Word on the World

Highlights of Montreal’s biggest film event

DEPRESSION DALLIANCE: Redland

By MATTHEW HAYS

Well, it’s big. This year, the World Film Festival expands its line-up of big-screen entries to well over 400. And as has become expected, WFF ringmaster Serge Losique delivered his usual strange shtick at the fest’s annual press conference last month, at once seeming to praise reporters (by suggesting that, like the World Film Fest itself, the demise of journalism had been greatly exaggerated) and snubbing them (by refusing to take any questions). It’s just part of the game now. Is anyone really too surprised when he says something kinda nutty?

Also as usual, the WFF is an odd melange of celluloid. It’s international, sure, but the diversity is also matched by the range of quality. From the sublime to the strange, here are some of the films that appear to offer something out of the ordinary.

Celebrated Italian filmmaker Felice Farina returns with the feature La Fisica dell’acqua (The Physics of Water), a melodrama and suspense movie in official competition about a young boy who must explain why he sabotaged his mother’s car so she and his uncle would have an accident. In a lighter vein, writer-director Micha Lewinsky offers the Swiss entry Die Standesbeamtin (Will You Marry Us?), in which a cynical woman realizes she’s in love again, with an old friend. Trouble is, he’s already getting married, and wants the former cynic to conduct the ceremony. An American entry with solid buzz that’s also in competition is Redland, directed and co-written by Asiel Norton, about a young woman trying to keep her extramarital affair under wraps as her family struggles through the Great Depression.

MONKEYS AND MALE BONDING: Un Cargo pour l’Afrique

Gay Jews and psychotic roomies

Fans of broad comedy may want to check out Oy Vey! My Son is Gay!, a farce about coming out to Jewish parents, from first-time feature filmmaker Evgeny

Afineevsky. Those who love roommate horror movies like Single White Female will want to venture to Je te mangerais (You Will Be Mine), Sophie Laloy’s French movie about a psychotic young university student who invites her friend to board with her. Draconian house rules one minute, passionate lesbian crushes the next, then severe control freakishness means it’s probably time to break the lease.

Mike Stasko’s Iodine is a truly strange low-budget film about a man who goes to his family’s cottage, where he struggles to figure out where his missing father has disappeared to. Son of the Sunshine is an ode to the outsider. Here, a young man with Tourette’s syndrome is also endowed with mysterious powers that allow him to heal the sick. After undergoing an experimental surgical procedure, his ailment fades—but so do his healing powers. It features a powerful performance by Ryan Ward in the lead, who also writes and directs.

The Bend is Jennifer Kierans’ brutally frank and emotionally intense potboiler about a few people trying to figure out why their loved one killed himself. And Rob Rowatt does the low-budget Canadian horror movie thing with The Honeymoon, in which a sweet, innocent couple go on a canoe trip after getting married, only to witness a murder and then get stalked and trapped by a crack-dealing hillbilly family. Lots of strange plot twists and turns in this one—sort of like The Love Boat meets Deliverance.

In Un Cargo pour l’Afrique

(A Cargo to Africa), a man and a boy forge an unusual bond when the man attempts to dump his pet monkey in a park. The boy chides him for this, accusing the man of having no heart. The two strike up a friendship in this tale of an unexpected bond written and directed by RogerCantin. And Claude and Nathan Miller direct Je suis heureux que ma mere soit vivante (I’m Glad that My Mother is Alive), a film about a young man who loves his adoptive parents but who yearns to find out who his biological mother is. And the documentary profile Looking for Dragone will premiere, in which the life and times of Cirque du Soleil mastermind Franco Dragone will be examined. Directed by Manu Bonmariage, the feature explores the man behind some of the Cirque’s most popular shows.

This year’s opening film is Ricardo Trogi’s 1981, which is the latest example of that path that’s all too well travelled, the maudlin look back at a wistful Quebec past through the eyes of a child. This film has its moments, but really, isn’t nostalgia just a state of depression?

And closing the fest is The Everlasting Flame, the official film of the Beijing Olympics. In other words, an infomercial brought to you by the fine people running the fascist regime of China.

THE WORLD FILM FEST SCREENS
FROM AUG. 27–SEPT 7. INFO:
WWW.FFM-MONTREAL.ORG