Brief notes on films seen (or first seen) at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival. Main report on the Festival can be found here.

BARAN (55) (dir., Majid Majidi) Hossein Abedini, Zahra Bahrami, Mohammad Amir Naji [Ambivalent hero, as in THE FATHER, obsessed with a quest (as in most of Majidi) - for a while he's actively unsympathetic, toying intriguingly with our audience-identification figures. What's new is the unrequited-love angle (the Afghan-refugee angle is almost irrelevant, beyond explaining why the love must be unrequited) and some fine images, pointing up Majidi's growing confidence behind the camera - the refugees' windowless living quarters, stark and boxlike with figures silhouetted in every room, are very striking. First half is RIFF RAFF-like (only not as salty), second half a case of Doing It All For Love, "the fire that burns the head" ; final shot is poignant, though only if you know the title means "Rain". Now if they could only wean Majidi off the slo-mo...]

TAPE (60) (dir., Richard Linklater) Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman [One of those plays - SLEUTH is another example - where confessions are teased out through back-and-forth dialogue and plentiful humour, except that the back-and-forth is so exaggerated it can drive you nuts ("We broke up" ; "Shut up!" ; "No, I'm serious" ; "Shut up!" ; "I'm serious" ; "You broke up?" ; "We broke up"). The lines operate on a sort of florid smart-ass quality - as in a character admitting he has been "known to act in a phallic fashion", i.e. he's a dick - and the snappy style plays the material for the funny, shallow entertainment that it is (though there's obviously a subtext about honesty being a kind of selfishness, forcing others to be "truthful" for our own gratification : what is "moral"? what is "appropriate"?). Hawke as the grungy dope-dealer - scratching arse and crushing beer-cans - is a little hard to swallow, but he seems to have handled the image-revamp quite successfully (might be fun double-billing his and Leonard's roles here with their characters in DEAD POETS SOCIETY!). Minor but likeable, one of those films you 'discover' on cable three years after their release ; as in WAKING LIFE, mixture of laid-back humour and moral questioning is very appealing.]

I'M GOING HOME (68) (dir., Manoel de Oliveira) Michel Piccoli, John Malkovich, Catherine Deneuve, Antoine Chappey [Coming to terms with Death. In the theatre - as per the lengthy opening sequence - you can rant and rave, scoff at Death ("Why was I born if not forever?"), rage against the dying of the light ; in real life, you can only go about your little bits of business ("I live as I can"), anchored by the small pleasures of daily routine, resting often in preparation for the final rest to come. Not a trace of self-pity, much of it playing unexpectedly close to deadpan comedy, Oliveira's detached style standing him in good stead, whether looking through a pane of glass at the actor signing autographs - literally adds an extra layer - or staying mischievously on a pair of shoes (instead of the face they belong to). Droll and down-to-earth, with bits to cherish (shame "Film Comment" don't do "Moments Out Of Time" any more) : the theatre people rushing in and out of frame in a jumble of curtain-calls while the solemn emissaries of the Real World wait implacably ; an entire scene played off Malkovich, with his little chuckle on "Paris fads" ; the most ineffably perfect of final shots, a passing of the baton, one life officially ending as another begins (because you're never really born till that first intimation of mortality). Shame about the anti-populist snobbery, but this is a 92-year-old person behind the camera, after all...]

TRAINING DAY (72) (dir., Antoine Fuqua) Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn [Hollywood gets it right : a superbly tight, tense cop movie with a hugely charismatic anti-hero. The plot recalls THE FIRM with cops instead of lawyers (bright young spark co-opted into charmed circle, having to decide between enjoying advantages and lifting the lid on dark secrets), but it really belongs to the urban-sleaze genre of DEEP COVER, good men morally compromised by their surroundings. Problems : (i) panders to middle-class paranoia about "the jungle", ghettoising the ghettos even further ; (ii) ends with Hawke using Washington's methods against him - i.e. going mano a mano - yet remaining untainted, going back (it's implied) to the nice guy he used to be ; (iii) plot is somewhat implausible, esp. the point that a cop of Washington's smarts would put so much faith in a rookie he doesn't even know, esp. on such an important day (also wondered why Washington doesn't kill Hawke when he gets the chance, but a man who's seen the film - as well as SATANTANGO - twice informs me that he's out of bullets at the time). Thrilling stuff nonetheless, all the more remarkable for being more talk than action ; many claim the last half-hour ruins it - yet it also contains the poker game, simmering more hypnotically on the brink of violence than anything I can recall since Dirk and the guys dropped by Rahad's pad four years ago...]

HI, TERESKA! (46) (dir., Robert Glinski) Aleksandra Gietner, Karolina Sobczak, Zbigniew Zamachowski [Girl goes from innocent to delinquent, comes home late, drunken father rails at her, parents fight, neighbours yell, etc etc ; not bad, just familiar. Is it all shot in grimy b & w? It is. Is there an old musical on TV, offering respite from the drab lives on view? There is. Vaguely attractive detail (teenage mating rituals and the like), but the acclaim it's received is a little baffling ; even the last line is predictable.]

A MA SOEUR! (64) (dir., Catherine Breillat) Anais Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinee Khanjian [Definitely going with the more aimable French title here (though Breillat did apparently plan to call it FAT GIRL, till a test-screening audience objected) : some of it - notably the two sisters chatting as they lie on the bed - feels almost sentimental, pointing up the autobiographical elements, and there's cutesy humour to the little girl in the swimming pool, alternately making declarations of love to a metal ladder and a wooden diving-board - though of course also a feminist statement, mirroring (hence refuting) the sweet nothings murmured by her sister's fickle seducer. The long sequence of said Lothario slowly negotiating some action for himself under the guise of pleading for "a demonstration of love" may be the most minutely-detailed of its kind ever made, though the shock ending tends to overwhelm what came before (obviously built up throughout, in Anais' repeated wish that "the first time should be with nobody", but still unexpected). As in Cronenberg - a director Ms. Breillat much resembles - sensibility is fundamentally anti-social (calling for carnal, faceless sex, without the snares men and women set for each other), which is why it goes so well with humour (another antidote to social mores and compromises) ; where acid commentary shades over into black comedy is, of course, another matter...]

LA CIENAGA (56) (dir., Lucrecia Martel) Mercedes Moran, Graciela Borges, Martin Adjemian [Frame always full (and deliberately over-full), creating a close, musky sense of intimacy, always on the brink of sensual fulfilment : you know it must either end in sex or death, just because the style demands some kind of cathartic physical contact. Sagging flesh, cuts and gashes, girls in their undies, splayed on their beds ; tropical lushness, the barking of dogs and "hammering" of unseen natives, a fetid swimming pool plus a GUMMO-like emphasis on white-trash unpleasantness - though there's also something of decayed aristocracy in these spoiled, selfish people, talking of their servants as "these Indians" (parallels with the Deep South - and writers like Faulkner or Tennessee Williams - are instructive, even if the master-class in South America never had slaves as such). Often grotesque, which often means you can't take your eyes off it ; nothing much actually happens, but that's another story...]

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (70) (73 - second viewing) (dir., David Lynch) Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Angelo Badalamenti [Not a huge amount to say, except that second viewing (in a vast auditorium, with excellent sound) probably the peak for this beguiling dream-piece - enough to confirm that its various bits do indeed fit together neatly without overstretching the thin material between its sensual pleasures (though cf. Phillip Lopate's theory that its open-endedness and "seductive, languid tempo" makes it part of a "newly evolving genre", also including IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (and presumably WAKING LIFE) : endlessly-rewatchable films which are "like a fusion of movie and pop music", semi-narratives one can revisit more or less at random, like putting on a CD). Seeing it again reinforces its anthologistic quality - basically a collection of loosely-connected scenes (again, like tracks on a CD) marinating in the moody drone of Badalamenti's score : one looks forward to the next memorable bit (the audition! the Cowboy! "Crying"! "The finest espresso in the world"!) in a constant state of tingly anticipation. Hugely enjoyable, if perhaps a bit tame by Lynch standards. Couple of points on the "dream" particulars : interesting how Diane's being pursued by her personal phantoms (people she's killed, whether literally or metaphorically), incl. her own innocent self before Hollywood - the "dream place" - corrupted her soul ; interesting too how Camilla's new lover (possessing everything Diane wants, and can't have) isn't hated in the dream, rather transmuted into something totemistic and untouchable : This is the girl...]

THE NAVIGATORS (65) (dir., Ken Loach) Joe Duttine, Tom Craig, Steve Huison [Liable to be misunderstood as a simple anti-privatisation tract (partly because the early scenes are as crude as anything in BREAD AND ROSES), but Loach, to his credit, does mention the other side - the fact that people do eventually adapt to a free market, the fact that state workers used to "get away with murder" in their old jobs. Overall politics still the same, of course, the climax (carrying special resonance in the wake of recent UK rail disasters) making clear the need for some kind of welfare state, but it's still a transition - not just sulking and ranting but accepting that the world has changed, asking how the damage can be minimised. Bluff, good-hearted, sometimes slapsticky, and the love of people is magnificent : check out the detail in the brief ice-rink scene - kid pushing his mother, rather fey chap swanning around like a ballerina, another kid falling down, looking round furtively for sympathetic onlookers before he bursts into tears. Loach all the way.]

HEIST (61) (dir., David Mamet) Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, Rebecca Pidgeon, Sam Rockwell [Good cast, but Mamet is in danger of turning into Kevin Williamson - one twist after another (and a couple of twists too many), with the audience left in the dark anyway (no hidden clues to be picked up on second viewing, just constant U-turns and wrong-footing) ; even has an unsympathetic character (Rockwell's) asking all the questions, as if to discourage us from doing likewise - just shut up and enjoy the ride, is the message. Easy to do, fortunately, with the lines so crisp and everyone speaking so entertainingly, though the most-quoted one-liners - "sheep count him" and "that's why they call it money" - do nothing for me. Best exchange is Pidgeon deflecting do-gooder in a bar : "That stuff'll rot your stomach lining" ; "Yeah, but I get to drink it first". Definitely using that one somewhere down the line...]

FROM HELL (40) (dir., Albert and Allen Hughes) Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm, Robbie Coltrane [Never read the comic, but this lost me right from the opening Steadicam tour round a theme-park version of late-Victorian London, rife with carefully-posed extras rhubarbing and gorblimey-ing. Doesn't even work as a serial-killer movie, merely ticking off predetermined victims, and the incidentals - from the shot of the Ripper at table (he likes his steak bloody!) to lesbian sub-plot and Elephant Man cameo - are just silly ; nor does it take much in the way of Ripperology to recognise a missed opportunity, reducing a hotbed of unknowns and conspiracy theories to a standard Hollywood thriller with psycho villain at the end (if ever a film cried out for an open ending...). Digs at Victorian hypocrisy - "unfortunates" for whores - are instructive, but the strenuous attempts to supply modern 'relevance' (drugs, racism, prejudice) never seem organic. Heather Graham confirms her uselessness in roles not involving roller skates ; Coltrane is a bright spot, however...]

ATANARJUAT : THE FAST RUNNER (54) (dir., Zacharias Kunuk) Peter Henry Arnatsiaq, Madeline Ivalu, Paul Qulitalik [Some three-hour movies go by so fast they leave you saying "I could've sworn that was two hours!" ; this is not one of those movies. Takes a while to cast its spell, esp. for those of us allergic to ethnography, but eventually clicks together - helped by the fact that the 'unspoiled' Inuit characters are in fact singing bawdy songs and saying things like "My brother is a real jerk", not to mention the strong visual sense of a perpetually white land (note how the kids are always snot-nosed!). Narrative strongest in the middle hour, falters a bit in the final section when Atanarjuat is almost forgotten (we shift to Oki killing his father, but it's too late in the story for any proper involvement) ; best scene obviously the chase across the snow - no less impressive when Kunuk and Co. reveal how it was done over the closing credits. Ethnological question : am I right in inferring that the culture apparently sanctions adultery (village elders advise unhappy husband to hook up with another woman), though polygamy is forbidden? Any Inuit readers, please write in...]

KIRA'S REASON - A LOVE STORY (50) (dir., Ole Christian Madsen) Lars Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade, Sven Wollter [Dogme goes Movie-Of-The-Week (or vice versa). Mentally unstable woman - WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, if you will - tries to adjust to the outside world, but the results alternate between familiar and unconvincing (worst bit : bohemian father's new girlfriend sings "Body and Soul" to her, followed by the injunction "You go and be happy now") ; mildly distinguished by the lead actress's fiery presence - kind of how Kirstie Alley might be if she were actually a good actress - but still mediocre. (Note : I mostly saw this because one of Toronto's alterna-weeklies ("Eye", I think) gave it a rave review, calling it "one of the most affecting films of the year". Those people should be ashamed of themselves.)]

LE SOUFFLE (62) (dir., Damien Odoul) Pierre-Louis Bonnetblanc, Dominique Chevallier, Maxime Dalbrut [Starts with b&w shots of French countryside, then sheep being slaughtered and our brutish-looking teenage hero pissing on the door of the WC ; "LIFE OF JESUS II," I thought, yet it really isn't miserablist - turns out said hero is a bit of a goofball, prone to tossing imaginary hand-grenades, rushing around in hormonally-charged confusion and trying out that trick where you stab a knife really fast between your outstretched fingers (he lasts about 2 seconds, then cuts himself). Intermittently captures the carefree, dark-at-the-edges spirit of Huck Finn - then goes very, very wrong, spinning off into sophomoric artiness before partly redeeming itself with the final shot (boy literally walking into a new day). Bonus points for soft, pleasing look, and for being just about the only film in memory not to rub our noses in it when a character throws up.] (Second viewing, May 2005: Stands up surprisingly well, though I'm kind of a sucker for this kind of rural French surrealism (see also NO REST FOR THE BRAVE and SKIN OF MAN, HEART OF BEAST); a boyhood idyll, though also setting up our hero as a lamb to the slaughter - I'd forgotten about that shocking early shot - on the brink of cynical, diseased adulthood (the inbred-redneck ambience comes across like a curdled Pagnol). Shame it's so pretentious, but there's still a lot to admire; a true poetic vision, which may be why Odoul hasn't been heard from in the 4 years since.) 

SUR MES LEVRES (39) (dir., Jacques Audiard) Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos, Olivier Gourmet [Looks like Audiard trying to make a 'commercial' thriller - and failing miserably : it's the kind of film where you think the heroine's deafness is going to have thematic relevance, but it ends up merely serving the plot in the most hackneyed way (she reads the hero's lips, thereby saving him from the bad guys). Maybe would've liked it more had I not seen it at a Festival (some of the early scenes are nicely done) ; could work reasonably well on video, with low expectations. Rhythm still fatally choppy, though...]

PASSPORT (54) (dir., Peter Gothar) Eniko Borcsok, Gergely Kocsis, Mari Nagy [A 70-minute TV movie, Gothar's main interest being apparently in the colour scheme (wouldn't be surprised to hear he took on the job purely as an opportunity to experiment) : O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU kind of deal - bleached colours, or perhaps it's b&w with blotches of colour, or perhaps a primary colour missing, or perhaps people in b&w and things mostly in colour, which would also make sense thematically given the story's air of Eastern European miserablism (plus grimly absurdist humour). Drunken man staggers home, falls on his cat and kills it ; later marries a Russian girl, their relationship founded in miscommunication ; "Two or three children, she has that in her," observes his toothless old father, "but I won't live to see them" (and he doesn't). Resolutely minor, but always watchable ; quite intriguing that - a mere decade after the fall of Communism - a Russian should be the heroine and boorish Hungarians the villains, at any rate...]

L'EMPLOI DU TEMPS (69) (dir., Laurent Cantet) Aurélien Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livrozet [Middle-manager on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Subtle touches - e.g. the pretend-job at the UN as coded symbol for globalisation, which is probably what forced the hero to invent a pretend-job in the first place - haunting grey landscapes, Jocelyn Pook score that gets under your skin, superlative performance from resolutely non-glamorous Recoing (when will someone offer Gandolfini or John C. Reilly a similarly meaty big-screen role?) ; manages to get at a larger alienation ("I look around," sighs our hero, "and see only unknown faces") while focusing unblinkingly on specific details. Remarkably intense, but you have to wonder how (and whether) it'll play on a second viewing : something of a one-note drama, though the tension - will the ruse be discovered? - is undeniable. Sombre, austere, yet filled with intimations of dread : style seems thoroughly familiar, yet not really like anything else you could point to (Sautet? Chabrol? Wenders? Claude Miller?). Like its hero, the ordinary surface is deceptive.]

A DOG'S DAY (56) (dir., Murali Nair) K. Krishna Kaimal, Lakshmi Raman, Suhas Thayat, Thomas [British-financed, apparently - and appropriately, given similarities to Ealing comedy or THE MOUSE THAT ROARED (small parochial trifle turning into big international incident). Laid-back humour of the first half works much better than laboured political satire of the second, but it's still a charming fable - and for once the 'ethnic' touches aren't offensive, since it's clear the villagers are joining in with the comedy (couple of great deadpan comics there, though the dog pretty much steals the show). Nominee for the archetypal Indian image : old man in white dhoti walks beside a line of palm trees, holding a rolled-up umbrella...]

LANTANA (53) (dir., Ray Lawrence) Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong [Egoyan-lite, without the magic : by-the-numbers drama of predictably unhappy people, over-literalising the connections between them. Every scene seems to end with a portentous zinger, the insights always front-and-centre - 'betrayal isn't in sleeping with another, it's in not telling about it', stuff like that. Which is not to say it's dumb, just that it's another middlebrow forelock-tugger (see also IN THE BEDROOM) slogging through its points without much transcendence, overpraised because it happens to be surrounded by trashy action pics and puerile comedies. LaPaglia superb, Rush and Hershey less so ; good moments, like the Rush-LaPaglia conversation about secrets and everyday deceits ("Every man holds something back"), undermined by sluggish pace and a weak ending. Sample dialogue : "I hate what's happening to us".]

HELL HOUSE (65) (dir., George Ratliff) [Incredibly even-handed, given the theme (Christian fundamentalists organising a cheesy House of Horrors designed to bring people into the fold) and director's disdain for his subjects (as apparently expressed in his Q&A). Occasional cheap shots, e.g. undercutting the communal prayer scene with a cell-phone beeping and having to be answered - makes it look like the praying is a sham, which it patently isn't, and it's not like the guy with the phone had a choice anyway ; generally fair, though, esp. in including a glimpse of the single father's home life, making clear (when his epileptic son has a seizure) how genuinely he feels (and applies) his faith. Easy to mock, and of course the "Hell House" scenes themselves are a hoot, in the way amateur dramatics are always a hoot onscreen - it plays like a Christian WAITING FOR GUFFMAN - but the most fascinating aspect (I thought) was the way these devout people seem to be acting out their repressed fantasies in pretending to be sinners : something just a bit disturbing in the wild-eyed gusto of a prim young girl (saving herself for marriage, she informs us with a smile) playing out the tragedy of a teenage mother, seemed to me...]