(originally
published in The Outreach Connection
in October 2001)
This is the seventh
and last of Jack Hughes’ reports from the 2001 Toronto International Film
Festival.
L’Anglaise et le Duc (Eric Rohmer)
81-year-old Rohmer’s
film, set during the French Revolution, uses digital technology to insert its
characters into painted settings. The technique is unsettling at first, but as
the film progresses, the artificiality strangely becomes a means of authenticity
– the unfamiliarity of its appearance reinforces the sense of a true window
into the past. The title characters, she a Royalist and he affiliated with
Robespierre, are former lovers whose shifting fortunes reflect the progress of
the Revolution. Much of the film consists of conversation, and in this respect
it’s certainly not that far removed from Rohmer’s contemporary works, although
under the circumstances politics and survival are more pressing subjects than
the machinations of love. The characters are superbly self-aware and regard the
analysis of the event as part and parcel of living it (a quality that gives
them a useful stoicism, if not fatalism, at times of pressure). The
matter-of-fact air of even the most dramatic events (there’s an especially well-executed
scene in which she hides a fugitive in her bed) seems like a further guarantee
of verisimilitude. It’s a film that’s extremely modern while possessing the
most classical of qualities, excellently acted especially by Lucy Russell as
the lady; some might find it a bit talky and distended, but it will probably
stand as a key Rohmer film.
Revolution #9 (Tim McCann)
McCann’s film starts
with a young woman bringing home her new fiancée to meet her family – they
express doubts about the guy, and then from the very next scene we see that
he’s losing his grip on reality. He imagines that his young nephew-to-be is
part of an internet-driven conspiracy against him and that a TV perfume
commercial is the nexus of a sophisticated mind-control plot. In the film’s
best scene, he tracks down and interrogates the ad’s director; taking him for a
journalist, the self-absorbed director takes a hilariously long time to catch
on. The film intertwines events from his perspective with events from his
fiancee’s. The first is a troubled, paranoid fantasy; the second a gritty
account of having to cope with his mood swings, the opposition of her family,
the police and the public health system (the film spends a surprising amount of
time on the details of his journey through the New York psychiatric admission
process). It’s also attentive to the real lives of its characters, with money a
perpetual issue: because it’s so well-grounded in economic and emotional
reality (she’s presumably as dependent on him in some way as he is on her), the
film can afford to indulge itself a little in how it visualizes his mental
state. At times, these indulgences render it a little repetitive and
derivative, but it leaves a strong after-impression.
Lantana (Ray Lawrence)
The Festival closing
gala was this somber, troubled drama about interlocking characters in an
Australian suburb. It’s somewhere in between a film noir and a kitchen sinker,
with a vaguely Latin flavour thrown in (for exoticism I guess) – Blue Velvet and La ronde may be other occasional reference points. Anthony LaPaglia
plays a cop who’s cheating on his wife with the woman who lives next door to a
guy who may have committed a crime that the cop’s investigating – to summarize
just one plot strand (Geoffrey Rush and Barbara Hershey are also in the movie,
both to lesser effect). The connections are sometimes illuminating (it makes
bedmates out of guilt and innocence, truth and lies; it transforms pursuers to
pursued at a snap) but are almost as often mildly groan-inducing. The film maintains
its smoky poise very well throughout, but the artistic and thematic
calculations drive out much spontaneity and feeling. It also seems to me that
the men in the movie are generally allowed a more complex and boisterous brand
of angst than the more straightforwardly unfulfilled women – but then it is an Australian movie after all. Lantana’s finest point may be the ending
– the solution to the central mystery is mundane enough to be authentically
tragic.
Festival summary
As everyone says, it
was two events. The movies were just as good in the second half, or just as
bad, whatever, but a pinched, dutiful air settled over the whole thing.
I was waiting for a
movie to start when I heard about New York. Someone a few rows back said the
World Trade Center was gone, and the Pentagon too. It’s not that I disbelieved
him exactly, but your concept of your world can only move so far based on one
overheard fragment. Then someone else came in who was deeply upset, and I knew
something real was happening. For all I knew it was the beginning of the end –
I certainly considered it. But I thought – as long as the movie plays, things
can’t be that bad. And I waited, and the movie did play, from beginning to end.
Then I came out and went downtown, and there were no more movies that day.
This year I stuck to
a very steady pace (three a day, pretty much every day) and kept healthy hours
– I didn’t go to any screenings ending past 8.30 pm. Some movies I deeply
wanted to see (Andre Techine’s Loin,
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Millennium Mambo)
couldn’t be accommodated by this structure, and they dropped by the wayside. I
took more chances this year than I have the past few years, and on the whole
they paid off. I wish I’d seen more movies that clearly belonged in the highest
rank, but I was nearly always stimulated and intrigued.
My favourite films
of the festival were all from Asia: What
Time is it There, Pulse and Warm
Water under a Red Bridge. Lovely and Amazing was probably the most
memorable of the American films; The
Pianist and L’Anglaise et le Duc
the most memorable of the European ones. Last
Wedding was the most memorable Canadian film I saw…well, I guess the only Canadian film I saw. Trouble Every Day put me to sleep, but
may stand most to gain from a second viewing. Of the other 25 films I’ve
written about, the ones with least to recommend them are probably Sex and Lucia, Heist, Warrior of Light,
Birthday Girl and Innocent Fairies
(I’m leaving aside the gala offerings Hearts
in Atlantis and Training Day,
which hardly seem like serious festival offerings at all). But then, I enjoyed
watching even those films much more than not. So keep the articles, wait until
the movies open (in the case of the foreign ones, pray that they do) and enjoy!
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