The best and worst at Toronto festival

Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is an art gallery owner who feels threatened after reading her ex-husband’s novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a veiled threat, in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, one of the films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is an art gallery owner who feels threatened after reading her ex-husband’s novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a veiled threat, in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, one of the films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Sometime on Saturday morning at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, I literally hit the floor. I had just watched Jim Sheridan's The Secret Scripture, an overwrought drama involving lost love and World War II (see below), and by the time the credits started to roll, I was already half out of my seat and bounding down the steps toward the exit.

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Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling dance across Los Angeles in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, an old-fashioned musical that captured the hearts of critics at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

In other words, it was still dark, and the stairs in the theater were only lighted by small LEDs that, for whatever reason on this occasion, were confusing. Looking at them, I suddenly took a misstep and went tumbling down the next flight of steps. I didn't fall terribly far, but it did hurt, and my backpack holding my computer and other necessities fell with me. I lay there for a beat, gathering my wits, just as the mass of other critics started hustling down past me. One woman actually stepped over my splayed form, asking absently "Are you OK?" as she passed over me.

The thing was, as insane as this sounds, I totally understood the crowd's single focus. Film festivals are curious things, ecosystems unto themselves, where time only matters in terms of when you have to jump in line next, and the days and nights all blur together, "like casinos" as one friend put it. It's a good analogy. Like manic gamblers, we let much of the real world hurtle past without us noticing it so much; also like gamblers, we always hope for the best, despite what you might call dwindling odds.

That is, most years. It just so happens we had a particularly robust Sundance, and an outrageously strong Cannes festival this year -- and yes, we talk of these things much like farmers might hail a good crop -- which meant "TIFF16" was absolutely lousy with excellent films, from international auteurs to American indies. I can't remember a Toronto festival where I truly adored so many of the films I was privileged to see. Here are some of the high- -- and paltry few -- lowlights.

Thematic Trend #1: The Aftermath of Violence

I touched on this before, but a great number of festival films this year were centered around the idea that, like a jagged rock hurled into the water, violence leaves shock waves and reverberations that affect a much wider section of the pond. Cristian Mungiu's Graduation focuses on the ramifications of violence perpetrated on a high-school girl about to face her final exams; Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman concerns a husband's quest for emotional reparations after an attack on his wife; the Dardenne brothers' The Unknown Girl follows a guilt-ridden doctor's obsessive quest to find the name of a young woman murdered near her clinic; The Birth of a Nation, from controversial director Nate Parker, tells the true story of the Nat Turner rebellion, where slaves gathered together and struck down their white masters over the course of a single, bloody night; and then there was Paul Verhoeven's intentionally divisive Elle, which features sexual violence as a major turn-on.

Thematic Trend #2: The Way It Was

As you can imagine, cinematic love comes up a great deal in any film festival, but this year's festival presented quite a number of films in which love was gained and lost, with only the sad memories -- or imagined fantasies -- to share between the lost couples. Jim Sheridan's aforementioned The Secret Scripture tells the story of a female patient long committed to an Irish asylum, who tells the story of her lost husband to an enraptured psychiatrist; Alex Lehmann's two-person show Blue Jay finds a pair of former high school sweethearts who randomly run into each other in their hometown and spend an evening reminiscing about what they lost; Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals describes a past marriage in a series of interrelated flashbacks and through re-created scenes from a novel written by the ex-husband; and in the wondrous La La Land, Damien Chazelle's throwback musical pulls apart a pair of star-crossed lovers who can only imagine what might have been.

Best Use of Directorial Strengths (tie): Denis Villeneuve, Arrival; Jeff Nichols, Loving

Both directors have done impressive work, but both also have a tendency toward unevenness. Here, they have produced extraordinary films that very much play to their respective talents. In Arrival, a sober sci-fi drama starring Amy Adams -- who with this and her role in Nocturnal Animals definitely became the belle of the Toronto festival ball this year -- that captivated the critics, Villeneuve keeps the cool distance which he often maintains, and his penchant for audience flim-flammery, but he also adds an unexpected jolt of emotion that is most welcome. Meanwhile, in Loving, Arkansas native Nichols has made a warm yet unsentimentalized historic drama about the real life struggles of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose interracial marriage in the '50s scandalized Virginia authorities and eventually led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that changed a nation. Nichols unsurprisingly has a great feel for the South, but he also has a deep affinity for the straightforward country folk who populate the film.

Single Most Peculiar Scene: The Naked Party

In Maren Ade's German comedy (yes, two words that aren't often put in such proximity to each other) Toni Erdmann, a prankster father goes to visit his rigid, type-A daughter in Bucharest and torments her with one of his fictive alter-egos, who keeps appearing wherever she goes. In the film's comic climax, the daughter, having finally caught on to the misery of her regimented life, decides at the last second to turn a work party in her apartment into a "naked" party, in which everyone is expected to be nude in order to enter. As it quite literally comes out of nowhere -- up to that point, the film was anything but revealing -- it's just as surprising to the audience as it is for her boss, who is nevertheless game.

Worst Film: The Secret Scripture

This year, that adjective has a very relative sort of designation. Sheridan's romantic weeper is far from the worst film you'll see this year, and I believe its intentions are honorable, but it's as overwrought as a cupcake made entirely out of frosting, and you see the shocking ending coming long before it dawns on any of the characters. It's watchable, but despite what you may hear from others, it is absolutely nothing like last year's far more reserved Brooklyn. Running a close second, we'd have to call out Adam Wingard's Blair Witch sequel (um, titled Blair Witch), which replaces just about everything interesting and creepy from the original with tired exposition tricks, endless jump-scares, and, most damningly, far too much information better left unsaid.

Most Ethereal Film: Personal Shopper

French auteur Olivier Assayas teamed with the luminescent Kristen Stewart before, in the beguiling Clouds of Sils Maria. This pairing, in which Stewart plays an American medium living in Paris and trying to contact her dead twin brother, works as a ghost story and as a fascinating character study of grief. Along the way, Assayas and Stewart manage to work in something of a fashion treatise, a murder mystery, and, most beguilingly, an extended dramatic scene that heightens the tension in the film by using little more than a texting conversation. Assayas has said Stewart very much shaped her own character, and they worked together on the script, which -- combined with the fine work she turned in for Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women -- hints at the depth of her considerable talent.

Best Cinematography: Moonlight

One film that critics almost universally swooned over -- excepting your faithful scribe, as I found the third act problematic in relation to the first two -- was this coming-of-age drama from writer/director Barry Jenkins. A triptych of segments concerning a young black man -- initially known as a young kid as "Little;" then, as a teen, "Black;" and finally "Chiron" as an adult -- who grows up under hellish circumstances, constantly being taunted by his peers until finally snapping, and spending time in jail, all while trying to come to terms with his sexuality. It's filled with strong performances and emotional depth, but it's the spectacular camera work by cinematographer James Laxton (Camp X-Ray, Yoga Hosers) that truly steals the show. Largely hand-held, but incorporating dynamic, complex movement and meticulous choreography, it sets the tone perfectly. You might not see a more beautifully shot film this year.

Best Culinary Find: Little Nicky's

Near the press theater sits a small, unadorned coffee shop. I suppose the coffee is fine, but the real draw is their freshly made mini-doughnuts, which they serve to you by the half- or full dozen in a small brown paper bag. My plan was to try one and keep the others for later in the day, but once I put one of those light, crispy sugar bombs in my mouth, it was all over. I devoured the entire bag on the spot, and I'm not even sure I chewed. This find comes via fellow critic (and Arkansas native) Noel Murray, whose opinion is almost never wrong about such things.

Best Performance, Male: Joel Edgerton

In an always-crowded field, Aussie character actor Edgerton (seen last year as the weaselly FBI agent in Black Mass), playing real-life figure Richard Loving in Loving, has produced some of his finest and least flashy work. As wonderfully directed by Nichols, Edgerton plays Richard as a no-nonsense country boy, thoroughly uncomfortable with the spotlight, and with no intention of his life turning into any kind of landmark. He just wants to live with his wife, a black woman, in the comfort of their own state, surrounded by their respective families, and be left alone. A simple man with a simple goal, but never sold short by Edgerton's understated performance, it's a standout in part for being so far removed from standard Oscar-baiting histrionics.

Best Performance, Female: Olivia Cooke

It would be hard to avoid Amy Adams for this distinction, appearing in two very high profile films at Toronto playing radically different characters with commendable command, nor neglecting the aforementioned Kristen Stewart, or Emma Stone, whose turn in La La Land is thoroughly captivating, but the nod here has to go to Olivia Cooke, the young actress front and center in Wayne Roberts' Katie Says Goodbye. She plays the near-angelic Katie, who cheerfully works as a waitress in a rough-and-tumble dead-end town, turning tricks, and trying to keep her no-good mother from going under, while falling in love herself with an ex-con lout (Christopher Abbott). Through it all, Katie maintains her sweet naivete in the face of such misery. It's an astounding performance; like something out of a Hubert Selby Jr. novel, only with a protagonist who thinks she's playing a Disney princess.

Best Film: La La Land

Dear reader, no one was more surprised than I was at being rendered a sodden heap by Chazelle's La La Land, a deeply moving film about a pair of star-crossed lovers (played by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone) trying to make their way in Hollywood -- the reason being, the film is a musical, a genre I have forever denigrated as being phony, flossy, and nonessential. Taking his cue from the golden age of the genre, and liberally paying homage to everyone from Stanley Donen to Jacques Demy, Chazelle has crafted an ode to old Hollywood that still feels thoroughly modern and vital. Expect this film to cause the biggest cultural detonation of any film this year when it hits in mid-December, and get used to the idea that between this film and the outrageous success of Hamilton on Broadway, the musical is anything but dead. I've had to re-evaluate my life upon viewing this extraordinary film; so, as a warning to all the other musical disbelievers out there, after viewing it, you might find yourself in the same predicament.

MovieStyle on 09/23/2016

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