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Cruising the meat market >> Toronto's film fest offers some of the best of the coming season
by MATTHEW HAYS
As much of a meat market as this place is, however, one does need a healthy market to attract good films. And the nurturing of Toronto's green machine has paid off: the films are excellent here, and there are far too many for one person to see over the course of 10 days. Perhaps the biggest buzz has been around two distinctly American movies, both in title as well as origin. American Beauty is stealing much thunder as a reckless and brutal take on mid-life crisis, Kevin Spacey style. What a movie this is--though I wonder why Torontonians endure massive lineups for this, and various other movies, which common knowledge indicates will open widely at local multiplexes within a matter of weeks. Go figure.
Headbanger's doc The other standout is American Movie, the hilarious Sundance hit about one rather accident-prone novice filmmaker's attempt to get his horror movie in the can and distributed. Filmmaker Chris Smith fended off criticisms that he mocks his subject, the hilarious Mark Borchardt, a heavy metal buff who stands as the doc's centrepiece. In fact, Smith and producer Sarah Price have adopted what is now referred to as the Hoop Dreams model, which means a set percentage of the film's profits will be handed over to the film's subject (this arrangement came after intense criticism of doc filmmakers who were becoming rich from their product while their subjects became notorious while remaining penniless). For his part, Borchardt, who arrived at the fest with filmmakers to help promote American Movie, is tickled pink by all the attention the film is bringing, even if he is the butt of a few jokes. "Yes, some of my behaviour is a bit bad," the Wisconsin-based filmmaker reports. "But watching myself up there, man, I could see it as therapeutic. I could see all the bad things I was doing, dude, and know not to repeat them." Bad behaviour included getting drunk and acting disrespectful to his dear mom, who actually ended up shooting some of the film. Despite attacks on the film for poking fun, American Movie manages to hold up the headbanger types in the film with a degree of admiration--if for nothing else, then for their sheer resilience within such a tough business. The good news is that despite its doc status (read: almost impossible to reach a broad audience), Movie has been picked up by Sony, which means you will get a chance to see this hilarious and bigger-than-life film.
Canadian Dogma For those who appreciated The Idiots and The Celebration, two of the first entries in the Danish-born Dogme '95, there are two entries at this year's fest which take up the call to reinvent cinema. For those who don't recall the details, Dogme '95 was a strict set of rules set up by a group of young filmmakers (Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg among them) who argued that cinema should go back to the basics: no elaborate set pieces, no special effects, no makeup. Just a hand-held camera and lots and lots of improvisation by dedicated actors. Dogme '95 has its first Canadian entry with Carl Bessai's Johnny, a stark account of one Toronto squeegee punk's grip over a group of adoring adolescents who hover around him. Bessai has taken on a tricky task, fashioning his film in a style that will invite inevitable comparisons to the work of the Dogme founders. But Bessai handles the material extremely well, evoking a milieu of alienation that is bound to touch multiple nerves with the young audience the film sets out to represent. Johnny's menace is perfectly captured by Chris Martin, a Joseph Fiennes lookalike who ignites the screen with his twisted motivations. The other Dogme entry comes from Harmony Korine, who has fashioned a sort of sequel to his '97 cult oddity Gummo, titled julien donkey-boy. Trainspotting's Ewan Bremner plays a man who cannot express himself as an adult, but rather only in the most child-like of manners. Adding to the surrealism of it all is Werner Herzog, who appears as Bremner's autocratic, wrestling-fan father.
Gender bender
Another bright light in the fest has been Madeline Kahn, who delivers a hilarious and poignant performance as a rather neurotic small-town wife and mother in Judy Berlin. While she's not the star of the film (the film's namesake involves one young actress who's about to leave Long Island to go to L.A. to make it big), Kahn's comic panache infuses the film, amazingly a first-time feature effort by Eric Mendelsohn, who intelligently writes and directs his standout cast (Kahn is joined by Julie Kavner and Barbara Barrie).
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There are so many stars at the Toronto International Film Festival, it's simply not worth listing them all, as I've done in the past. It's enough to make you believe that Beverly Hills is all but empty. And they're all here to sell their latest products. If Montreal's World Film Fest has evolved into a clearing house for aging European directors, the International is a clearing house for every star vehicle the studios have lined up for the fall season.
Another standout is Boys Don't Cry, the Christine Vachon-produced indie film about Teena Marie Brandon, a woman who always identified as a man and, after being discovered for her true gender identity in the early '90s, was brutally raped and murdered in a small southern U.S. town. Hilary Swank delivers a stunning performance in the lead, utterly believable as a gender outlaw who ends up a victim of brute redneck justice.