Nouveau heights

Highlights of the exceptionally
strong, 37th annual FNC

DELIGHTFUL DEBUT: When Life Was Good

by MATTHEW HAYS

The Festival du Nouveau Cinéma has had its ups and downs over the decades, but I must say, this year’s edition completely kicks ass. There’s a lively, diverse selection of films that will please just about any adventurous filmgoer. What follows are some of the very best the fest has to offer.

Kicking off the festival will be Denis Villeneuve’s masterful short, Next Floor, a darkly hilarious combination of theatrical acting styles and CGI. Villeneuve takes aim at gluttony, with utterly strange results.

The FNC presents a series of films by masters and seasoned directors, among them Wim Wenders, Jonathan Demme, Kathryn Bigelow, Terence Davies, John Boorman and Barbet Schroeder, all of whom will screen their latest films. And look out for the new Atom Egoyan entry, Adoration, about fragile human connections in the cyber era, as well as Heaven on Earth, Deepa Mehta’s intense film about domestic violence in an Ontario immigrant community. I would argue this is Mehta’s finest film.

As well, there are fresh visions from relative newcomers: Morgan Dews will premiere Must Read After My Death, a film about what a family learns about their beloved grandmother after she passes away. It’s another disturbing dysfunctional family dissection, à la Capturing the Friedmans. From Vancouver comes When Life Was Good, a delightful, charming first feature from Terry Miles. Here, his characters stumble through their messy relationships, with surprising results. The movie’s intense spirit is buoyed by the star-making performances of Kristine Cofsky and Casey Manderson, who lead a perfect cast.

Quebec talent will also be front and centre with Lost Song, Rodrigue Jean’s beautiful but devastating entry involving an opera singer in the throes of postpartum depression. And Denis Côté is back with his distinct brand of magical strangeness, Elle veut le chaos. Michael MacKenzie’s latest, Adam’s Wall, tells the fraught tale of a Jewish teenager and an Arab girl who fall in love in Montreal’s Mile-End ’hood, where they learn that Middle East tensions still have repercussions, despite the geographic distance. Manuel Foglia peers into the political machinations of la belle province in his documentary Chers électeurs.

Charles Officer serves up a poetic, heartfelt trio of stories about a nurse struggling with sickle-cell anemia, a boxer dealing with the death of his mentor/trainer, and a boy striving to save his sick mother in Nurse.Fighter.Boy, a hit when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Gwen Haworth takes us through the transgendered journey from male to female in her first-person documentary She’s a Boy I Knew. One of my personal favourites is the gritty Newfoundland feature Down to the Dirt, Justin Simms’ gorgeous, unblinking gaze into the lives of reckless youth who are longing to escape the Rock.

There are two entries from Israel that warrant mention, the critically acclaimed The Last Card, about one man’s reconciliation with his aged mother, a Holocaust survivor. And Ari Folman has crafted an utterly unique cinematic experience with his animated documentary Waltz With Bashir, a memoir about the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war.

THE FESTIVAL DU NOUVEAU CINÉMA
SCREENS FROM OCT. 8-19. INFO:
WWW.NOUVEAUCINEMA.CA