My Mini TIFF 2017 Recap

Every year, a part of me wonders if it will be my last year attending TIFF. When my oldest daughter was born 6 years ago in mid-August, I skipped TIFF that year, and in the five years since, I’ve only attending two or three days – far from the week I used to spend, watching between 30 and 40 films. This year, it was 3 days and 14 movies – and I thought often that I have no idea how I used to do this for a week – especially considering in those days, I had to go back and forth on the train at the beginning and end of each day. I’m spoiled now springing for a cheap Toronto hotel – and I’m still exhausted my sometime on day 2. TIFF certainly has its share of problems – which I won’t really delve into here – but this year, like every year, I still loved it. Yes, I was tired – but it was also exhilarating. I liked or loved most of the films I saw this year – only hated 1 (we’ll get to that) – and it’s always a pleasure to be surrounded my so many film lovers and films for three days. So, as much of a headache (literal and figurative) it is to attend TIFF every year, I’ll be back, God willing, next year. As is my usual custom in my TIFF recap, I’ll start with the worst film I saw – and end with the best – although the rest is certainly not in order of preference, but just in an order that made sense. I even managed to see the People’s Choice Award winner at the fest for the first time since Slumdog Millionaire in 2008 – and two other prizewinners as well – the People’s Choice Documentary Winner and the Platform winner as well. Anyway, on with it.

 

First the film I hated - April's Daughter (Michael Franco) – which is a film that annoyed me to no end. Franco is clearly inspired by Michael Haneke (who, while being a great filmmaker, does have a lot to answer for in terms of the filmmakers he has inspired) – but the story he tells is nonsensical – a needless, thoughtless provocation about a woman (Almodovar favorite Emma Suarez – doing what she can with a horrible role) as a woman who has all but abandoned her two daughters – one in her early 20s, another who is 16 – and now seven months pregnant. Suarez eventually does return – saying she’ll be there to help raise her grand-daughter – but then basically kidnaps the baby, and seduces the kid’s 17 year old father. Why she does this – or the idiot teenager lover does it – is never explained, and no information is given. I’m all for ambiguity, but Franco is cheating here, as he gives you nothing to work with. How this scored a win at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard program is beyond me.

 

The only film I didn’t really like was The Insult (Ziad Doueiri) – his follow-up to The Attack. That film looked at all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and saw victims and victimizers on all sides – and offered all humanity and sympathy. The Insult tries hard to do the same thing – this time in terms of the conflict between Christians in Lebanon, and the Palestinian refugees, who have been there for decades. I appreciate what the film is trying to do – but it withholds far too information from the audience, just so it can spring it on you to “shock” you – and after a while, it just feels like you’re getting jerked around. Still, until April’s Daughter which was frustrating and boring, The Insult is neither – it’s an entertaining bad movie – one with good performances, that fully embraces the contrivances of the courtroom drama. It’s a foreign film I could envision becoming a box office hit in North American (meaning it makes like $1 million here) – because it offers confront in more sense than one.

 

While I cannot really say I enjoyed Makala (Emmanuel Gras) – I admired it a great deal. This documentary follows a young man in the Congo who chops down a giant tree, chops it into smaller pieces, makes charcoal out of it, packs it all in bags, straps them to his old bicycle, and pushes it 50km into the closest town, where he has to try and sell it all. All that sounds about as entertaining as it plays – and yet, I couldn’t help, but be drawn into the film. Yes, it goes on a little long, and I’m not 100% sure what the extended church sequence at the end is supposed to mean. You also have to simply admire the filmmaking – and the dedication it took to make the film, and the young man’s journey. I know now more than I ever need to know about how you make charcoal in the Congo – but I’m glad I did.

 

For the second year in a row, I went to see the latest film by the most prolific Korean auteur The Day After (Hong Sang-soo). Like most of Hong’s films, it deals with the romantic dealings with a powerful middle aged man, and the younger women in his life. This time though – he’s not a film director (shock!) – but as the head of a publishing house and a writer – who spends most of the day with his new assistant (Hong favorite Kim Min-hee) – while he’s also juggling a wife and mistress, both of whom will show up during the course of the day. The film is undeniable minor Hong – it’s nowhere near as good as my favorites of his Right Now, Wrong Then or The Day He Arrives (although it shot in the same beautiful black and white as the later) – yet seeing it at the end of a long day of screenings was somehow very comforting. He repeats his themes most of the time anyway, but watching his variations on that theme are fascinating. I hardly loved the film – but I still quite liked it.

 

For filmmakers working (just) outside their comfort zone, we had Let the Corpses Tan (Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani). They team behind Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears apparently decided they had taken their barely narrative exploration of giallo films as far as they could – so they set their sights instead on spaghetti westerns and low-budget European exploitation crime films. For a feeling of what the film is like, just think of a Quentin Tarantino almost completely devoid of plot, character or dialogue – and add more leather than you could imagine. All that probably sounds like I didn’t like the movie – but I had a blast with it – as a group of criminals, hiding out at the secluded home of an artist – who is crazier than any of the criminals – are confronted by a pair a of cops, and then start double and triple crossing each other with such frequency that you couldn’t keep track if you wanted to. The film is a wickedly stylish blast – full of gunshot blast, creaking leather and blood galore. None of it makes sense, or is trying to – and I a lot of fun with it. It’s too bad most will not see it in a theater, where they will be deafened by each and every gunshot (there are a lot).

 

Another film that looked to the past for much of its style was the Platform section winner Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton) – who clearly watched some Sam Peckinpah before making this outback Western about an aboriginal man who kills a white man – with very good reason – and goes on the run from the law. The film is great on style, and has some fine performances – and it’s good to see a film like from the point of view of the aboriginal for once (and made by Thornton, who is aboriginal himself). The film runs out of steam for me in its last 30 minutes, when it goes from a tracking film a la The Searchers, into an outback courtroom drama – but overall, this is a solid film, and a welcome addition to the genre.

 

His first film, Lebanon, won the Venice Film Festival all the way back in 2009 – and second prize there last week for his long awaited follow-up - Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz). In many ways, Foxtrot is a companion piece to his first film – that documented his time during Israeli-Lebanon war, and this one is about a veteran of that war, who is told his son was just killed during his military service – and too paralyzed by inaction. The film takes some surreal twists from there – the highlight is the second act, set at a remote checkpoint in the middle of nowhere – and is funny, touching, and ultimately heartbreaking. It’s also a tough film that has angered some back in Israel – but Maoz is fine with that. Foxtrot will hopefully find the audience it deserves – it should be seen and discussed.

 

A couple of French directors made stunning debuts films here. The first Custody (Xavier Legrand) about a custody battle between the parents, that turns violent. The film starts with a lengthy, tense sequence in family court – and each scene after grows more and more intense from there. The final act of the movie is as terrifying as any horror movie you could imagine, and all the more so because it feels so real. It’s such a simple story in so many way – but just done really, really well. The second is an actual horror movie Revenge (Coralie Fargeat) – a rape-revenge movie from a female director for a change. This time neither the rape itself nor the gorgeous woman at the center are eroticized or fetishized – it’s harsh and unrelenting. From there, it really does go fairly bonkers and bloody, right up until its wonderful climax. This is a new horror classic – and I cannot wait to see what Coralie Fargeat does next.

 

From new French filmmakers to a French legend - Faces, Places (Agnes Varda & JR) – which won the People’s Choice documentary award was a pure delight from beginning to end – as the 88 year old Varda teams up with a photographer more than 50 years her junior, to travel around France talking to people, and putting up giant photos wherever they are able to. I’m not sure what else to say about it, other than to note that Varda is already winning an Oscar this year – a long overdue lifetime achievement award – and if she added a Best Documentary award to her mantle as well, I wouldn’t complain. The film is simple, yet perfect just as it is.

 

Now, let’s move onto the four larger films I saw at the festival – those that will be vying (or attempting to) anyway Oscars in a few months. You can certainly pencil in a Best Actor nomination (and possible win) for Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (Joe Wright). The film itself is a straight ahead prestige movie – albeit with some very impressive aspects (the cinematography and especially the score are great) that along with Oldman’s brilliant, blustery performance under layer upon layer of make-up, help make up for some of the screenplays missteps (no one is going to believe that sequence on the underground). The film itself makes an interesting companion piece to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk – this one concentrates on the first month of Churchill’s time in office, when he was getting pressured to make a peace deal with Hitler – and both films culminate with his famous speech in the wake of Dunkirk – in Nolan’s film delivered by a soldier reading it in the paper, here with Oldman screaming it brilliantly. Oldman has been one of the best actors in the world for decades now, and yet he only has one Oscar nomination (for his great turn in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). The film should also get Joe Wright back on the career path he probably envisioned for himself after his first two films – Pride & Prejudice and Atonement – as he’s struggled since then. No one is going to call Darkest Hour innovative or original – but it works on precisely its own turns.

 

A better biopic for me was I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie) – the wonderfully funny film documenting the life and times of Tonya Harding – wonderfully played by Margot Robbie, with a killer supporting turn by Allison Janney as her mother, and fine work by Sebastian Stan as her ex-husband as well. The film knows its time period well – hell, this feels like a 1990s film in almost every way, which makes me as easy mark, as this was the era that made me fall in love with films as a teenager – and this is the type of film I loved then. The film is wickedly funny, and yet strangely sympathetic to all its characters – it would have been easier to mock them all, which this film stays just on this side of not doing. The film is also a reminder of just how miraculous Harding’s story almost was – if she hadn’t been involved in what everyone in the film calls “the incident”, and got a few different breaks, it would have been one of the greatest underdog sports stories in history. Instead it’s this wonderful mess of a thing – and the film fully embraces that mess.  Pure entertainment done well.

 

It was a surreal experience to watch The Shape of Water (Guillermo Del Toro) in the Elgin Theater, considering parts of it were shot in the Elgin Theater. In many ways, this feels like the film Del Toro has been warming up his entire career – this man who clearly loves monsters has crafted a rich fantasy about a mute woman (a wonderful Sally Hawkins) who quite literally loves a monster. Surrounded by a fine supporting cast – Richard Jenkins is a delight, Michael Shannon oozes menace, and both Octavia Spencer and Michal Stuhlberg do fine work as well – and containing Del Toro’s trademark eye for production design, cinematography, costumes, and a wonderful Alexandre Desplat score – this is Del Toro at his most whimsical and fantastical. It’s hard not to fall for this film.

 

But the best film at the festival that I saw, was also the film that won the People’s Choice Award - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh). McDonagh’s screenplay is the star here, in his film fully of snappy dialogue in which Frances McDormand plays the mother of a teenage girl who was raped and murdered, and whose killer has not been found – so she takes some drastic steps to put pressure on the police. You aren’t like to see a better ensemble cast this year – Woody Harrelson is great as the Sheriff, dying of cancer, who can dish out as well as take, Sam Rockwell, finds surprising levels to a violent deputy – and Peter Dinklage turns what I first thought was a nothing role into something quite great (his final scene in the film is I think perhaps the key one in the film – as you see things in a different way after that. The film starts out hilarious, but edges into darkness and tragedy – and ends on a note that I cannot quite describe. It’s a delicate balancing act, but one McDonagh pulls off effortlessly. This is one of the very best films of the year.

 

So that’s it for me for TIFF 2017. Here’s hoping I can attend next year as well.