. For Kaufman though, it's worth the wait. Enjoy.

Wednesday, 10 September 2008

TIFF Report #14: GOMORRA

Gomorra (2008) dir. Matteo Garrone
Starring: Salvatore Abruzzese, Simone Sacchettino, Gianfelice Imparato, Vincenzo Altamura

**

“Gomorra” arrives in Toronto after a Grand Jury victory at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s billed as a realist view into the modern Italian mafia – not the “Sopranos”, not “Goodfellas”, or “The Godfather” - an Italian story made by Italians. But I think I’m suffering European social realist fatigue. Though it feels like an important movie, the emotional detachment from its characters left me underwhelmed and had me longing for more artificiality and dramatic manipulation.

In the tradition of "Traffic" or "Syriana" “Gomorra” interweaves a number of separate stories and different points of view into the world of this new type of mafia. There’s an elderly money runner who spends his days walking through the neighbourhood either collecting money or giving it out; A waste disposal broker and his protégé who buy a quarry and rent out the space to illegal toxic waste dumpers; A young teenage grocery clerk who takes the initiation to becoming a full-fledged gang member; A sullen tailor who betrays his mob dons by selling out to a group of Chinese sweatshop rivals. And the journey of a couple of young and raucous “Scarface” wanabees run who wild on the streets with reckless abandon.

Tailors? Corporate waste disposal? Elderly money runners? These subplots are intended to be the antidote to the salacious aggrandizement of the mob in Hollywood. It results in a narrative that purposely eschews drama and emotion and unfortunately interest.

The current social realist trend in European films is taking its toll on me. By using handheld cameras without traditional coverage, or editing, Garrone attempts to tell his “story” like the documentary-like approach of the Dardennes Bros, or last year’s Cannes winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” Unfortunately in ‘keeping it real’ he strips away all emotion and personality and distances himself from his characters. In fact, most of his actors are just moving bodies performing actions and dialogue that never really deepen, enlighten or connect us to the new world of Italian crime.

There’s a series of title cards at the end of the film which tell us some information about the state of the real Gamorra in Italy kind of like a call to action – like in Howard Hawks' original 1932 “Scarface”. I was shocked Garrone ended with this information. Because it just reinforces how vacant his film is, and how little we have learned about this subject.

The only subplots that maintained momentum were the stories of youth. The journey of Marco and Cirro stands out - a couple of bumbling idiots who are ballsy enough to steal cocaine right out of the hands of a group of dangerous African gangsters. They get away with it, which fuels their confidence that they can get away with everything. They command the majority of the standout scenes, including an eye-opening target practice scene (from the still above).

But despite a few standalone scenes, at the end of the film, we are left with the question – so what? To see some characters get killed on screen? Certainly not to get emotional involved with them or even deepen the complexities of Italian crime. Some will be attracted to the freshness of Garrone's approach to the familiar genre, but most will find it too vacant to really become the masterpiece it strives to be.

Tuesday, 9 September 2008

TIFF Report #13: BLINDNESS

Blindness (2008) dir. Fernando Mereilles
Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Don McKellar, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, Alice Braga

***

“Blindness” is a mixed bag of intriguing high concept intellectual ideas and thriller genre cliches. Unfortunately it’s an oil and water concoction. What’s frustrating is that both elements could have worked with a seemingly simple idiot check somewhere in the script stage. A couple of massive plot holes drown the entire second act and the film only barely emerges for air in the finale to save itself.

At a busy intersection a Japanese man (Yusuke Iseya) stops his car causing a massive logjam. For some reason he can’t see. He’s gone blind, but not darkness, a total blanket of whiteness with nothing visible. A kindly eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) examines him, but can’t find anything wrong. One by one more citizens experience the same affliction. Fearing a contagious infection, the government quarantines these individuals in an abandoned asylum. Among them are the Japanese man, his wife (Yoshino Kimura), a Brazilian prostitute (Alice Braga), a cheap petty thief (Don McKellar), an elder eye-patched black man (Danny Glover) and the kindly eye doctor and his wife (Julianne Moore). Inexplicably Moore’s character is the only one who can see, but she pretends to be afflicted so she can stay with her husband and help him through the trouble.

Once in the asylum, more people get interned. The government suddenly turns extremely hostile and violent towards them like lepers from the Middle Ages. This hostility bleeds into the asylum as the group becomes divided before an all out war for food begins with “Lord of the Lord Flies”-like dehumanization. The doctor’s wife who can see is the only one who can put a stop to the madness, but it means breaking down to the level of the dehumanized to achieve peace and resolution.

Mereilles crafts a stunner of an opening act. He sets up the scenario of a society gradually going blind with frightening real world paranoia. The film is in a unique artistic thriller mode. Don McKellar’s sharp dialogue draws us in as much as the characters are trying to figure out what’s going on.

Mereilles’ right hand man behind the camera is Cesar Charlone who shot of “City of God” and “The Constant Gardner”. A welcomed change is a concerted shift away from the hand-held grainy trend he helped start for a locked down pristine sharp look. Charlone covers the film with over-exposed whiteness to compliment the point of view of the infected. Surprisingly the extremity of the stylization never gets in the way of the story.

One of the subtle themes in the film is the worldly everywhere and nowhere location. The film is a three-way co-production, with over a dozen producers and a multi-national cast. Parts of Toronto, Sao Paulo, and Montevideo, Uruguay were used to create the unnamed city in which the story takes place. As a result it’s a metropolis we’ve never seen before – a fantasy city of sorts, like 1984 – a near future dystopia.

The elements are set up to produce a profound and unique take on the genre of near-future thrillers. Unfortunately the second act is marred by the “Lord of the Flies” factor, a bend to the usual post-apocalyptic story elements which we’ve seen in countless other movies.

It's a predictable course of cause and effect action no more intelligent or creative than that horrible Stephen King film “The Mist”. When Gael Garcia Bernal and Maury Chaykin enter the picture they are immediately defined as the ‘bad guys’, and start an illogical conflict with the rest of the bunch. When the conflict becomes violent and life-threatening there's a deus ex machina staring us (and the characters) right in the face, but it isn’t cashed in. The filmmakers failed to ask the fundamental question to themselves, “what would I do in such a situation?” Since moral objections became null and void once the bad guys started raping the women in exchange for food, it’s a simple answer; Julianne Moore can see, the bad guys must die.

What’s also never answered properly is why the government suddenly turns into Nazis and starts treating the asylum like a concentration camp. It’s a lazy device contrived to generate quick and easy conflict. From a multi-award winning filmmaking team and a Pulitzer Prize winning book we all expect something smarter than “The Mist”.

These two plot holes mar what is for two thirds a wonderful artistic near-future thriller.

Other related postings:
THE MIST

Blindness

Monday, 8 September 2008

TIFF Report #12: HOOKED

Hooked (2008) dir. Adrian Sitaru
Starring: Adrian Titieni, Ioana Flora, Maria Dinulescu

***

Everything coming out of Romania these days commands attention. Romanian director Adrian Sitaru’s debut feature which featured a gorgeous and buxom gal as it’s still image in the TIFF guidebook (see above) commanded my attention. “Hooked” is a deceptively creepy psychothriller reminiscent of early Roman Polanski and Michael Haneke and one of the pleasant unexpected surprises of the Festival.

A couple (Mihai and Sweetie) drive off for a peaceful picnic in the country. In the car ride up their bickering hints at deep-rooted troubles in the relationship. Suddenly Sweetie, the driver, hits a prostitute with her car. The woman is lifeless and assumed dead. After a lengthy debate the couple decide to bury the body instead of facing the criminal charges. But to their relief, before burial, the woman wakes up from unconsciousness.

The woman (who we now know as Ana) can’t remember the incident and so Mihai and Sweetie play dumb and keep quiet about the truth. Ana is soon ingratiated by the couple into their picnic. But as their conversations become more personal Ana’s motivations are revealed to be devious and potentially dangerous.

“Hooked” is a difficult film to penetrate. Sitaru shoots the film with what appears to be the crappiest video camera available. And it’s peculiarly amateurish style uses exclusively POV shots of the characters. As a result the camera whips and swishes around with the technical skill on the level of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Many people walked out of the theatre before the first act turn. Those who stayed were rewarded.

Once Ana enters the picture we forget about the style and get wrapped up in Sitaru’s fascinating dialogue. The more we get to know Ana the creepier the film becomes. Is Ana a psychopath in disguise preying on the innocence of Mihai and Sweetie? Or is she sincere in her concern for their relationship?

For the rest of the film I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and launch it into predictable genre territory, or at the very least compete with Michael Haneke and shock us with sudden violence.

“Hooked” never goes there. Instead Sitaru is surprisingly optimistic about the relationship of his characters. I saw Ana as the Mephistopheles character, like the Joker in “The Dark Knight” who chooses to mess with Mihai’s and Sweetie’s heads because she can. But her coy games are not completely without cause. Sweetie appears to have started the battle, and as the film progresses we deduce that Ana’s game is an act of revenge. Or is it?

The finale gave me a quiet smirk and nod of appreciation for satisfying me in a simple way I never expected. Beneath the rough amateurish technical exterior is a major filmmaking talent – a reminder of the ‘keep it simple stupid’ technical methods of those Dogma filmmakers in the 1990’s. Enjoy.

TIFF Report #11: UN CONTE DE NOEL

Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale) (2008) dir. Arnaud Desplechin
Starring: Mathieu Almaric, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Anne Consigny, Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni

*1/2

“Un Conte de Noel” bowed first at Cannes and now receives it’s North American festival debut at TIFF. Arnaud Desplechin weaves a sometimes serious, sometimes absurd look at a dysfunctional family reuniting at Christmas. It’s wildly inconsistent tones, inexplicable behaviour from its characters, over stylization from the director and a two and a half hour running time made this a frustrating experience and an exercise in cinematic self-stroking.

Over Christmas Junon (Catherine Deneuve) and her husband Abel have assembled a family reunion. It’s significant because it brings back into the family Henry (Mathieu Almaric) who was ostracized by her sister Elizabeth after a betrayal of fraud 4 years ago. It’s an awkward meeting, but the family is so big Elizabeth and Henri manage to avoid each other. Unfortunately Junon has cancer and requires a bone marrow transplant to cure her.

The central question is who will be the bone marrow donor –Henri or Paul. This provides the internal conflict for Elizabeth. Which is the lesser of two evils? Subject her son to the pain and danger of the extraction procedure, or give her beloved mother the ‘bad blood’ from the despised Henri. This provides a compelling moral throughline, but unfortunately Desplechin distracts us with excessive subplots and incomprehensible characterizations.

The film is a mish-mash of “The Royal Tenenbaums”, “Rules of the Game” and the bourgeois surrealism of Luis Buñuel. Arnaud is supremely confident his hodgepodge of cinematic stylizing will weave an idiocyncratic tapestry and entrance the audience through its 150 minutes. It’s just plain confusing, distracting, pretentious and agonizing.

Let’s start with the music. I made a mental count of the different types of music used in various scenes. Desplechin repeatedly uses a film noir cello-heavy brooding sound seemingly to raise some tension or intrigue, to which nothing is ever paid off. We are hear on occasion as the score, Celtic music, hip-hop, jazz, Indian tabla.

Desplechin throws just about every visual stylistic device at us bombarding us to a pulp with eclecticisms. Characters often talk directly to camera, there’s an animated opening sequence, freeze frames in the middle of a scene, etc etc.

There’s never short of conflict in "Un Conte de Noel" – which couldn’t be said about Olivier Assayas’ “Summer Hours”. Everyone seems to be at odds with each other. Ironically, some moments which should provide conflict don’t. For example, towards the end of the film Sylvia (Chiari Mastroianni), who is married to Ivan, offers herself to his cousin Simon, who I thought was gay?. Huh? They sleep together and the next morning they are discovered in bed together by their kids and Ivan himself. No one seems to care. I stopped caring about this movie long before that.

TIFF Report #10: MORE THAN A GAME

More than a Game (2008) dir. Kristopher Belman
Documentary

****

I’ve often said the best documentaries are unintentional and incalculable strokes of luck. “Capturing the Friedmans” was a stroke of luck, “Thin Blue Line” was a stroke of luck. Kristopher Belman has similar luck. Several years ago the unknown rookie filmmaker decided to follow his local Akron high school basketball team around for a short film. One of the players happened to be the soon-to-be NBA superstar LeBron James. Once James hit the big time Belman found himself sitting a very hot property, something he caudled and took his time to craft and perfect. The simple verite documentary, now completed, is perhaps the finest film ever made on the sport of basketball – even better than the revered “Hoop Dreams”.

It’s 2003 and the St. Vincent-St. Mary high school basketball team are about to play in the National Championship game. Against that background Belman traces the journey of it’s five key players from humble beginnings in grade school to their rollercoaster senior year under the national sport microscope thanks to the phenomenal talent of their leader LeBron James.

Belman is smart with the narrative structure. He doesn’t establish his characters in the first act, instead he staggers his flashbacks over the span of the entire film. Gradually we get to know about: Little Dru, the pint sized point guard and son of the coach who battles against the odds to play against players much taller than him; Romeo Travis, the arrogant outsider who harbours emotional insecurities because of his fractured childhood; Sian, the power forward who feels the pressure to get a scholarship and save his family from poverty; Coach Dru who takes over in junior year and succumbs to the publicity pressures of the LeBron hype machine. Belman saves LeBron’s story for the last. We are offered a rare glimpse into the birth of a superstar at every stage in his life, the heart of which is the relationship with his single-parent mother who struggled for years so her son could develop his talents.

LeBron comes off as an articulate and mature teenager. He handles with remarkable poise the pressure of being the so-called “Chosen One” from his famous Sport Illustrated Magazine article. And even though his team seems to demolish every opponent, it’s not always smooth sailing. Even though we know how it’s all going to turn out, Belman is able to create suspense and narrative ebb and flow with moments of utter despair and depression which threaten the hopes and dreams of each of the characters.

Belman has a gold mine of archival television footage as well as his own shot footage to work from. Nothing seems inaccessible; every aspect of the past 10 years of the players’ lives is available to show. Belman gives us glossy-slick colour, graphics, hip-hop music to amplify every emotion moment and story beat. It’s cut with the energy of a feature film. Montage scenes capture the energy and excitement of those whirlwind moments of the team’s rise to fame.

“More Than a Game” reminds me of those branded Disney sports movies like “The Rookie”, “Invincible” and “Remember the Titans”,which feel like emotional manipulative ‘true stories’ of impossible comebacks, and triumphs over diversity. But “More Than the Game” doesn’t need dramatic or artistic license to create false drama. The story of “More Than a Game” couldn’t be written or executed any better, and definitely not by Disney. And all the more impressive for Mr. Belman, a lucky break which he seizes and slamdunks with authority. It's a phenomenal film. Enjoy.

Sunday, 7 September 2008

TIFF Report #9: UNIVERSALOVE

Universalove (2008) dir. Thomas Woshchitz
Starring: Anica Dobra, Daniel Plier, Sascha Migge, Erom Cordeiro, Kyoichi Komoto

**

Director Thomas Woschitz is not to shy with his intentions – to create an abstract film about love, with no allusions toward traditional narrative. “Universalove” is symphony of emotions interconnected not through story but music and imagery.

The film intercuts a number of separate stories about the triumph and tragedy of love. We cut from New York, to Brazil, to Serbia, to Japan, to France. There’s rarely an establishing shot to tell us where we are. Location is deduced by the language the characters are speaking. Each of the stories involves a couple dealing with some form of tragedy or wistful longing for love.

The content of each vignette feels obligatory though and only serves as a makeshift coathanger on which the director can hang his grandiose emotional moments. Much of the action does not make any sense at all either. At one point a Japanese man who has been stalking a woman he doesn’t know gets stabbed by someone we never see. And the American woman at one point gets hit by car, but instead of going to the hospital her husband takes her to their home to die on the couch. Logic, smogic.

The credited co-author of the film is “Naked Lunch”, an Austrian indie rock band that provides the soundtrack throughline. The music is a melancholy rock soundscape of moaning guitars and moody pianos, “Explosions in the Sky” meets “Sigur Ros”. The filmmaker’s passion for the music is evident; unfortunately he doesn’t provide us with the imagery to match the power the music. Both the sound and picture needs to stand on its own for a film like this to work - Godfrey Reggio’s “Qatsi” trilogy being the best example.

Woshchitz’s visual style borrows from Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu (“Amores Perros”, “Babel”). The handheld grainy over-the-shoulder close-ups are also mixed with a number of slo-mo and time-lapse beauty shots. If Woschitz stuck exclusively with the stylized imagery as opposed to the grainy realism, he would have come closer to matching his soundtrack.

In the end “Universalove” is better as a music CD than the harmonious visual and auditory symphonic experience it desires to be. It’s a shame, I applaud the ambition to create such an abstraction, but by not fulfilling the potential only make me more frustrated.

TIFF Report #8: GENOVA

Genova (2008) dir. Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Willa Holland, Perla Haney-Jardine, Hope Davis

**1/2

Michael Winterbottom’s latest film tells a grim story of a family dealing with the death of their mother. Winterbottom adequately applies his on-location immersion modus operandi to this film, but the grim material is missing a spark of optimism to keep its audience from drowning in excessive grief.

The opening scene is played out with ominous tension. Winterbottom shows the tragic car accident which takes the life of devoted mother and wife (Hope Davis) to Joe (Colin Firth) and his two daughters Kelly (Willa Holland) and Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine). After the funeral, Joe decides to uproot the kids and move them to Genova Italy where he has been offered a teaching job.

Once in Italy, it’s culture shock for the kids. Kelly is a typical teenager and thus despises having to hang around her father and her pre-teen sister. At every opportunity she abandons Mary and Joe to exercise her burgeoning sexuality with local Italian boys. Mary, the youngest, is having the most difficulty with the loss. Her only method of coping is her waking visions of her ghostly mother which keeps her safe when alone. Catherine Keener plays Joe’s friend who guides them around the city and acts as their surrogate mother. Unfortunately for the family the city of Genova acts as both an enabler and an inhibiter to the grieving process.

Winterbottom and his crew appeared to have had a wonderful time filming the movie. The location is stunning and serves as a great promotional piece for Genovese tourism. Marcel Zyskind, Winterbottom’s frequent collaborator lenses the film with a light and mobile handheld digital camera. While the colours becomes muted by the video-ness of the image, the camera is free to move covertly through the public streets interacting with real live Italian pedestrians.

At times the documentary-like location shooting can feel self-conscious and draw attention to itself. Winterbottom, listed as a co-editor, often cuts randomly to locals in the background who seem unaware they’re being filmed. While it’s authentic, it’s also an obviously attempt to be authentic, when authenticity isn’t required.

The heart of the story is how each of the family members deals with the mother’s death. Kelly’s coming-of-age story is the most accessible because it’s structured with a traditional and familiar character arc. Unlike some of his other films, Winterbottom keeps the content PG13. Some tasteful skin is flashed, just enough to remind us of those days of innocent love and sexual discovery. Both Joe and Mary are characterized with less completeness. Joe ‘reacts’ more than ‘acts’. Once he’s in Genova he’s a passive character and does nothing to advance the story. Mary drives the film. All the tension and action is motivated by her decisions. But Mary serves more as a device than a developing character.

Winterbottom crafts only a couple of ‘cinematic’ set-piece scenes of danger – both involve Mary getting lost. The finale is a contrived conversion of the three characters. It’s a clichéd scene, which we’ve seen in a number of Hollywood genre films. Though it seems out of place for Winterbottom’s free-form techniques, I certainly welcomed the satisfying suspenseful climax.

“Genova” frustrates because Winterbottom never adequately defines his characters’ goals and instead lingers too long with the grief. I’m still questioning if it’s a coming of age story, or a thriller, or an art house mood film. It’s all and none of the above. Whatever it is, we desperate need a spark of optimism, even a dash of what Danny Boyle supplied us with in “Slumdog Millionaire”.

TIFF Report #7: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) dir. Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel, Irfan Kahn, Anil Kapoor, Freida Pinto

****

One of the great crowd-pleasers of the Festival so far is Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire”. It’s a sweeping coming of age film, love story, exotic adventure and triumph of the human spririt all rolled up into a film about a young man who plays India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. Danny Boyle injects his story with the same cinematic energy as his other classics “Trainspotting”, “28 Days Later”. It’s a surefire indie hit coming to a theatre near you.

Pitted against the other grim realist dramas I’ve seen so far at TIFF, “Slumdog Millionaire” stands out as old-fashioned Hollywood escapism. Yet, there isn’t a recognizable Hollywood face in the entire film. It’s all set in India in 2006. A young Indian man Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be Millionaire”. He appears to have won but instead of celebrating we first see him strung up and tortured by the police who have accused him of cheating. After many excruciating torture techniques Jamal won’t confess. So they sit him down in front of the videotape of the show and Jamal recounts how he knew each and every question on the show.

As each question is read out by the India equivalent of Regis Philbin, we flashback to the specific incident which recalled each of Jamal’s answers. And so in one half hour game show we get to see a sampling of Jamal’s extraordinary young life. We see Jamal as a child become orphaned, live on the streets begging, stealing, to survive – living a life of poverty like millions and millions of other impoverished kids. Except this one slumdog is about to win the biggest jackpot in the country and make him a millionaire.

Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy use the life story flashback technique of “Citizen Kane” as it’s narrative structure. After the first couple of flashbacks I figured out what the technique was and I expected a predictable course of action. Indeed the film doesn’t waver from its course, but Jamal’s life is so extraordinary it becomes a unique and eye opening view into Indian subculture.

As expected with a ‘Danny Boyle film’ he sets a blistering pace and challenges us to keep up. There are numerous chases through the populated Mumbai streets, bold eye-popping colours, and an exciting pop music soundtrack. Boyle has always had a great ear for music. Whether it’s the Brit pop music in “Trainspotting” or his pulsing ambient rhythms of “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine”, there’s always something special to listen to in his film. A.R. Rahman (“Elizabeth The Golden Age”, “Water”) provides an eclectic score mixed in with fresh energetic Indian pop music. There are few familiar tunes, but it had me yearning to find the soundtrack and listen to it in the car ride home.

I saw the film in press and industry screening early yesterday morning. It was 9:00am and most of the crowd, like me, were still trying to wake up after a long day of movie watching, partying, or in my case writing late night reviews. After 120mins the film ended on such a high the entire audience applauded spontaneously – a rarity for the jaded businesslike industry crowd. And even more rare is that the audience stayed through the end credits.

After Boyle bombards us with so much story, adventure, melodrama and nail-biting game show suspense, he’s still not content with pleasing us. Over the final credits the entire cast treats us to a raucous Bollywood style dance sequence, intercut with flashing picture credits set to a foot-tapping bangra number. “Slumdog Millionaire” is crowd-pleasing optimistic filmmaking at it’s best. It shines a beacon of light on a subsection of the world that has little hope. Enjoy.

Saturday, 6 September 2008

TIFF Report #6: HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (2008) dir. Kevin Rafferty
Documentary

**1/2

“Harvard Beats Yale 29-29” is a difficult film to review. We get to see a play by play recollection of a great nail-biting game of football. But while the game is great and had me on the edge of my seat, the film is rudimentary and barely anything better than what we see on “NFL Films”, which, ironically, is more cinematic than Rafferty’s.

Kevin Rafferty recounts for us one of the great U.S. College football matches – a regular season game between Ivy Leaguers Harvard and Yale in 1968. In traditional documentary fashion Rafferty intercuts the chronological order of the game with the interviews of the participants. A familiar face is Tommy Lee Jones, who actually played on the Harvard team. The others are average Joes who grew up and became regular anonymous people, but still retained the minute details of every aspect of this memorable game.

In the first half Rafferty devotes much time examining the historical context of the time. It was 1968 during Vietnam, the many campus protests going on, birth control and so on. Yale, ultraconservative, contrasts against the rebellious liberals of Harvard. And it so happens that George W Bush was in Yale at the time and Al Gore was in Harvard at the time. In fact, Mr. Jones roomed with Gore. But apart from one funny anecdote from Jones about Gore, the President and former Vice-President are just minor footnotes to the main action. The second of the film concentrates solely on the game. Via the play by play TV coverage we get to relive the intense drama of the sport rise to awesome heights.

An interesting note is that Rafferty was Michael Moore’s cameraman on “Roger and Me” and ironically a cousin of George W. Bush. But for a cinematographer Rafferty’s videography is barely a notch above a student film. And his chosen interview locations don’t do anything to idolize these once great players. Take a note from Errol Morris, the master of sit down interviews. The background of one’s subject is an important visual tool. And since Rafferty’s film is over 50% talking heads, the blandness of the various kitchens, home offices, libraries and suburban backyards weighs down the cinematic aspects of the film.

And Mr. Rafferty, you even have Tommy Lee Jones in your film – you should be able to afford a better cinematographer at least. But Rafferty stubbornly does everything himself – write, shoot, edit, sound.

To the film’s credit, the Yale and Harvard teams do have some fun personalities. Tommy Lee Jones is a star, and it’s fun to watch his drole sense of humour frustrate the interviewer. Mike Bouscaren is the highlight. A key Yale player who becomes the film’s ‘villain’. Rafferty is clever to bring out his enormous ego from beneath his soft spoken and quiet interior.

“Harvard Beats Yale 29-29” is a great game but adequate filmmaking and I expect more from TIFF Documentary.

TIFF Report #5: HUNGER

Hunger (2008) dir. Steve McQueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham, Brian Milligan, Liam Cunningham

***1/2

“Hunger” which has been coasting through festivals piling up accolades since it’s debut at Cannes bows in North America at the Toronto International Film Festival. Director Steve McQueen tells the true story of Bobby Sands and his group of Irish dissidents held in a Northern Irish prison in the early 80’s. Harrowing is too small a word to describe the brutality brought to screen by McQueen and his astonishing lead actor Michael Fassbender.

McQueen’s dramatization of the elaborate means of the inmates to fuck with the guards and practice their gross forms of aggressive protest is mesmerizing. While it can be a sickening experience to watch Davey and his cellmate smear their own faeces on their wall, or the whole cellblock dump their urine into the hallways for the guards to mop up, McQueen shoots the film with a beautiful artistic cinematic eye. Instead of the fashionably gritty handheld techniques of social realism McQueen opts for lengthy and often stunning shots of artistic beauty to contrast the brutality.

While “Hunger” is an impressive display of physical brutal, the film arguably suffers from because of its realism. In the final act during Sand’s agonizing hunger strike, McQueen plays these days of terminal sickness as matter of fact – too much so. After 90mins of constant beatings we desperately want some to express an emotion towards Sands. No one ever does, not even his parents ask him to stop. Not even the doctors ask to stop.

There are also some glaring stylistic inconsistencies. The first half of the film is completely different from the first. We are introduced to a depressed prison guard Ray (Stuart Graham) who day after day beats and pummels the prisoners in an effort to maintain authority and discipline. We see his unhappy wife frown as Ray checks under his car every morning for IRA explosives. He is given much screen time, but leaves the story quickly with cause, but without the effect. There’s also Davey (Brian Milligan) a newbie to the prison who becomes our entry point into prison. We watch him slowly and carefully undress and enter the hellhole of the prison. He is framed as the protagonist in the film, but he literally disappears from the film unceremoniously at the midpoint.

The second half is Sand’s personal revolt, his hunger strike. One head-scratcher of a shot is a static long take of Sands and an IRA leader in dialogue for 10mins uninterrupted. Of course, I enjoy long takes (I wrote a lengthy article on it), but McQueen’s extends his shot so long (much of it with extraneous dialogue), it becomes a piece of cinematic aggrandizement which stops the film dead.

Much talk will be about lead actor Michael Fassbender’s Christian Bale-like physical transformation. Losing weight for a role doesn’t impress me, but Fassbender offers stunning performance deeper than the mere physical. The aforementioned long take dialogue scene, while excessive and meandering, features a dynamic moral and political tête-à-tête with his priest. The two debate the ethics of starving oneself for one’s beliefs, and whether it’s the right way to convince the British to make concessions. The Priest calls it suicide, but Sands calls it murder. Fassbender is magnetic and utterly convincing as a stubborn but passionate man who is willing to make his own body a vessel or statement for the cause. Enjoy.

Friday, 5 September 2008

TIFF Report #4: FROM MOTHER TO DAUGHTER

From Mother to Daughter (2008) dir. Andrea Zambelli
Documentary

***1/2

“From Mother to Daughter” is a deceptively simple, but wholly satisfying documentary. A reunion of elderly Italian rice field workers rekindles their love of song, which turns into a legitimate traveling music chorus band spreading their history, culture and love of song to youth around the world.

The opening introduces us to a group of Italian labourers known as the ‘Mondine’ – young women who, from the 1940’s - 1970’s, worked arduously as rice weeders for local Italian farmers. Archival footage is intercut with a reunion of these elderly but spry ladies decades after they last saw these rice fields. There’s little conflict or drama in the reunion, but it’s an interesting history lesson into the turbulent post-war, post-fascist period when socialist values flourished.

During their reunion the ladies often break out into song, their traditional labour folk tunes which helped them get through their long days on the rice fields. The harmonies and passion for the music is infectious every time they sing. It’s a marvel in fact. And so as the film moves along, the story becomes less about the reunion and more about the formation of a music chorus group centered around these fabulous songs. We see the ladies perform in various venues and events to large crowds. They even join up with an eclectic pop group and become a nationally sought-after musical sensation.

The title, “From Mother to Daughter” can seem a misnomer. It’s not so much about daughters and mothers, as about family and the relationship of youth to the elderly. Zambelli is careful to show the spectators during the many song sequences. They are all young people, more than half the age of the singers. Of course, youngsters are always taught to respect one’s elders, and the Italian youth treat the chorus with reverence and near idolization.

When the ladies are not in song, their stories and joie de vivre is interminably interesting. Italian is a lyrical language, the cadence of its speech patterns can be oddly hypnotic. And listening to a dozen elder women chattering in their native working class tongue becomes a harmonious song in it’s own right.

Zambelli uses uncomplicated and traditional cinema verite style to tell his story. Other than the occasional intertitles to identify a location there is no one other than the characters telling us what’s going on – no narrator, preamble, or on camera documentarian. Style is put on the shelf in order to showcase, unencumbered, the raw power of the beautiful songs sung by the passionate ladies of the Mondine.

In working class societies in any culture there’s always been an association of song and work. For example, another great documentary, “Men of the Deeps”, tells a similar story of a Canadian miner chorus group. The most touching scene in "From Mother to Daughster" is when the ladies journey to America. They land in Detroit to play a cultural exchange concert. They couldn’t be more out of place. Yet, during a boring ol’ ferry ride across the river they treat the English-speaking and normally zoned out American ferry-riders to an impromptu concert. The reactions and reverence of those urban Americans to their performance transcended nationality, race, culture and language. “From Mother to Daughter” is a special film. Enjoy.

TIFF Report #3: SAUNA

Sauna (2008) dir. Antti-Jussi Annila
Starring: Ville Virtanen, Tommi Eronen, Viktor Klimenko, Sonja Petäjäjärvi

***1/2

“Sauna” is a truly wonderful cinema experience – a dark gothic horror near-masterpiece which mashes the existential atmosphere of Andrei Tarkovsky with the mindbending terror of J-Horror and a dash of the Spanish films of Guillermo Del Toro.

“Sauna” is a Finnish-Russian co-production, a unique collaboration, set in a unique time and place virtually untouched in the movie landscape. It’s the year 1595, on the border between Finland and Russia. A long bloody war between the Swedes and Russians has just ended, with Finland caught in the cross-fire. A group of Finnish and Russian geographers is on a journey to map the new border between the two Empires. When they happen upon an uncharted village in the middle of a giant swamp they encounter a dark ghostly curse which threatens the lives of the group.

Screenwriter Iiro Küttner and director Antti-Jussi Annila have a traditional ghost story on their hands, but execute it with metaphysical and at times confusing narrative. It’s a complicated set-up to start with and the filmmakers are careful about telling too much information which we couldn’t deduce visually. The unfamiliar period of history means there’s a political dynamic which takes a while to grasp. We are given few details of the village, the sauna, the history of its inhabitants and the dark forces around.

But the heart and central conflict of the film is clear. Our heroes are the two Finnish geographers, Erik and Knut, who are also brothers. Erik is introduced early as a maddog warrior with 73 killings on his conscience. Knut is along for the journey to help him get a job as a teacher, so he can live a quiet scholastic life. When Erik murders a Russian villager and leaves a young girl locked in an underground cellar to die, their divergent principles put the brothers at odds.

The other point of conflict is the relationship of the geographers with the village itself and the ghosts that haunt it. The presence of these metaphysical forces causes each character to have horrific delusions. This feeds into the strongest theme of the film - its religious conflict. Some research into the history of Russian/Scandanavian relations would probably create deeper meaning in the film, but we gather there’s a bitter feud between the Russian Orthodoxy and the Scandanavian Protestantism. But the real conflict is Erik’s own acceptance of God and his need for confession of his laundry list of sins. Though the film is vague about the dark forces, we gather it’s that vengeful God, which Catholics are taught to fear. And so it becomes a truly terrifying Wrath of God.

Like Tarkovsky Annila uses the cold and lifeless environment to create mood. But he also has great lead actors to bring life to the two Finnish characters. Tommi Eronen and Ville Virtanen are a great pairing. Virtanen is the great discovery though. Annila gives his character a natural arc of personal redemption and the need to find family honour, Virtanen's hardened and course face appears to be carved out of stone, each wrinkle and facial crevasse reads as the physical expression of these emotional battle scars.

When Annila is not slowly burying the atmosphere and tension into our skin, he’s shocking us with jolts of traditional horror genre goodness. The climax is a terrifying sequence anchored by a great reveal of the physical manifestation of the dark forces. Annila pays off all the low lying tension with great satisfaction. There’s almost no denouement or lingering time after the climax, which can bring up the question, ‘so what was the point of all that?’

The quick ending allows us to formulate the meaning behind the actions in the film ourselves. While all the dots aren’t connected for us, the themes and conflict are clear enough for the film to make perfect sense. I hope distributors pick up the film, because there’s a wealth of great filmmaking talent on display that needs to be discovered. Enjoy.

Thursday, 4 September 2008

TIFF Report #2: SUMMER HOURS

Summer Hours (2008) dir. Olivier Assayas
Starring: Juliet Binoche, Charles Berling, Jeremie Renier, Edith Scob, Isabelle Sadoyan

***

Olivier Assayas certainly does not make the same film twice. His credits range from his ode de cinema, “Irma Vep”, his Canadian heroin film, “Clean” and his sleazy corporate thriller “Demon Lover”. “Summer Hours” is a return to unabashed art-house cinema. It arrives at the Toronto International Film Festival already being released in Europe. The film stands little chance of staking a claim on North American audiences other than the discriminating art house cineaste, but as a prestige piece it's a fine example of introspective European cinema.

Assayas sets the film in the world of the educated bourgeois upper class of highly discriminating tastes. The film opens with a birthday celebration for Helene Berthier (Edith Scob). She is the neice of an internationally renowned and long deceased artist, Paul Gauthier. Helene is now the matriarch of huge family of 3 children and numerous grandchildren. When Helene dies, she bequeaths a large country home and an extensive collection of artwork, which is much sought after by numerous museums.

Frederic (Charles Berling), the eldest son, feels the pressure to hold onto and maintain the estate so their grandkids can one day enjoy the same fruits they experienced. But since Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) lives in the New York and Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) lives in the China, they both vote to sell the property. The majority wins and so we slowly watch as the appraisers dismantle a century of family treasures, for the sake of money and convenience.

“Summer Hours” forces us and the characters to put a value of our memories. The artwork of Gauthier is treated as part of the family – the legacy of which contributed to education and successful careers of the entire family. Even though audiences may not identify with the dilemma of cashing in a fortune of priceless art, the loss of one's tangible memories will resonate with everyone.

Assayas makes a conscious effort to suppress all conflict and visualizing his character’s emotions. In fact there’s almost no conflict whatsoever. The biggest decision made in the film is the vote to decide what do with the property. Frederic, Adrienne and Jeremie debate this after dinner. Each sibling states their case, and as mentioned, the vote to sell wins out. Frederic respects his brother and sister’s decisions. There’s no malice or scheme to be had, no backstabbing or ulterior motives. Assayas puts the audience into the lives of real people. He lets the audience feels the emotion of their loss. No tears are shed, no anger and drunken speeches. A great representation of this tone is the wonderful tracking shot with the old caretaker Eloise through the empty house after all the artwork has been removed.

This careful and honest approach to the drama comes at a cost though too. It’s uncinematic, undramatic and for many people, for lack of a better word, boring. Since there is only one plot point in the film, we don’t know where the film will end. It doesn’t have a natural conclusion. There’s a series of fade outs in the final 15mins, a no-no, especially when we know there will not be traditional narrative closure. But Assayas does provide thematic closure by staging the wonderful final scene in the house. It’s a subtle bookend to the opening scene and puts into greater perspective the incalculable treasure the Gauthier have sold off. Enjoy.

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

CANADIAN FILMS AT TIFF

Yesterday the full line up of Canadian films for the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival were announced.

Please go to Canadian Film Dose for the full, easy to read list.
Click HERE

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