eOne released Incendies on DVD and Blu-ray in Canada on September 13, 2011. Help support Toronto Screen Shots by buying it on Amazon.ca.
Incendies (Director: Denis Villeneuve): Surely the best Canadian film of last year, and deservedly nominated for an Academy Award®, Incendies tells an epic and yet personal story of war, divided families, and devastating secrets. When their mother dies suddenly, twins Simon and Jeanne are shocked that her will assigns them the task of returning to their Middle Eastern homeland to deliver two letters, one to the father they thought was dead, and one to a brother they never knew they had.
Though the country is never referred to by name, it’s almost certainly Lebanon, which suffered through a bitter civil war that raged from 1975 until 1990. The film flashes back and forth between the present (the twins’ quest to find their missing relatives) and the past (their mother Nawal’s long and surprising journey from her homeland to Canada), and through the masterful editing, we discover some shocking family secrets at precisely the same time as Simon and Jeanne, even though we’ve been following Nawal’s story too. It’s an impressive feat, and just one of many in this superb and moving film.
The only bonus feature on the disc is a 44-minute documentary feature entitled “Remembering the Ashes,” but it’s worthy of a watch. It focuses on the many extras used in the film, and it was interesting to discover that almost all of them were Palestinian, Lebanese or Iraqi refugees living in Jordan. As we see the film crew shooting several of the more violent scenes, the extras share their own experiences of war. On the other hand, it’s depressing to hear the local villagers defending the practice of honour killing as well as boasting of their implacable hatred of “the Jews.”
Amy George screens at part of the Canada First programme at TIFF 2011.
Amy George (Directors: Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas): Toward the end of this quietly resonant film, 13-year-old Jesse’s mother tells him about a time when he was a child that his parents thought they had lost him, but that they knew to just look up: “You came down from the trees like a monkey turning into a man.”
And although it’s a rare case where the writing feels a tiny bit forced, it just might sum up this intimate slice of adolescent life. It’s a glimpse, a snapshot of a man in the process of formation. And it’s all the more remarkable because the average age of the cast and crew must be somewhere around 20. Director/writers Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas are very recent (2008) film school graduates, and the film’s executive producer is 15-year-old actor Connor Jessup.
“Write what you know” is good advice for writers and Lewis and Thomas certainly are not so far removed from the small terrors of adolescence. And newcomer Gabrielle Del Castillo Mulally is stuck right in the middle of them, ensuring that his constant expression of puzzlement comes from a genuine place.
Jesse is the son of well-meaning but flaky liberal parents (ex-Rheostatics drummer Don Kerr and his real-life spouse, author Claudia Dey) who are navigating a frightening new stage of parenting in which neither of them seems able to communicate with their son. Mother Sabi nags Jesse to eat his vitamins but wonders to her husband whether he might be gay, or unpopular at school. It’s the stage where taking care of your kids seems to become exponentially more complicated than just making sure they’re fed and clothed and sheltered.
In reality, Jesse has lots of friends, even a close female friend, but he also seems to enjoy spending time by himself. When an art teacher’s assignment requires him to take a photograph that represents some aspect of himself, he convinces his parents to buy him an “analog” camera and a telephoto lens.
He also takes an offhand remark from his teacher about being a “true artist” so literally that he checks out a book from the library called “True Artist” in which the male author says definitively that no man can be a true artist until he has made love to a woman.
Throwing this “advice” into the churning stew of Jesse’s adolescent sexual awakening leads him into some murky territory; namely, up a tree across from his slightly older neighbour Amy George’s room, where he snaps a picture of her. A few days later, the two are thrown together in unusual circumstances. After sneaking some alcoholic coolers from the fridge, and some experiments with hypnotism, Jesse finds himself tempted to go further than ever before in his sexual explorations on a passed out Amy.
In one of the film’s best scenes, he confesses his feelings of guilt to an older female family friend, who assures him he’s likely done nothing wrong, and that these things are more complicated than he thinks.
It’s barely an epiphany, but the film contains a few of them, making us feel that Jesse, despite his continued wide-eyed bewilderment, is on his way.
It’s a remarkably self-assured debut for the filmmakers, and though there are a few rough spots technically (shaky camera, less than perfect sound, a few uneven performances from the supporting players) and a bit of shapelessness to the story, it adds up to a satisfying experience. And it makes me happy to add another couple of young Canadian filmmakers to my radar.
Take This Waltz screens at part of the Gala Presentations programme at TIFF 2011.
Take This Waltz (Director: Sarah Polley): Sarah Polley’s second directorial effort, Take This Waltz starts out looking very much like a romantic comedy, and despite efforts to change gears later, never seems to achieve the weighty seriousness it needs. The superficial sheen of coincidental meetings and deserted spaces for lovers to flirt or to talk make it hard to take what is essentially a tragic story very seriously.
Margot (Michelle Williams) and Lou (Seth Rogen) have been married for four years, and their domestic routine is affectionate and a bit eccentric. In other words, like most couples, they share their own private language and long-running jokes. In small doses, this can add a unique intimacy to an on-screeen relationship (I really liked the way Rashida Jones and Paul Rudd bantered in I Love You, Man, for example.) But overused, as it is in Polley’s film, it makes the characters annoying and infantile. And perhaps that’s her point. Margot and Lou never really seem to have an adult conversation.
Which makes Margot’s slow-burning flirtation with neighbour Daniel (Luke Kirby) such a powderkeg. Confused by her desire for something new, Margot never really articulates to either man what it is she wants. Daniel appears out of nowhere and promises…well, what? Escape? Novelty? Temporary passion?
It’s never clear what he wants out of this flirtation either. In one more maddening rom-com touch, this powerfully attractive man has no mate, and the perfect strong-sensitive work life. He works as a rickshaw driver (macho side) but is also secretly an artist (sensitive side). He is, in fact, the perfect man.
But Lou isn’t so bad. Sure, he refuses to make conversation at their anniversary dinner (“we’re not going out to ‘catch up’!” he scoffs), but he loves her like any good husband, sometimes distractedly but never less than deeply.
We see no evidence that they’re actually bad for each other (unlike Williams’ superior turn in last year’s Blue Valentine, a film I’m sure will be drawing comparisons), so we’re left to think that Margot is simply pursuing something new and shiny.
When it turns out that it’s really Lou who learns from the affair, it makes it all the more frustrating. On the cusp of having their first real on-screen grown-up conversation, he says, “You didn’t want to have this discussion before. Let’s not have it now.” It’s one of several moments when important things need to be said. And we don’t get to hear them. It robs the narrative of the angry and hurt confrontation that not only our couple, but the audience, needs.
A series of wordless (of course) montages near the end were almost laughable in their unreality, but when I wondered if Polley was positing them as some sort of fantasy sequence, I looked back to the beginning of the film, and realized the whole beginning was equally phoney.
It’s painful to write those words, because I had very high hopes indeed for the film. And there are many things to like. My initial fear that Seth Rogen would be the weak link was unfounded; his performance, in fact, felt the strongest of the three main characters. And the cinematography, by veteran Luc Montpellier (Cairo Time, Polley’s previous film Away From Her), is gorgeous, lending Toronto a candy-coloured dream palette. It’s Polley’s script that fails for me. Perhaps she should have brought in Leonard Cohen (whose song “Take This Waltz” provided the film’s title if not its theme) for a rewrite.
Le Havre (Director: Aki Kaurismäki): Working on recurrent themes, in his usual style and with many actors who have appeared in previous films, Kaurismäki could be accused of making the same film over and over again. But to be fair, each iteration is just so lovely to watch that it’s easy to forgive him.
In the latest in his series of deadpan melodramas, André Wilms plays the perfectly-named Marcel Marx, a shoeshine man eking out a modest existence with his loving wife (the always wonderfully droll Kati Outinen) in the port city of Le Havre in Normandy. I say perfectly-named because Marcel is a portrait in gentle, almost silent, compassion with a bit of a political edge. It’s also an apt description of the film.
Le Havre is one of France’s busiest ports and a major transit point for cargo traveling to Great Britain. It’s not surprising that it’s also a hub for illegal migrants trying to find a better life there. When a container is found to contain a human cargo of Africans trying to make it to England, Marcel’s settled life is turned upside down. Kaurismäki’s compassion and humanism is never more evident than in a sequence where the music drops away and he lingers on the face of each person inside the opened container. A young boy, Idrissa, evades the police roundup and is soon discovered by Marcel, who takes pity on him, bringing him food and eventually taking him into his own home. This is all the more surprising because his wife Arletty has taken ill and is confined to hospital. Even as he worries about her, he rallies the ragtag community that seems to exist in all Kaurismäki films to help the boy find his way to relatives in London. Similar to Philippe Lioret’s excellent Welcome (review), the film’s politics are strictly personal, but with the sense that the protagonist’s growing awareness of the issue may change him for good.
It’s a serious story, but told with his typical light touch. Sublime lighting and a wonderful sense of composition elevate the visuals to the point where it couldn’t be described as gritty or even realistic, but it finds the beauty in each face and in the slightly shabby homes and storefronts of Marcel’s neighbours. There is also a rather unlikely benefit concert performance by an elderly rockabilly legend, whose presence in the film is completely unnecessary but serves as another indication of Kaurismäki’s big hearted loyalty to his friends.
In the end, it’s not surprising that a little bit of magic seems to bring the story to a happy conclusion. One critic I know has called Le Havre a masterpiece, but it’s my firm belief that Aki Kaurismäki doesn’t set out to create masterpieces, and I don’t think he’d be comfortable with that term. Instead, he continues to paint small and lovely portraits of overlooked people. Whether he really believes in the goodness of people or is just challenging us to live up to the ideals of characters like Marcel makes little difference to me. It’s just a genuine pleasure to be able to enjoy the work of one of world’s great humanist filmmakers.
With TIFF almost upon us, this will be my last preview post, and I’m happy to be featuring another Canadian film from Québec. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria), Café de Flore has been getting great buzz among local critics who have seen it before it screens at the festival.
[nggallery id=6]
The synopsis describes the film as “a love story about people separated by time and place but connected in profound and mysterious ways.”
Atmospheric, fantastical, tragic and hopeful, the film chronicles the parallel fates of Jacqueline, a young mother with a disabled son in 1960s Paris, and Antoine, a recently-divorced, successful DJ in present day Montréal. What binds the two stories together is love – euphoric, obsessive, tragic, youthful, timeless love.
Jacqueline is being played by French actress Vanessa Paradis, better known over here as Mrs. Johnny Depp. A beautiful woman by any measure, she dares to look very unglamourous in the film, which raises my expectation that she’ll show some serious acting chops. The role of Antoine is being played by Québecois musician Kevin Parent, and it’s interesting to note that Paradis was also better known as a singer and model before turning to acting. Music promises to be an important part of the film, with a soundtrack featuring Sigur Rós, Pink Floyd, and The Cure, among others, but I wonder if the fact that both leads can sing will figure into the plot at all?
According to Canadian distributor Alliance Films, the film will receive a theatrical release in the province of Québec on September 23rd, but no release date for English Canada has been announced. All the more reason to catch it during TIFF!
SCREENINGS:
Monday September 12, 10:00pm – Princess of Wales
Wednesday September 14, 11:45am – TIFF Bell Lightbox 2
