My first film at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival was Cleanflix (review), a documentary which explored the issues surrounding the sale and rental of edited versions of R-rated movies to observant Mormons in Utah. I knew that after seeing the film, I wanted to ask the creators many more questions than they could have fielded during the post-screening Q&A. So, thanks to David Magdael and Margot Hardy from TC:DM Associates, I was able to sit down for half an hour with the creators of the film during what must have been a very hectic week for them. In addition to co-directors Andrew James (on the left in the picture above) and Joshua Ligairi (on the right), we were also joined by producer Amber Bollinger.
Since the interview deals with some plot points in the film, it really makes sense to read my review first.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
censorship,
mormonism,
religion
Air Doll (Kûki ningyô) (Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda): The premise of Air Doll seems silly at best, salacious at worst: an inflatable sex doll comes to life. In the hands of another director, the resulting film would probably have been a standard sex comedy. But Kore-eda, whose previous TIFF appearances have been with thoughtful films like Still Walking and Nobody Knows, turns the film into an absolutely captivating meditation on what it means to be human.
One morning, Nozomi, a “sex substitute”, finds that she has acquired a heart. Puzzled, she dresses herself in the maid’s outfit her owner has bought for her, and ventures out. By mimicking the speech and actions of her neighbours, she learns to fit in, and she soon lands a job working at a video store, where she begins to fall in love with her co-worker. Casting the wonderful Bae Doo Na (Linda Linda Linda, The Host) was a stroke of genius. Her wide-eyed wonder at everything in the world is beautiful to watch, and the scenes of her joyfully discovering everything around her put a big smile on my face.
Though she is “owned” by a lonely waiter, he doesn’t realize what has happened and eventually buys a replacement doll. One of the big themes of the film is the idea of substitution and replacement, that in a big and impersonal city like Tokyo, it’s easy to feel unimportant. Kore-eda assembles a supporting cast of neighbourhood characters who are all struggling with loneliness; the old man who sits on the park bench, the single father of a young daughter, the middle-aged hotel clerk worried that a younger woman will soon replace her, the bulimic young woman who refuses to work on her parents’ apple farm. Unfortunately, our interactions with these characters is fleeting, giving a climactic scene near the end a little less impact than I think it should have. As well, a few narrative threads are confusing which momentarily pulls us out of this lovely fable.
Bae Doo Na is absolutely fearless in her performance, whether she’s naked physically or emotionally. When the joy of discovery inevitably gives way to the pain of rejection and “replacement,” I was never less than mesmerized by her performance and her beauty. The film takes a turn for the tragic, as might be expected, but the ending is actually somewhat upbeat, and throughout, Kore-eda powerfully reminds us that we are not meant to be alone in this world. Visually beautiful and with a beating emotional heart, just like Nozomi, Air Doll is definitely a film I’m eager to catch again soon.
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
japan
Police, Adjective (Director: Corneliu Porumboiu): Young police detective Cristi seems to have pulled a pretty boring assignment. Tail a group of hash-smoking teenagers until their dealer appears. He’s been on the case more than a week, compiling detailed but monotonous reports on the movements of his main target, a kid named Victor. One of the other teens, Alex, has been informing on his friend, but so far, all they can charge the kids with is simple possession. His superiors insist that he should wrap up the case by conducting a “sting” operation, and that the kids will give up more information once they’re arrested, but Cristi has been dragging his feet. As he protests to his colleagues, he doesn’t want to send a kid to prison for seven or eight years just for smoking a joint, especially when it wouldn’t even be an offence anywhere else in Europe. Besides, he says, the law is probably going to change very soon.
As the film continues to follow Cristi through his boring days of surveillance and paperwork, we get the sense that there’s going to be a showdown; not with the supposed “criminals” but between Cristi and his boss, the police captain. The grind of the job is palpable, and after an hour of watching this young cop do nothing but wait, some of the audience began walking out. But I think director Porumboiu does something quite brave, by emphasizing the procedure in the standard police procedural. It dawns on Cristi, and on us, that he is nothing but a cog in a vast legal machine, with no ability to make decisions for himself. Everyone else seems to have accepted their place in the bureaucracy, but Cristi talks about his conscience and about moral law.
The final confrontation with the police captain is dazzling. For about twenty minutes, this man demonstrates both his intelligence and his authority by forcing Cristi to read out definitions from a dictionary. He systematically devastates Cristi’s appeals to his conscience as irrelevant to his job as a policeman. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the nuances of their dialogue are lost in the translation to English, but in at least one case there is a political resonance to their discussion. The older man, of a generation that grew up under the dictatorship of Ceausescu objects to one of the dictionary’s definitions of the word “police.” When Cristi reads out a section that describes a “police state,” the captain laughs and says, “Nonsense! The state has always relied on the police.” In the end, he forces Cristi to make a choice between doing the sting and remaining a policeman, or following his conscience out the door into unemployment.
This is smart and challenging filmmaking that requires patience from the audience. Visually, it’s as unexciting as the dingy streets and warren of offices that are Cristi’s habitats. But the sense of being lulled into complacency is important for the latter part of the film, where the young man’s ideals are found wanting. Maybe he joined the police force for excitement, or to do good, but in the end, Cristi takes his place in the creaky apparatus of a state that isn’t about to change as quickly as he would like.
(8/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
romania
Gigante (Director: Adrián Biniez): Fabian Jara (Horacio Camandule) is the titular giant, working as an overnight security guard at a large grocery store in Montevideo. He spends his evening shifts watching security cameras of other night employees doing their jobs, including a crew of female cleaners. He gradually comes to fall in love with one, even though he doesn’t know her name. He begins following her from afar in the mornings, discovering her routines. On the weekends, he works as a bouncer at a nightclub, though he’s far too gentle a giant to really hurt anyone. Although he loves aggressive heavy-metal music, he’s far too shy to actually approach his crush. Instead, his stalker-like behaviour increases, although each time the film steers toward darker territory, Jara’s basic decency surfaces, preserving the light tone. Eventually, he discovers her name is Julia, and by the end a work-related crisis throws them together at last.
It’s the slightest of premises, basically a “nerd gets the girl” story, but the performance of Camandule as the innocent “Jarita” (as his co-workers jokingly call him) is completely endearing. Leonor Svarcas as Julia is just the right combination of dorky and alluring to be believable as a woman Jara believes he might actually have a chance with. The film has the languid pacing and gentle humour that Uruguayan film is becoming known for, and it was a pleasure to recognize Juan Andrés Stoll from Hiroshima (review) in a small role. Though it’s not great cinema, this is a perfect festival film, a crowd-pleasing slice of life that for me personally was a welcome respite from the steady diet of abusive families, suicide, disease and obsession I’ve been watching so far at this festival.
Here is the Q&A with director Adrián Biniez from after the screening:
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Duration: 24:40
Here’s a clip from the film, which is available now on DVD in the US through the excellent Film Movement subscription service:
(7/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
uruguay
Kynodontas (Dogtooth) (Director: Giorgos Lanthimos): Although I saw this film several days ago, it’s been difficult to put my thoughts into words. Lanthimos has delivered an unforgettable and disturbing film, but not one that is easy to critique or even describe. And though I consider myself more of a film reviewer than a critic, it’s even difficult to provide any sort of plot summary.
Briefly stated, Dogtooth concerns a well-to-do Greek family, living in a large suburban house. The parents of three adult children have kept them confined to the house since birth, teaching them their own unique vocabulary (the “sea” is a large armchair, the “phone” is a salt shaker, “zombies” are small yellow flowers, etc.). Though the children appear to be in their twenties, they are dressed like children and spend their days engaged in competitive games to gain the favour of their parents. Occasionally, the father pays Christina, the female security guard at his workplace, to relieve his son’s sexual urges. None of the children have names.
If this isn’t unsettling enough, it soon gets worse. Christina takes a liking to the older daughter and gives her gifts in exchange for sexual favours. One of the gifts is a collection of VHS movies, which the daughter watches after everyone is asleep. This little bit of the outside world begins to obsess her. She asks her sister to call her Bruce, and begins quoting dialogue from Rocky and Jaws. She lashes out violently at her brother, and in one harrowing scene, dances herself into a frenzy. When her father finds out the source of this “evil,” he beats Christina and banishes her from their home. In a matter-of-fact but deeply disturbing conversation with his wife, they agree that one of the sisters will have to take Christina’s place.
The title of the film comes from another of the heartbreaking lies the parents have told their children. They will be ready to leave the house only when their dogtooth (eye tooth) falls out. As the older daughter’s desperation grows, she takes matters into her own hands, and the results are tragic. Aggeliki Papoulia is absolutely fearless in this difficult role, and the rest of cast make a strange and disturbing viewing experience also surprisingly compelling.
This is a film of stunning visuals to accompany the ideas. The house is decorated in 70s kitsch style, which reinforces the feeling of being trapped in time. The children are suffocating in this airless environment, and their sexual and violent urges are treated as something to be controlled. Everything that should give them pleasure is turned into a competition or a test of obedience. In the post-screening Q&A, Lanthimos explained that the genesis of the film came out of a discussion he had with some friends who were getting married. When he expressed his doubts about the institutions of marriage and family, his friends became extremely defensive. He decided to make a film about what would happen if a man went to the ultimate extreme to protect his family. In an odd way, the film reminded me of Cleanflix (review), which I’d seen just the day before. The folly of thinking that evil comes only from outside of us, or that our natural desires are bad, always leads to tragic consequences, and yet it is ingrained in our society. Luckily, it rarely goes to such extremes, but Dogtooth is a particularly unsettling reminder of the danger of idolizing the idea of “family” values.
Here is the Q&A with director Giorgos Lanthimos from after the screening:
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Duration: 11:38
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
family,
greece
