TIFF 2019 - Day 1-3

My husband Rich and I watched 13 advanced screening movies prior to the official start of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, so it was a good thing that we had a week's rest in between since we tentatively planned almost 30 more to go during the actual festival, although we usually drop some towards the end as we become too tired.  On the first day, we had four movies scheduled with at most 30 minutes in between each one.  To prepare, we loaded up with coffee and packed a lunch.  Since we would be sitting for most of the day, we made a pact to walk up and down every set of stairs that we encountered including the ones at our condo, the subway and the 75 steps leading up to the Scotia Paramount theatres where we would spend most of our time.

Our first movie was American Son, based on an award-winning play Broadway play of the same name with its lead Kerry Washington (of TV series Scandal fame) reprising her role.  Kendra, a well-educated black woman is at the police station in the wee hours, concerned that her 18-year-old son has not returned home.  She was told that the car her son was driving was involved in an "incident" but gets nowhere in trying to find out more details. As she becomes more and more frantic, Kendra experiences and gets into debates about racism from the white junior officer who interviews her, her estranged white husband Scott, and even the senior liaison officer who is black.  The plot deviates from the standard trope of the poor black kid from the ghettos, dealing instead with a mixed child in a well-to-do family with a mother who has a PhD in psychology and an FBI father.  This brings up issues of class and identity in addition to that of race.  The dialogue, probably taken word for word from the play, is powerful and scintillating.  Given that the film takes place almost exclusively within the waiting room of the police station, it feels more like you are watching a play.  The only things the movie adds are the atmospheric presence of the pouring rain outside, the poignant close-up shots of the anguished parents and the lone scene that takes place away from the waiting room, which is used to accentuate the racism.  This is an excellent movie with mesmerizing performances by all the actors.  Now I want to watch the play!

Unfortunately, we did not like the Chinese spy thriller Saturday Fiction as much as the previous movie. Stylistically and beautifully filmed in black and white with primarily close shots to create a claustrophobic feel, the movie is set in 1941 Japanese-occupied Shanghai, a few days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Saturday Fiction is the name of a play which the famous but mysterious actress Jean Yu has returned to Shanghai to take part in.  The motivations of Yu are questionable, as she, as well as those around her could all be spies either for China, Japan, or the Allied Forces.  We found the plot to be convoluted and confusing, with action indistinguishably switching between scenes from the play and the rest of the movie.  It did not help that the Chinese and Japanese looked very similar and it was difficult to tell which was which until they spoke.  Also the white subtitles were often unreadable against white backgrounds.

Lyrebird is loosely based on the true story of Han van Meegeren, who was accused of being a Nazi collaborator for selling a priceless Vermeer painting to senior Nazi leader Hermann Goering.  Pleading not guilty, van Meegeren claimed that he actually duped Goering (amongst others) with a fake that he painted himself in the style of Vermeer.  To pass the chemical test that determines the age of the paint, Hans developed a special process using Bakelite plastic as a sealant.  The movie also depicts Allied officer Joseph Piller, who was assigned to find paintings stolen from Jewish owners and identify the collaborators who passed them on to the Nazis.  After being arrested, van Meegeren tries to prove his innocence by creating a “new Vermeer” while in Piller’s captivity.  Once convinced, Piller ends up defending van Meegeren in an exciting but mostly fictitious trial proceeding, enhanced for entertainment purposes.  We first heard about Hans van Meegeren when we watched the stage play “The Bakelite Masterpieces”, which re-imagined Piller as a female Jewish art expert who had her own dark history.  By comparison, the movie gives an informative account of Piller’s family life and motivations.

Watching the French/Belgian psychodrama Sibyl, the phrase “Physician heal thyself” comes to mind.  Sibyl is a psychologist who wants to wind down her practice so that she can concentrate on becoming a novelist.  Unfortunately she has writer’s block and can’t come up with any original ideas on her own.  When she becomes engrossed in her patient Margo, Sibyl ends up using details of Margo’s life and problems as plot points for her book, even replicating actual conversations that Margo has with others.  In addition to totally violating doctor-patient confidentiality, Sibyl seems to have many issues of her own.  She has frequent flashbacks to a failed relationship, is impulsive, lacks good judgement and imposes herself more and more into Margo’s life.   

On the second day of the festival, we were in for a rude surprise. Without prior warning, we found out that TIFF had implemented a new policy for Patron Circle members watching Press and Industry screenings.  As opposed to being able to waltz into a theatre even minutes before run-time merely by showing our badges, we now had to go outside and stand in a rush line for each movie, regardless of whether there was any indication that the movie would be full or not. As a result, we needed more time between movies and could see less of them, and might not get into the more popular ones.  Even if we do get in, we might be relegated to the front rows where my eyesight prevents me from sitting without getting dizzy.  This negates the main benefit of our very expensive membership which I described in my previous blog, so this will probably be the last year that we sign up for it.  In the meantime, we had to soldier on with the rest of the festival but it was nowhere near as enjoyable as in previous years.

I loved my first movie on the second day of the festival.  It was a delightful Argentinian caper movie called Heroic Losers, set in the days just before and after their markets crashed and their currency was devalued in 2001.  A group of lovable locals pooled together their life savings to purchase a defunct granary and form a co-op in hopes of resurrecting it and providing jobs for their small village.  Unfortunately they were tricked by an unscrupulous banker into converting their US cash into Pesos and depositing the money into a bank account the day before the crash.  The fun begins when the group finds out that it was a scam.  All the money in the bank was withdrawn by a corrupt lawyer that same day and he has built an underground vault in the middle of a remote farm in order to hide the funds.  An ingenious and hilarious plan is devised in order to reclaim the stolen money.  This movie was such an unexpected gem.  One of the joys of attending a film festival is when you get to see foreign films that might never see the light of day otherwise.

Wild Goose Lake Is a Chinese noir about street gang leader Zhou Zenong who is on the run and the “bathing beauty” prostitute Liu Aiai who offers to help him .. for a price. Told initially through a pair of flashbacks, we find out why Zhou is in his predicament and how Liu came to approach him. Zhou is part of a motorcycle theft ring that gets into a turf war with a rival gang. During a contest between the two gangs to determine which one can steal the most bikes in one night, violence erupts resulting in Zhou inadvertently killing a police officer. Loyalties are questioned and double-crosses are abundant as Zhou struggles to do right by his wife and young son by having her turn him in for the reward money. For me, the most interesting scene in this movie was at the beginning when the gangs attend a seminar on the various techniques for stealing a motorbike, as well as the ones depicting the bathing beauty prostitutes who had sex with their johns in the lake. The most confusing point of the film was why Zhou was wearing the same shirt as the rival gang as opposed to his own gang. The rest of the movie was pretty much standard fare for the Chinese gangster film genre.

Not being able to get into another press screening, we wandered instead into the 2nd of a 5-part documentary series called Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema. Based on the title of the series, I thought the documentary would focus on the proverbial “female gaze” as it applies to film making.  Instead, what we got were in-depth, insightful explanations of different aspects of film making, using movies made by female directors from across 5 continents and 13 decades as examples to illustrate the points being made.  In our segment, the film discussed Staging, The Journey, Editing, The Parent-Child Relationship, Economy/Minimalism, Point of View, Close-up, and Dream Sequences/Surrealism.  The most interesting discussion related to staging, as we were taught how to view characters’ placement and movement across an X-axis (left to right) as opposed to a Z-axis (front to back).  There was also a stunning sequence in one film where the use of a mirror on the swinging door of an armoire slowly revealed the various characters within a death-bed scene.  To illustrate point of view, one movie filmed a scene from the perspective of a young child hiding under a table, where she witnessed the men sitting at the table from their feet only.  One took off his shoes, while another scratched his ankles.  Later on in the festival, I caught portions of Part 4 and 5 of the documentary, which covered topics including filming of memory and the passing of time, use of stillness, the decision of what to keep in a frame and what to leave out, how to depict love, death and thought.  The series has been picked up by Criterion Films as well as Kanopy (which the libraries access) so I would love to catch the sections that I missed when they become available.

Our third day of TIFF started off well with Just Mercy, a movie that is definitely Oscar-bound since it hits all the points desired for Oscar bait including a poignant plot, social justice theme, and stellar performances by Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Brie Larson. The movie is based on the memoirs of black Harvard-educated lawyer Bryan Stevenson who created the foundation Equal Justice Initiative and returned to Alabama to defend death row inmates who were never given proper representation. While it shows Stevenson’s interactions with multiple inmates (of all races), the main focus of the movie is his defence of Walter McMillan (aka Johnny D), a father of three who was railroaded into a conviction for the murder of an 18-year-old white girl based on coerced false testimony and suppressed evidence.

Military Wives is inspired by actual choir groups comprised of the wives of military soldiers and officers in army bases around the world. These choirs were formed to keep the wives busy and distracted while their mates were deployed in dangerous situations. The movie provides a fictional depiction of one such group and does a good job of showing the stress and fear that these women feel, imaging the worst with every phone call and doorbell ring. Kristen Scott Thomas and Sharon Hogan are entertaining as the no-nonsense colonel’s wife Kate, and Lisa, the rules-adverse wife of the Regimental Sergeant Major, who attempt to lead the choir but have differing philosophies of how to go about it.  The choir gives the military wives a purpose and sense of comradery as they build bonds and friendship through singing.  It was interesting seeing images of some actual groups of military wives’ choirs at the end of the movie.

A Bump Along the Way is a fairly typical coming of age story set in Northern Ireland about a prim and proper teenager with the daunting name of Allegra, grappling with the social pressures of school including bullies and a school-girl crush on a classmate.  Things get worse when Allegra’s middle-aged free-spirited mother Pamela becomes pregnant after a one night stand with a man almost half her age.  The character of Pamela was delightfully brash and irrepressible, and so well-meaning that you really root for her.  There is nothing much new for a movie of this genre, but I was surprised when I first heard the characters speak with their heavy Derry accents, since I was under the false impression that this movie was Canadian!