Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Diary #1

Welcome to TIFF, where more than 200 features will play over 11 days. Some have already premiered at the year’s other major fests—Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Telluride—and some are having their world premieres in Toronto. To say it’s impossible to see everything is an absurd understatement; it’s not even possible to see 25% of the features (and that already discounts all of the shorts). Even for those lucky pundits to attend some of the aforementioned previous fests, navigating the Toronto schedule is perilous. And this year, I was not one of those lucky pundits.

I’m here for the full 11 days, with both a press pass and a large ticket package, so I’ll probably see around 45 films and I’ll make a strong attempt to make sure that slate has some good diversity. I’ll see a lot of the major premieres and Oscar hopefuls, a lot of the holdovers from Cannes and others, many foreign films, several docs, a hopefully healthy number of films directed by women and people of color, a few genre films, and a few films with no buzz or pedigree at all (because small discoveries are a wonderful part of the fest experience).

Here’s what I saw on the first two days:

Atlantics: Cannes Grand Prix winner, directed by Mati Diop

Les Misérables: Cannes Jury Prize winner, directed by Ladj Ly

Pain and Glory: Cannes Best Actor winner, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Parasite: Cannes Palme d’Or winner, directed by Bong Joon Ho

The Personal History of David Copperfield: TIFF premiere, directed by Armando Iannucci

The Platform: TIFF premiere, directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: Cannes Best Screenplay winner, directed by Céline Sciamma

The Report: Sundance premiere, directed by Scott Z. Burns

While at War: TIFF premiere, directed by Alejandro Amenábar

The Whistlers: Cannes premiere, directed by Corneliu Porumboiu

BEST FILM: Parasite

This is one of those cases where every gushing review you’ve seen or heard of the film since its Cannes debut was accurate. Parasite really is that good. More than anything, Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece of class warfare reminded me of Jean Renoir’s 1939 classic The Rules of the Game.

These similarities go far beyond merely thematic ones. Both films predominantly take place in one very large residence, in which many characters of different class status are having multi-layered interactions with one another, and those interactions are taking place in both the foreground and background of the film.

And though it’s far too early to know what kind of enduring place Parasite will have in film history, after seeing it, I can tell you that a qualitative comparison to The Rules of the Game—which always places highly in Sight & Sound’s once-per-decade list of the greatest films ever made—does not feel entirely off base.

But part of what’s so absorbing about the experience of watching Parasite is that, even though you never know exactly where it’s headed, you have an inescapable feeling of what it’s headed toward: violence. Unlike, say, There Will Be Blood, the tell isn’t right there in the title. But the ominous feeling that this won’t end well is positively soaked into the film. As with Tarantino films—which are all conversation and build-up right until the moment that they aren’t—the releases of Parasite come suddenly, and they wrench the audience into both uproarious laughter and audible gasps of four-letter words.

If you can imagine a version of Do the Right Thing in which all of the tension, resentment, and eventual fury arrives out of economic inequality instead of racial inequality, you’re just about there. Except Parasite has numerous Mookies, and none of them are holding anything as docile as a garbage can.

BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE: Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire has a hypnotic fascination with held shots where we’re experiencing the gaze of one protagonist through the camera’s focus on the other. This style leaves both actresses frequently trapped in the grip of a camera that is always calmly, sensually watching them, and it allows us to really notice the nuances of what they do with their faces.

They’re both wonderful, but particular praise goes to Adèle Haenel. The final shot of the film latches onto her for a good long time, but unlike the similar concluding shots in Michael Clayton and Call Me By Your Name, Haenel is looking away here. The camera doesn’t fully meet both of her eyes during this shot, which adds to the voyeuristic mystery that the film never quite allows us to exhale from.

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE: Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory)

Like so many of cinema’s great, decades-spanning actor-director partnerships, the actor tends to, over time, become a stand-in for the director. But here that trope is taken one step further by Banderas overtly playing Almodóvar (or at least an analog for him). As a once-celebrated filmmaker in his twilight years, fighting health problems, fractured personal relationships, and a sudden interest in recreational heroin use, Banderas gives a career-best performance. Every cough, sigh, and resigned look of defeat is deeply felt.

BIGGEST SURPRISE: The Platform

Here’s TIFF’s description for the Midnight Madness genre film The Platform, because I can’t word it any better:

In a future dystopia, prisoners housed in vertically stacked cells watch hungrily as food descends from above—feeding the upper tiers, but leaving those below ravenous and radicalized.

That basic metaphor about how the haves will always fuck over the have-nots—even when roles get reversed—is heavy-handed, but it works here because of how carefully considered the implications, resulting behaviors, and consequences are within the finished film. Despite how sadistic and gory some of the proceedings are, The Platform is a genre triumph precisely because of how unflinching and daring it is in its willingness to follow its ideas on human nature to their logical conclusions. No matter how unpleasant they may be.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: The Personal History of David Copperfield

This designation says a lot more about me than it does the movie, but I just wanted something different out of an Armando Iannucci film. David Copperfield is consistently witty, with a nice snappy delivery by the actors, but it doesn’t showcase any of the astonishing agility with language and insults that Iannucci’s other work does. Nor does Copperfield possess any of the pathetic, sycophantic inanity that Iannucci had made his bread and butter in Veep, In the Loop, and The Death of Stalin.

Iannucci said in the Q&A that he thought it was time to make something that wasn’t about “how we’re all fucked.” But in a global moment where that sentiment feels more accurate than ever, I wasn’t ready for Iannucci to abandon the cathartic release of the funhouse mirror he had been so deftly holding up to global politics for the last decade.

THREE OTHER THINGS I LIKED:

• The centerpiece scene in Portrait of a Lady on Fire

In Céline Sciamma’s previous film, 2014’s Girlhood, the centerpiece scene was three young girls dancing and lip syncing to Rihanna’s “Diamonds,” while a fourth girl longingly gazed at them, wishing nothing more than to just live in their orbit forever. Portrait of a Lady on Fire has a similar moment, also perfectly set to music, except here both women are looking at each other with the same gaze. I fell head over heels for this moment in both films, and I love that it’s become Sciamma’s stylistic signature. It’s now officially her equivalent of the Spike Lee double-dolly shot.

• The ending of Les Misérables

Some films have the courage to bring us right to the exact moment where the characters have to make their fateful decision, and then just cut to black. Call it the Before Sunset ending, or the Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels ending. And now you can call it the Les Misérables ending. It worked perfectly for me.

• The sunsets in Atlantics

Much of Atlantics, the Cannes Grand Prix winner, didn’t work for me. But gods it had some stunning magic-hour cinematography. It’s worth seeing for those shots alone.

THREE OTHER THINGS I DISLIKED:

• The length of The Report

The Report is a good movie. I want to make that clear up front before I start sounding like I’m trashing it. Okay, having said that, I think two hours was the worst possible length for this movie. The Report takes place over many years, covering the research, writing, and release of the congressional report on the CIA’s use of torture in the years following 9/11. This movie covers a ton of time, material, and important history.

For a subject that meaty, I think there are two clear options: either zoom in on one aspect or try to get it all. There isn’t really a middle there, yet The Report tried to thread that hole-less needle. To its immense credit, the movie actually did this really well. But I can’t escape the feeling that, given the amount of material The Report tried to cover, it really should have been an HBO miniseries rather than a two-hour movie that frequently felt like it was on fast-forward.

• The plot cohesion of The Whistlers

As far as high concept caper movies go, The Whistlers has one hell of a great conceit—the action all takes place in the Canary Islands, and the culprits attempt to communicate via an indigenous language based on whistling. Hilarity ensues. What a great hook! Except The Whistlers tries too hard to outsmart itself. It constantly jumps around in both chronology and character POV, and the resulting movie unfortunately adds up to significantly less than the sum of its parts.

• The Darkest Hour-ness of While at War

While at War might as well have been called The Darkest Hora, because it’s basically The Darkest Hour set in Spain. Like The Darkest Hour, it takes place at the outset of World War II, it’s mostly distinguished by a good score, good acting, and incredible lighting, and it culminates with a scene of a balding old white guy pleading to a Parliament-like governmental body to not fuck up this important historical moment. While at War certainly isn’t a bad movie, and many of its craft elements are rather striking. But it does feel as though we’ve been here before, and quite recently at that.