I am a film junkie. There, I've admitted it.Movies are not only my business and my pleasure, but something I need a steady supply of in order to function with some degree of normalcy. Put me out in nature for too long, away from a movie screen or a DVD player, and I start to get squirrelly.
For movie junkies like me, the Toronto International Film Festival is Mecca. Toronto is arguably the most important film festival in the world, second only to Cannes in terms of prestige and scope, but far friendlier and more manageable. Many of the year's biggest movies premiere here, as well as hundreds of smaller, more unusual gems that will never again be seen anywhere near North America. The film industry flocks to Toronto every year, tapping into the legendary enthusiasm of the city's movie-mad audiences, and movie theaters are everywhere, most of them full.
This year's festival features some 345 movies from 50 countries, so about a week before I leave I begin scouring the festival Web site, picking the most promising, prioritizing and creating grids in an attempt to fit as many movies as possible into the eight days I'll be there. It takes the better part of an afternoon just to read through all the film synopses, whittling my list down to 60 films.
Saturday, Sept. 7I arrive in Toronto early in the afternoon, with just enough time to grab a cab and check in with the festival's press office.
The festival's nerve center, situated in two adjacent hotels, is a condensed, elaborately interconnected network of press liaison offices and suites housing publicists for the various films and studios. The whole area is a bubbling vortex of journalists, publicists, producers, agents, movie stars, filmmakers, buyers, sellers and freeloaders all hanging out, sizing up the films, jockeying for position and having fun.
4 p.m. La Vie Nouvelle turns out to be a terrible choice for a first taste of Toronto. The movie sucks, frankly, although I suppose you could be charitable and say that it sucks in an interesting sort of way. The film is set in one of those decimated modern urban landscapes that could be anywhere, where characters without names stare silently out windows and periodically engage in degrading sex acts. It's all hopelessly pretentious, and I soon begin counting the walkouts just to keep myself awake.
6 p.m. This is where the festival really starts for me, with Todd Haynes' remarkable Far from Heaven. It's one of the festival's hottest tickets, so I line up early, which turns out to be a smart move. As it happens, there are not enough seats to accommodate everyone in line, and several hundred people are eventually turned away — including celebrity critic Roger Ebert, who is later lambasted in the Canadian papers for throwing a "hissy fit" over not getting in. Ebert shoots back in his own column, claiming that the festival's press screening system is in dire need of reorganization, that the Canadian journalists are America-bashers with inferiority complexes, and that he has never hissed.
The movie is great, by the way.
Sunday, Sept. 8Up at the crack of dawn to make the rounds with publicists, making sure I get in to the films I want to see today. As Roger Ebert can attest, a basic press pass does not guarantee entry even into press-only screenings, which are strictly first come, first served. As for public screenings, you need a "hard ticket" to assure admittance.
I stop by the Miramax suite, where I find myself the lucky recipient of a coveted hard ticket to the sold-out morning screening of Frida. (Actually, I later learn, virtually every public screening at this festival is sold out, right down to the most obscure Sardinian documentary on goat herding).
9:30 a.m. I waltz into the theater, attracting glares from the Frida faithful who've been standing in line all morning. When it's all over, I almost feel guilty for not liking the movie more.
11:30 a.m. Just enough time to catch the tail end of a press conference for The Wild Thornberrys Movie, a kiddie cartoon that has inexplicably shown up in Toronto. The press conference is less than half full, and the organizers of the event are so grateful to have another warm body in the room, they present me with a limited edition, hand-painted Russian nesting doll featuring various Thornberrys characters. They've given out only a handful of these and I make a mental note to check when I get home to see how many wind up on eBay.
Maybe I'm just disoriented from circling the publicity maze too quickly, but when I get off the elevator and literally bump into Salma Hayek, it takes a second to realize that this is in fact the very same face I've been staring at all morning in Frida. In the flesh, she's barely 5 feet tall.
1 p.m. Across town, I take a seat in the back for a special event with Paul Schrader, best known as the writer of Taxi Driver, and Brian De Palma, director of movies like Scarface and The Untouchables. It's a cozy little chat in front of an intimate crowd of 50 or so, 10 of whom are technicians and cameramen documenting the event. The two longtime friends agree that Paul Thomas Anderson is the Great White Hope of American Cinema but don't see much else promising in our future. "What I find distressing when I teach film students," says De Palma, "is that they're whining and complaining and calling you an old hack, and you look at them and you know these kids are not going anywhere."
3 p.m. I arrive early, but not early enough, for Japon, a relatively unheralded Mexican film I was dying to see. The screening is completely sold out. That an obscure art film from Mexico can sell out a large theater at this festival might be good news for the future of cinema, but it doesn't do much for all of us poor saps who couldn't get into the screening.
5 p.m. No expense seems to have been spared on the party for Real Women Have Curves, a little independent film that somebody obviously thinks might, with the proper promotion, be the next My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I make myself at home between the bar and the mounds of smoked salmon, freshly shucked oysters and prosciutto with asparagus, down a snifter of cognac, and leave not quite so shattered at having missed Japon.
5:30 p.m. We hear so much about stagnation in the Arab world, but it's nice to have a festival like this to remind us that pockets of creativity exist there too. Divine Intervention, by the Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, depicts life in a run-down neighborhood in the West Bank, and it unfolds as a series of absurd, largely wordless vignettes in which everybody is ultimately ridiculous and childlike. The movie is full of sly, wonderfully droll humor that often recalls the classic silent comedies of Buster Keaton by way of Jim Jarmusch, which is not at all a bad thing.
The movie has its problems, though, and they're substantial. Like so many films from Arab and Muslim countries, the ugly, all-consuming politics in Divine Intervention eventually obscure its considerable art. If the movie's adult Palestinians are painted as endearing innocents, its Jews become spoiled brats and, eventually, signifiers of ultimate evil. The movie ends with an extended special effects sequence in which a flying Palestinian female ninja defeats a squadron of tough Israeli commandos by driving Islamic star-and-crescent-shaped darts through the men's skulls. The scene is presumably intended as over-the-top comedy, but its actual effect is hideous. It divided the audience I was in right down the middle, with half of us gasping in disgust and the other half applauding.
7:30 p.m. Hoping to clear my head of foggy Middle Eastern politics, I check out the Brazilian production The Three Marias a strange hybrid of splatter movie, art and convoluted feminism. After the screening, I rush downstairs to another auditorium in the same theater, where the three-hour Gods, Gambling and LSD is already in progress. Drifting from the urban underbelly of Canada, to the American Southwest, to the mountains of Switzerland, to India, the movie is a sprawling, lyrical meditation on the small but significant things we rarely notice about a culture, an essay on the dark places hidden with the light.
Monday, Sept. 9 The papers are filled with reports on the previous evening's social gatherings. The biggest stir took place at the party for a movie called Spun at the Bovine Sex Club, where Mickey Rourke reportedly pranced around the VIP lounge, mock-humping the other guests and waving his penis around as he danced. My personal choice for most disturbing image of the festival.
Even after yet another night of way too little sleep, the first images of Waiting for Happiness blazing across the screen at 8:30 a.m. have me sitting bolt upright in my seat. This is one of those slice-of-life movies, but a slice so exotic, that it has the effect of pure science fiction, like some sort of ethnological study beamed in from outer space. The setting is a small village in the African desert country of Mauritania, and the screen fills with effortlessly gorgeous imagery and one fascinating, funny and frequently mysterious vignette after another. Watching the film is such a hypnotic experience I almost forget I'm supposed to be doing something across town in a few minutes.
Running to the press conference for Moonlight Mile, I nearly plow into Julianne Moore, who is walking toward me while chatting on a cell phone. I sidestep the star, zip upstairs, and stumble into a room where Dustin Hoffman has his head buried in the lap of co-star Susan Sarandon, who's teasing young Jake Gyllenhaal about pinching her ass.
After 30 minutes of watching the Moonlight Mile stars mug and toss sexual innuendoes back and forth, I head over to my interview with the legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, director of Spirited Away. Curiously enough, Miyazaki reveals that he's not a particularly big fan of Disney, the studio releasing his new film in America, claiming he finds Disney's female characters "tacky and cheap." Then again, Miyazaki is a joker. He insists the one American cartoon femme with dignity is Betty Boop.
12:30 p.m. I've scored a pass to Talk to Her, the new film from Spain's Pedro Almodovar. A sort of companion piece to the director's Oscar-winning All About My Mother, Almodovar's wonderful new movie is about a couple of men who invent the women in their lives, imagining their desires and dreams as the women lie in comas. The centerpiece is an audacious simulation of an old silent film, in which an incredible shrinking man walks into his girlfriend's vagina and disappears.
5:45 p.m. South Korean cinema is all the rage these days, and Toronto is filled with it. The first of the festival's Korean films that I catch is Camel(s), an ultra-minimalist, black-and-white exercise so mind-numbingly dull it's actually sort of cool. Virtually nothing happens. A middle-aged man and woman meet, drive around in awkward silence, exchange small talk, share a meal, have sex and part ways. When the couple sit down to eat, they hardly speak, but the sound of their chewing is deafening. I can't get the sound out of my head.
From Korea, I jump back into the Arab world with Khourma, a slight but strangely satisfying comedy from Tunisia about the rise and fall of a simple-minded man-child. There's a fable-like symmetry to the tale, and a sly, perverse streak that places it a long way from Forrest Gump.
9 p.m. I stand outside for a while, watching celebrities arrive for the gala presentation of Spider, the excellent and typically disturbing new movie from Canadian national treasure David Cronenberg. Afterward, I hop a cab to the Power Plant, the hottest club in Toronto this week, for the Moonlight Mile party.
The Power Plant is a cavernous venue with a stark, post-industrial look and tables heaped with cold poached salmon, sesame noodles and chilled vodka. Navigating the crowds is tricky, but I manage to spot Jake Gyllenhaal mugging for the cameras, pinned against the wall and arms spread like he's being crucified. Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon and co-star Holly Hunter all put in obligatory 15-minute appearances, and Sharon Stone eventually makes a wobbly entrance of her own, looking extremely disoriented behind her dark glasses, as if she's uncertain if she's at the right party.
Tuesday, Sept. 10Tomorrow's the anniversary of Sept. 11, and the shadow of that event looms large over Toronto this year. The destruction of the twin towers occurred in the middle of last year's festival and brought everything to a halt. There was no closure, not even a closing night party, and it's been suggested that what seems to be a surplus of activity this year is to somehow make up for that. A number of Sept. 11-related films have been scheduled for today and tomorrow.
9 a.m. My first movie of the day is Paul Schrader's Auto Focus, a portrait of sex and celebrity far removed, happily, from the real world of politics.
Afterwards, it's time for another Korean movie, and this one fully lives up to the buzz. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is crazy, chaotic and all over the map — but everywhere it goes, it goes with confidence and style to burn. The movie dishes up an assortment of mostly youngish Korean misfits, then thrusts them into a kidnapping scenario that's anything but typical. The movie's a bit tough on the nerves, with an ending that's a feeding frenzy of ultra-violence, but it's all as thrilling as it is quirky.
1 p.m. I should have known there was no avoiding politics today.
I go into the shot-on-location Palestinian production Ticket to Jerusalem with trepidation, but am bowled over by how charming and life-affirming it is, at least during its first 40 minutes or so. There's a delicate, fairy-tale quality to the early sections of this tale of a poor projectionist who travels from village to village in the West Bank, setting up shows where cartoons are screened for Palestinian children. Unfortunately, almost exactly as in the other Palestinian film in this festival, Ticket to Jerusalem's humanism eventually dissolves in an orgy of mean-spirited and self-righteous speechifying, its handful of Israeli characters reduced to faceless entities in uniforms, anonymous icons of brute power.
2:30 p.m. Fleeing the Middle East again, I arrive for a series of interviews with Catherine Deneuve, Eight Women director Francois Ozon and Spider director David Cronenberg. Like a character in one of his own movies, Cronenberg seems to be transforming into some sort of large reptile as he ages. We speak for almost half-hour and I don't think I see him blink once.
5:30 p.m. 11'09"01 is not just a Sept. 11 movie, it's the Sept. 11 movie. This extremely controversial project gathers together 11 filmmakers from around the world, each of whom offers a highly personal reaction to the destruction of the World Trade Towers.
All of the filmmakers involved in the project were given complete freedom of expression, and the range of styles, themes and viewpoints in these short films is eclectic, to say the least. One of the most devastating pieces, by Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is nothing but a black screen and a series of percussive thuds that we eventually realize are the actual sounds of bodies hitting the ground after they have leapt out of the burning towers. Inarritu's black screen finally transforms into a field of blinding white, accompanied by the question "Does God's light guide us or blind us?" in Arabic, and then English.
Some have already branded 11'09"01 as anti-American, largely on the basis of two of its segments — one of which may just be the best piece of the bunch. UK director Ken Loach turns in a stunningly eloquent critique of Nixon's America, in which we're reminded that Sept. 11 is also the anniversary of this country's terrible participation in the destruction of Chile's democratically elected government.
Even more controversial is the entry by Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. Chahine's films can be fascinating, but the one in 11'09"01 is heavy-handed, naive and dangerously confused. The piece depicts an Egyptian filmmaker called "Chahine" who, confronted by the ghost of an American marine, tries to explain away the terrorists' actions, as well as those of Palestinian "martyrs." It's an obscene little film that was booed at the gala premiere in Toronto.
As much as I'm moved and exhilarated by 11'09"01, I can't get Chahine's creepy whining out of my system fast enough. The fabulously glamorous gala of Eight Women seems just the diversion, but is so star- studded that it's virtually impossible to catch sight of any of the stars, who are hidden behind massive armies of reporters, security guards and paparazzi.
Wednesday, Sept. 11In honor of the Sept. 11 anniversary, the festival is observing a period of silence this morning, so things don't officially get going until 11 a.m. I'm already suffering from Sept. 11 overload, so I decide to skip the big morning screening of The Guys, a eulogy for the firemen lost in the WTC attack. Instead, I escape to Korea again and Turning Gate, a beautifully made film about an unemployed actor whose life is going nowhere. The movie isn't nearly as depressing as it sounds, with moments of ravishing serenity alternating with some deliriously out-of-control sex scenes.
1 p.m. Speaking of sex, you can practically smell the steamy young loins wriggling their way through Larry Clark's Ken Park.
Unofficially billed as a companion piece to the director's infamous Kids, Clark's new film starts from where that earlier movie left off, and then goes into even more extreme territory. Ken Park answers the question, "Where were the parents in Kids?" by supplying a variety of adult authority figures, each one more awful than the next. The parents are abusive and idiotic, and the kids respond in kind, wandering about, kicking dogs and masturbating to TV images of women's tennis, with every last drop of semen captured in loving close-up by Clark's camera.
It's not exactly the most subtle of movies, but the raw, angry power of some of Clark's imagery just can't be denied. The director later tells me he couldn't bear for this film to suffer the compromises he feels marred Kids and his other movies. More power to him, but the end result is a film that most Americans will probably never even have the opportunity to see. Ken Park's sex scenes walk a very fine line between hardcore porn and art, and the chances of the film getting any sort of a distribution deal in the States are almost nonexistent.
6 p.m. Having been bombarded by so much anger from Arab filmmakers, I figure it's time to check out what the other side has to say. Israeli director Amos Gitai's Kedma isn't a great film by any stretch, but it's interesting in that it's almost the exact opposite of the Palestinian movies at this festival. Where the Palestinian films are appealingly naturalistic but marred by a preachy political agenda, the Israeli production goes out of its way to be open minded, but is so self-consciously mannered it often seems like the spitting image of a bad European art film.
Kedma brings together a group of characters, both Jews and Arabs, on the eve of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. The film seeks to explore the various colliding ethnicities and historical viewpoints, but it's not very convincing. The camera glides elegantly around the characters as they brood, tell stories and stare out to sea, but the speakers are merely mouthpieces for the massive monologues they're required to recite. Everyone in the film simply talks and talks, delivering their words into what seems like some bleak, existential vacuum. There's almost no action in the film; even under fire, everyone continues to talk, only faster.
The director sticks around for a Q&A after the screening, telling the audience that he made a conscious decision to include and reach out to Palestinians in his film, since he believes that "each side has its narrative." To his credit, Gitai wanted to put both of those narratives side by side and see what happens. As it turns out, not much. But it's a start.
8 p.m. I'm knocked out by Patrice Leconte's Man on the Train, and then by Ten Minutes Older: The Cello, a film so interesting that it's unlikely it'll ever be released in the United States. Eight internationally acclaimed directors contributed to this enigmatic beauty, including Mike Figgis, Czech filmmaker Jiri Menzel and the legendary Jean-Luc Godard. There's also a brilliant, black-and-white entry by Bernardo Bertolucci that is probably the best thing he's done in 20 years. This is exactly the sort of reason that people like me come to festivals like this.
Thursday, Sept. 12I begin the day with Clair Denis' lovely Vendredi Soir, a magical, mystical tour of nocturnal Paris, seen mostly through the window of a car stuck in a traffic jam. Next comes one of the happiest and most unexpected surprises of the festival: Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things. A delightfully quirky thriller set in London's diverse immigrant community, the film features Amelie's Audrey Tautou as an illegal immigrant from Turkey, with a moustache yet. The film has all the makings of a cult hit.
1 p.m. After being pleasantly confused and invigorated by Punch Drunk Love, I proceed directly to the press conference, which might be better described as the Adam Sandler-P.T. Anderson love-fest. Asked about his decision to work with Sandler, Anderson responds, without a whiff of irony, "I just think he's wonderful, and I wanted to be near him." This, naturally, is Sandler's cue to cozy up to the director and stage whisper, "It feels good to be near you too." The crowd goes wild.
Anderson seems uncomfortable and distracted throughout the press conference, constantly rubbing his hands over his face, and appearing reluctant to say much of anything about his enigmatic new film. When pressed, Anderson finally sputters a bit and likens the whole notion of answering questions about the creative process to "crawling up your own ass." And they say filmmakers aren't poets.
4:50 p.m. It's pretty surreal, walking out into the tiny patio of the Four Seasons restaurant and encountering more famous people than nonfamous. It's a little like celebrity blab school, with Matt Dillon, Robert Duvall and Tilda Swinton all hawking their new films a few feet from one another, not to mention grizzled, passionate Larry Clark and all the kids from Ken Park, who look different with their clothes on.
7 p.m. Hukkle is a delightfully wacky blast of cinematic imagination from Hungary. Both minimal and elaborate, the movie's like one of those old Rube Goldberg contraptions where every part effects the unlikely motions of every other part. There are no words at all, and the movie's string of dovetailing gags sometimes makes it seem like a really, really good Roadrunner cartoon.
Friday, Sept. 13My body's beginning to revolt, but I get up early anyway and check out the 8:30 screening of Chicken Poets, a surprisingly hip and humorous feature from mainland China.
From there, I take a place in line for the screening of De Palma's Femme Fatale, and spend most of the afternoon forced to listen to my neighbors yammering about this movie and that. This is the blessing and curse of Toronto, and, after nearly a week of not just watching movies but hearing people talk about nothing but movies — on the street, in restaurants, at the post office, everywhere — I'm just about saturated. Total film immersion is wonderful for a while but, even for a dyed-in-the-wool movie hound like myself, the charm eventually wears off.
As for Femme Fatale, it's not worth the wait.
4 p.m. With a few hours to kill before the next screening, I check out the festival's archive room, where accredited press and industry types can book time to view videotapes of films from the festival. I spend the next few hours being blown away by Every Day God Kisses Us on the Mouth, a Romanian film about a murderous butcher that's an astonishing a mix of spirituality and brutality. There's a sort of golden cast to the film that makes it look like it was shot through a filter of holy water mixed with urine.
6:30 p.m. Maybe it's just the lack of sleep finally catching up with me, but I find it very hard to stay awake for the gritty, sensationalistic Hong Kong art film Public Toilet. So, I exit one theater and enter another, where the audience is getting a sneak peak at a film directed by Matt Dillon, City of Ghosts. The film is nicely photographed and features a killer cast — Dillon, James Caan, Gerard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgard — but it's way too long and convoluted to really get under the skin.
One of the best parties at this year's festival is the one for Punch Drunk Love at Rain. I wind up at a corner table drinking weird Australian liquor with the guy who moderated the Punch Drunk Love press conference, so when Adam Sandler comes ambling in, surrounded by a small army of bodyguards, he stops by our table to say hello.
I'm already halfway back to the hotel when I decide to make one more stop to catch the midnight screening of the action-fantasy-spoof Volcano High. I'm in just the right mood for this outrageous blend of Harry Potter, X-Men and a Saturday morning cartoon, in which rival bands of gravity-defying students battle for supremacy.
Saturday, Sept. 14One last major disappointment: I'm shut out of Russian Ark, a high-concept art film that would be lucky to draw a crowd of 30 people in Tampa. Realizing that my time here is running out, I head back over to the festival's video library for one last marathon round of tape watching. Maybe I'm hoping to discover that one perfect masterpiece that will somehow put this vast, sprawling labyrinth of a film festival into perspective. Maybe I just don't know what else to do.
I watch MC5: A True Testimonial, a documentary on the legendary Detroit band, and then A Peck on the Cheek, a touching Indian film about a little girl who discovers she's adopted. Neither of these films is going to change anyone's life. Alive, a much-ballyhooed Japanese movie I wasn't able to get into, is a real disappointment. This is by the same guy who made the hyper-kinetic cult fave Versus, but Alive is just a dull, talky yarn about a couple of guys locked in a room.
5 p.m. One more long line to stand in — this time successfully — for 10, the latest from Iran's Numero Uno Genius Film-maker, Abbas Kiarostami. It's an interesting enough movie, but not a masterpiece by a long shot.
The film's even more minimalist than Kiarostami's usual fare: A digital camera is mounted on the dash of a car, capturing a series of what appear to be improvised conversations between the driver and her various, mostly female passengers. Several of the conversations touch on controversial topics (divorce, prostitution, sex out of wedlock) that are positively daring, considering this is coming out of Iran, but much of the talk isn't particularly focused and the images are sometimes so physically murky it's impossible to see anything. Still, even lesser Kiarostami contains brilliant moments, and 10 is no exception.
After dinner, I catch my last film of the festival. It's an over-the-top horror-comedy called Cabin Fever, which is basically a knockoff of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies with a little extra nudity thrown in. Entertaining enough for a kids-in-a-cabin gross-out, but totally predictable. I later discover that the movie's been purchased for U.S. distribution and is expected to be a huge hit.
Sunday, Sept. 15It's over and I'm on the way home.
Did I get what I came for? Did I even know what I wanted?
Hard to say. All I know is that I don't hear a single conversation about film on the flight back, and it feels just fine. There's not even an in-flight movie.
The serenity won't last. I know in a week or even less, I'll be rushing out to screenings, making too many plans, craving more again. Then I'll start regretting all those films I missed.
Toronto is dozens of different experiences rolled up into one big, ridiculously diverse event, and attempting to sink your teeth into too much of it — as I did — is probably dumb. Approached from too many angles, it all just seems to cancel itself out. Maybe it even winds up making you a little crazy.
But these are big, burning questions for someone who's had enough sleep. For now, all I know is the silence sure feels good.
When he's not globetrotting, film critic Lance Goldenberg can be reached at [email protected] or 813-248-8888, ext. 157.
