Another week, another few hundred groundbreaking, illuminating new films, many making their world premiere in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs until Sept. 18. Here is another short-list of films to watch.
Unless (Canada/Ireland)
One of two movies based on Carol Shields novels at the Toronto International Film Festival, Unless is the story of a woman whose college-aged daughter Nora suddenly and inexplicably decamps to a spot on Toronto’s streets, virtually catatonic and holding a cardboard sign on which is one word — “goodness.” Catherine Keener plays Reta Winters, who resists the urge to simply drag Nora into a waiting car — that comes later — in favour of solving the mystery of why her daughter (Hannah Gross) would choose such a silent and demeaning form of protest. Poor director Alan Gilsenan, who has to contend with both ardent fans of Shields’ final novel and the fact that he turns Downton Abbey’s Brendan Coyle into a bad guy. “Happiness isn’t goodness, I know that now,” says Reta. Part mystery, part drama, and Keener’s finest role to date, bar none.
Planetarium (France/Belgium)
Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central) directs Natalie Portman in Planetarium, the story of a psychic medium sister-act that travels from the U.S. to Paris in the 1930s. Laura and younger sister Kate (Lily Rose Depp) find some manner of success on the nightclub circuit but seize an opportunity to move in with Andre Korben (Emmanuel Salinger), a well-connected French film producer who cooks up a strange film project after a revelatory private séance with the sisters. “He’s an opportunity,” says Kate, though he’s clearly something more. As Laura finds fame in film, Korben seeks answers with Kate, all while fascism and Nazism seeps slowly into the party. The film is rich and luxe to the nth degree, including a plot that is overstuffed with too much potential. “Abandon yourself, stop being wary, disappear!” is a director’s instruction to Laura. The film is best enjoyed if the viewer can stop trying to make sense of things and do the same.
Gaza Surf Club (Germany)
All that Westerners hear of Gaza, that beleaguered Palestinian strip of land between Israel and Egypt, is of bombings and explosives smuggling. It’s of great surprise, then, to learn that there is a burgeoning surfing community comprised of young men — and a few brave women — seeking to escape it all on the waves of the Mediterranean. Documentarians Philip Gnadt and Mickey Yamine introduce us to several characters, most notably 23-year-old Ibrahim, who dreams of opening up a surfing school and meeting place for Gaza’s youth. He’d like to go to Hawaii for proper training but is consistently denied permission to travel. Young Sabah, 15, continues to surf despite disapproval from the community at large, though she does have one strong advocate: her father. Through these interviews Gnadt and Yamine show the tragedy that something so basic as recreation should be so fraught with risk, but demonstrate that getting out on the water is in of itself an act of resilience and hopeful optimism for the future of the region.
The Duelist (Russia)
You can almost smell the muck and blood in Alexey Mizgirev's The Duelist, even more so now that it's coming to an IMAX screen near you. In 19th-century Czarist Russia, only a nobleman is permitted to restore the honour of a nobleman, and boy, do these guys get peeved a lot. But nobility can be bought, as our hero Yakovlev (Petr Fedorov) discovers. A professional duelist with an uncertain history — and a death wish, apparently — Yakovlev kills five men in St. Petersburg in four months alone, trying to earn enough money to restore his family name. "You are a death machine, and you and I will make millions," proclaims his German procurer. It is surprisingly violent: clearly a single shot at 40 paces is not the only way to honourably murder a man. The plot thickens after Yakovlev discovers that he's a pawn in a bigger game, and with the introduction of a princess-in-distress (Julia Khlynina). Superb costuming and set pieces offset Mizgirev’s tendency to underestimate his audience.
In The Blood (Denmark)
The characters in Rasmus Heisterberg's In The Blood long to break out of Copenhagen and get away. Far away. After exams, medical student Simon (Kristoffer Bech) has plans to take off to the Amazon in Bolivia and work in a field hospital there, dragging along best friend Knud (Elliott Crosset Hove), who was recently dumped by his girlfriend of three years. "We're going to have a great summer!" feels like a doomed prophecy, not a proclamation. There are too many weekends spent drinking surgical spirits and picking up women in between now and then: it'll be a miracle if brilliant, entitled Simon makes it. Or if his friendship with Knud and two other flatmates can survive Simon's bouts of petulant game-playing. Known primarily as writer for A Royal Affair and the film adaptation of Steig Larsson's novels, Heisterberg shows his skill as a director as he maps Simon's journey in monthly chunks, while the viewer feels the effects of the men’s partying with every discomfiting close-up.
Park (Greece/Poland)
Spectator sports of a different kind take place at Athens’ abandoned Olympic village, where troubled kids and teens hang out in between scrounging for food and dealing with their dysfunctional families. These lost boys and girls spend empty, aimless days, the next generation to face joblessness and economic despair in Greece. Summer love, of sorts, blooms between Anna (Dimitra Vlagkopoulou) and timid Dimitri (Dimitris Kitsos), Director Sofia Exarchu proves a master with the small moments that make these kids who they are. There is no small measure of bravado, but an equal dose of pain/shame written on their faces as these kids grow up far too fast.
