framing device

Yesterday, I wrote about Secret Sunshine. Today I saw Sad Vacation, a Japanese film that coincidentally explores similar ground and even has a couple of scenes in common. Sad Vacation is a much quirkier film, with a collection of sad-sack characters all coming together under the protection of a kindly boss. The lead character is a young man who leaves a criminal enterprise to take care of a mentally ill young woman and a Chinese orphan. Things change dramatically, though, when he sees his mother who left him as a boy.

Director Shinji Aoyama made the brilliant 2000 feature Eureka, and this narrative both refers to the earlier film and builds upon it. The style and tone couldn’t be more different, though, as Aoyama uses aggressive jump cuts, quick cutaways, diverse musical numbers, and colorful compositions. The story is told against the backdrop of a brutal series of murders described at the beginning of the film, and so we spend much of the movie trying to figure out how this story connects to that event. Furthermore, keeping track of the various characters and how they relate is taxing. At one point near the end of the film, two men show up, and I spent the entire scene trying to remember who they were. Nonetheless, I found the unwieldy story compelling, and the themes of parents and children, revenge and forgiveness are explored with verve, if not subtlety.

Just Like Home is the first bad film I’ve seen at the festival. Not that it’s terrible, but Lone Scherfig’s follow-up to Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is pointless, not terribly funny, and spends much of its time pandering to its audience. It’s one of those films set in a small town where every character is quirky in a very particular way (the fatuous professor, the dumb blonde, the city employee who carves pipes, the gruff man who thinks he’s addicted to medication), and it only takes a half hour of narrative to know exactly who will eventually fall in love with whom. I really liked Scherfig’s Italian for Beginners, which also featured quirky characters. There, though, the characters weren’t defined by their quirks but were full characters in spite of them. In Just Like Home, we only have the quirks. Along with a gripping mystery over which person is the town streaker. No, I’m not making that up.

Despite the buzz surrounding Joe Wright’s new movie Atonement, I was able to walk up to the box office in the morning and get a ticket. I get a sense that the festival held back more tickets than usual for the public screenings and then released what they didn’t need the night before. With one exception (more on that in a sec), I was able to obtain a ticket to every movie I wanted, even if I had been shut out before. That’s both good and bad. Good because I got to see what I wanted. Bad because I had to wake up early and head to the box office to do it.

Atonement stars the lovely Keira Knightley (looking skinnier than ever) and James McAvoy (who, judging from the squeals in the audience, is attractive to the ladies). Because both leads and the director showed up for the evening performance, the scene around the Elgin theater was a bit of a madhouse. But a fun madhouse, if you know what I mean. I and many other people stood in line on the sidewalk watching from afar as the limousines drove up. Though we couldn’t see who got out, we could kind of tell from how the people closer by reacted.

And then I had one of those quintessentially Toronto moments, the kind that happen because the people here are so unusually friendly. As my line began to move toward the theater, I suddenly realized I was in the wrong one. I had thought I was standing in the overflow line (I arrived a bit later than usual), ready to go in after the primary line had entered. In fact, I was standing in the Visa Card Gold line, for people who had paid with a Visa gold card and, therefore, had the privilege of entering early. I turned to the ladies behind me, apologized for my mistake, and prepared to switch lines. But they would have none of it, claiming that I should stay with them, and that they’d just tell the people checking the cards that I was with them. I assured them that it wasn’t necessary, that I’d go where I was supposed to. But they were the kind of wonderfully friendly, somewhat pushy Torontoans who weren’t going to let a good deed go awry. And so we went in–past three different sets of gatekeepers checking the gold cards, right pass Ms. Knightley doing tv interviews, and down to one of the best seats in the Elgin. I thanked the ladies profusely, and they smiled at having been able to help another out-of-towner. I promise I won’t do that again, but it makes for a pretty cool story.

The movie itself has a pretty great first half. Based on the well-loved Ian McEwan novel, it’s about a beautiful young woman of the upper class and her longtime friend/possible boyfriend, the son of a servant (Knightley and McAvoy, of course). It’s also, though, about the woman’s younger sister, an impressionable tweener (though they didn’t have that phrase in the ‘30s, when the movie is set). Briony, the younger sister, is infatuated with the older man (of course) and takes it badly when she realizes he’s much more interested in her older sister. This has catastrophic effects when Briony misinterprets an indelicate situation.

Set on a beautiful country estate, the movie’s first half is similar to director Joe Wright’s earlier film, the amazing adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. It’s both wonderfully funny and romantic. But when the movie shifts to World War II and specifically the area around Dunkirk, Wright is on less surer footing and it shows. I was thinking during the movie’s opening scenes how much I was enjoying it and that I was wondering when Wright would spread his wings and try something different. But after watching the second half, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.

One helpful example. In Pride and Prejudice, you might remember an amazing tracking shot at a fancy ball that ties together all the characters and helps us understand the situation. Wright tries a similar thing on the Dunkirk beach, weaving his Steadicam through hundreds of extras and enormous war equipment. But here the effect is empty showmanship, designed merely to impress the audience rather than further the story. And though the film is spectacularly lit, with eye-popping shot after another, the visual style isn’t as well integrated into the story as it was in Pride and Prejudice. At least not in the second half. The first act, though, has several shots of Briony alone in a large room that I’ll long remember. Don’t get me wrong. Atonement is worth seeing, and Keira Knightley gives another sparkling performance. The movie’s just not quite as good as it could’ve been.

You can’t say the same thing about 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. I saw it first thing in the morning on Day 5 (I got up even earlier to stand in the rush line and met a couple of wonderful people, as I always do in Toronto), but I wanted to save it till the end of the post because it’s so fantastic. Arriving in Toronto after winning the Palme D’or at Cannes, the film’s as great as all the reviews have said. Another tremendous offering from Romania, it’s further evidence of the burgeoning national cinema in that former Communist state. This film is set in Communist times and focuses on two women who are college students. I won’t say too much, as I think the film derives even greater power the less you know going in.

What I can tell you, however, is that the acting is incredible. Anamaria Marinca gives an absolutely riveting performance as a woman trying to help out her friend while juggling her own life. The conversations between her and her roommate, or with her boyfriend or with another man are simply constructed but powerfully told. Director Cristian Mungiu simply puts his camera in exactly the right spot and lets the scene unfold. In a way, the mise en scene reminds me of the Dardenne brothers, though stripped down even more to the basics of character and dialogue. But what dialogue! Exploring the themes of trust, responsibility, friendship, truth, and sex, the film is rich, dense, and compelling. It also rings true to life. As much as I’ve loved the festival movies so far, many of the characters have struck me as people I’d never meet in real life. These two women could be almost any woman on the street, and that familiarity lends even more power to the narrative.

I’m running out of superlative adjectives and adverbs here, but I have to mention Mungiu’s direction. The choices he makes of where to put his camera and when it should move and how he should cut between shots are perfect. 4 Months was my first film of the day, and I felt like taking the rest of the day off just to think about it. Instead, I wondered down Bloor St. and then Yonge, taking notice of the people around me and wondering what their “stories” were. When a film leads from art to reality, I know that’s a great film.

Tomorrow brings yet another masterpiece, as if my entire top10 for the year will be shown here at Toronto.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days: four 1/2 stars (but really close to five), out of five
Sad Vacation: three stars
Just Like Home: two stars
Atonement: three 1/2 stars