Since this is my introductory post, I feel obligated to hit you with a little
local color before diving into the films. But truth be told, this is the seventh
straight year I’ve come to Toronto and nothing has changed: The streets
around festival central are lined more or less with the same businesses (a boon
if you’re into Asian noodles, corner hot dogs, all-night Internet and gaming
cafes, and strippers; not so much if you want just a little variety), the weather
is mild and temperate, and we’re even staying in the same room
as last year. This could suggest stability or stasis in the city—goodness
knows, the complexion of my Chicago neighborhood changes by the minute—but
it more likely indicates just how pitifully myopic critics like myself can be.
Though I’ve never been to the Cannes or Venice Film Festival, I imagine
those alluring backdrops at least prompt a few casual strolls around the area,
if not a reason to skip out on screenings altogether. At Toronto, it’s all
about seeing movies: The city itself becomes little more than the inconvenient
sprawl between theaters.
Just like last year, I landed during a mid-afternoon lull in the press screenings,
so I needed a slot-filler before catching my first big title, which in this case
was the new Pedro Almodóvar. I could only improve on last year’s
kick-off, The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes, a formally precise but deadly
dull Quay Brothers film that very nearly drained my energy for the whole festival.
(Opening a festival with an excruciating film is a little like pulling up with
a leg cramp 10 steps into a marathon.) Fortunately, the German demon possession
drama Requiem
turned out to be a significant improvement, if only for dialing down the hysterics
on the same true story that inspired the awful Christian horror film The
Exorcism Of Emily Rose. In fact, the two approaches are so different
that I didn’t get the connection until the end, though throughout I kept
thinking, “You know, if this movie was remade in Hollywood, it’d probably
look a lot like that piece of crap The Exorcism Of Emily Rose.”
The basic storylines are, of course, the same—young woman from an extremely
religious family tries to go to college, suffers from what appears to be strange
epileptic fits, comes to believe (via the influence of family, priests, and the
nature of her spasms) that she’s possessed, and then goes through an exorcism—but Requiem never attempts to get "inside" her hallucinations and
it certainly doesn’t indulge in the science v. religion courtroom theatrics
of Emily Rose. Really, it’s better for what it doesn’t do
than what it does—that is, until the wonderful final scene and shot, when
she takes her ultimately tragic fate in her hands.
Now to the main event: Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver
continues perhaps the hottest streak in international cinema, and it probably
ranks alongside Talk To Her and Live Flesh on my list of favorites
by the director. Much has been said about the maturity of Almodóvar’s
films since The Flower Of My Secret and All About My Mother,
and it benefits this particular film greatly, because I think the Almodóvar
of old might have leaned on a splashier, more strenuously “outrageous”
approach to this material. The story piles on the melodramatic twists of a telenovela,
with elements of murder, betrayal, and the supernatural combined into a kind of
grand soap opera. But when those twists are revealed, Almodóvar pulls back
on the reins a bit, choosing to let their implications register as deeply felt
character drama rather than something loud and brassy. And who knew Penélope
Cruz, so painfully stilted in her English-language roles, could be this good?
The night closed with another of my most-anticipated titles: Climates,
the new film by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose previous film Distant
knocked me flat. In many ways, Climates recalls Albert Brooks’ great Modern
Romance, following a totally incompatible couple that breaks up, flounders
apart, and gets together again, mostly through the force of the man’s creepy,
borderline pathological obsession. And it’s not unfunny, either: Ceylan’s
deadpan style could be likened to Jim Jarmusch, especially once the film ventures
into a snowbound city straight out of Stranger Than Paradise. Though Climates isn’t quite as haunting and resonant as Distant,
it’s astonishing to behold on a purely cinematic level. Ceylan’s films
have a tactile quality that feels almost three-dimensional at times; the shots
are exquisitely framed (he uses a telephoto lens like no other) and the ambient
soundtrack is so carefully laid out that you feel immersed within every scene.
Amazingly, the film was shot on hi-definition video, but it’s absolutely
essential to see it in a movie theater; the experience would probably flatten
out considerably on DVD or video. Hopefully, Zeitgeist Films will do something
more with it than New Yorker Films did with Distant a couple years ago;
it opens in New York on October 27 and rolls out from there.
Tomorrow brings Asian cinema galore, including new films by Hong Sang-soo, Hirokazu
Kore-eda, Apichatpong Weerathesekul, and Bong Joon-ho. And also… BORAT!