WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 9

By Chris Luckett

The penultimate day of the 2012 AGH BMO World Film Festival took us through the home stretch in a limping shuffle. The day’s trio of films wasn’t a complete bust, but today’s selection of films was certainly the most melancholy of the festival.

Marécages (Wetlands) is a Canadian film, filmed on and set on a rural Quebec farm. Gabriel Maillé plays Simon, a teenage boy just beginning to explore his dominance and his sexuality.

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Simon watched his younger brother drown, which his mother (Pascale Bussières) has always blamed him for. When Simon’s father (Luc Picard) is crushed by a tractor, Simon once again has to live with the guilt and blame for a family member’s death.

What begins as an interesting examination of a tumultuous mother-son relationship soon devolves into standard drama, with a new man stepping into the stepfather role and Simon rebelling against him. By the end of the movie (dark undertones of the finale aside), Marécages (Wetlands) has failed to create interesting characters or much of an original story.

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Take This Waltz arrives with the anticipation built in by the fact it stars 2011 Best Actress Oscar nominee Michelle Williams and a mostly serious Seth Rogen, and is the second feature directed by Sarah Polley (whose other movie was the heart-wrenching Alzheimer’s drama Away from Her).

Like Marécages (Wetlands), Take This Waltz begins seeming more original than it ends up being. Margot (Williams) is married to Lou (Rogen), and the two appear to have a pretty good relationship; they talk, they cook together, and the banter they have feels absolutely real.

Appearances are deceiving, though, for once Margot discovers a more traditionally handsome man across the street (Luke Kirby), she begins spending more and more time with him, while Lou waits at home for his wife, oblivious to what she’s doing behind his back.

If Lou was a jerk, like Ryan Gosling in Williams’ own Blue Valentine, one could understand Margot’s motives and justification. Yet Rogen naturally imbues Lou with a likability that projects him into the sympathetic role, leaving Margot as the unsympathetic character the audience is still shackled to.

By the time of the film’s end, no character is happy, and none in the Westdale Theatre audience seemed to be, either.

Cleansing the palate to an extent was Luc Besson’s The Lady, a bio-pic about the woman at the heart of Burma’s decades-long fight for democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi. The Lady may not be much lighter in tone than Marécages (Wetlands) or Take This Waltz, but it’s skilfully crafted, well acted, and gorgeous to watch.

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Michelle Yeoh earned much-deserved awards attention for her portrayal of Aung San Suu Kyi, probably the most accomplished performance of her already impressive career. David Thewlis is also fantastic as her husband Michael, loving enough of his wife to let her put a cause ahead of himself.

The Lady’s biggest problem is simply its bloated nature, covering 61 years and running 135 minutes. Riveting performances and lush cinematography ultimately can’t distract from the weight of the complete tale and the gruelling subject matter. Yeoh is downright radiant in a career high and The Lady is a well-made bio-pic, but it falls short of being a truly great true story.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 8

By Chris Luckett

Tonight double-feature was a pair of adaptations that couldn’t have been much different, both because of their subjects and because of their general quality.

Trishna is a modernization of Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, set in modern India. The central and titular character, played by Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto, is modelled after Hardy’s protagonist and her story is mostly that of Tess.

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What may have worked as a century-old book, however, does not work for this film. Trishna ends up being an endurance challenge, of sorts, to see if the audience can sit through each and every cruel and unfair injustice Trishna is subjected to or made to bear witness of, from murder to suicide to broken limbs to kidnapping to countless rapes.

If the movie went somewhere with its story, had a moral beyond general misanthropy, or even was nice to look at, it would have been palatable. As it is, though, Trisha is an unenjoyable and unrewarding slog.

Off the heels of the Swedish masterpiece The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Headhunters is another thrilling adaptation of a Scandinavian thriller. It manages to surpass its predecessor, in fact.

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It is rare to see a thriller with this many great plot twists. The film is 90 per cent red herrings, double-crosses, bait-and-switches, and fake endings. After about halfway through, it becomes pointless to even try and predict when and how they’ll come, and easier to just sit back and let the masterful storytelling unfold.

Admittedly, Headhunters is quite bloody by the end of it. Good comparisons would be The Departed or The Town; if those films weren’t too much to watch, Headhunters shouldn’t be, either.

Even for the squeamish, though, Headhunters is a phenomenal cat-and-mouse game that people should go out of their way to see. The tension it builds is practically palpable at times, and the clever plot is always four or five steps ahead of the audience. There simply hasn’t been a thriller this well-plotted and -executed in years.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 7

By Chris Luckett

Today’s sole film was also arguably its most widely anticipated. Among other accolades, The Intouchables won Best Actor at the Cesar Awards, was nominated for another eight Cesars, and is the only film of the 2012 AGH BMO World Film Festival to be on IMDb’s elite Top 250 list. Is it worth the hype? For the most part, actually, yes.

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The Intouchables tells the story of Philippe (Francois Cluzet), an incredibly wealthy quadriplegic who needs to hire a new live-in caretaker. Despite all the “qualified” applicants, Philippe chooses to hire Driss (Omar Sy), a young man who only showed up to get a signature for welfare. The two form the kind of unlikely friendship that’s pretty likely in movies like this.

If I can lobby a criticism against the movie, it’s that it tries too hard to be a people-pleaser. It unfortunately sometimes slips into the treacly territory of saccharine bonding flicks like The Bucket List or Finding Forrester. And between the two leads, the movie is able to be marketed towards white people, black people, rich people, poor people, old people, young people, and people with disabilities. It’s very convenient when movies are able to reach every conceivable demographic.

That said, it’s really more of a quibble than anything. The movie is a wondrously fun experience, even when things get sad. While there are definite weaknesses to being a feel-good movie, there are also perks; when it works well, it takes you through a range of emotions and leaves you fulfilled. The Intouchables will make you laugh, and it will make you cry, and by the end, it will make you feel good.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 6

By Chris Luckett

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The first film of today’s bunch was the weakest. We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam) is a dramedy from Italy that succeeds, but doesn’t stand out in any real way. It’s a tried-and-true movie formula, gussied up to look fresher than it really is. One need only look to any movie in which a groom gets cold feet and spends the running time contemplating going forward or running away, to see the worn inspiration for this film.

In We Have a Pope, the time has come to elect a new leader of the Catholic Church. None of the voting cardinals can agree on a candidate and none seem to want the position. Through a plot catalyst, one cardinal (Michel Piccoli) is elected to be the Pope. He then spends an half and a half wandering the streets of Rome, wondering whether to accept the position or resign.

The film is entertaining, in its own way, and even contains scenes of amusement. (While the Piccoli’s cardinal wanders Rome, the rest of the cardinals spend the conclave in such activities as an ad hoc volleyball game.) The problem isn’t that nothing much happens beyond wandering and pontificating – others, like Gerry or Before Sunrise, have made that conceit work; the problem is that the wandering and pontificating that is done isn’t interesting. Even the ending lands with a thud, when it clearly was intended to surprise.

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What did surprise was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It looked like an “old person” movie, to put it in the blunt words kids these days are using. Instead, it ended up being a vibrant, riotous comedy that just happened to star legendary British thespians instead of Apatow alumni.

It should have been more obvious from the start. After all, the director, John Madden, also directed the Best Picture Oscar-winner Shakespeare in Love. On top of that, the seven leads are played by Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, and Billy Nighy, among others. The chemistry they all create is downright magical.

Watching experts do what they do best can be riveting, and the acting in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is rife with scenes of jaw-dropping brilliance in both performance and execution. Best of all, it’s one of the funniest movies of the year – for any age group.

Capping off the evening was a more modern comedy, Safety Not Guaranteed. Almost feeling like a comedic, hipper version of K-PAX, it follows a reporter (Jake Johnson) and his two interns (Aubrey Plaza and Karan Soni) as they try and track down the author of a bizarre classified ad seeking a partner for time travel.

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When they finally track down Kenneth (Mark Duplass, in a welcome return following Monday’s screening of the brilliant Your Sister’s Sister), he seems like the next Unabomber. Plaza’s Darius begins spending more time with Kenneth, though, and starts to see more to him.

The plot kicks into cruise control for a while, as far as their storyline goes. It all builds to a climax, though, that really leaves the audience unsure of what will happen. By the time the end is approaching, it almost seems just as plausible that Kenneth is telling the truth as that he’s crazy. The ultimate truth is satisfying, while still leaving questions. Safety Not Guaranteed hasn’t been one of the outright best of this festival, but it’s an fun comedy with an enjoyable cast and its own amusing charm.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 5

By Chris Luckett

For the first day since the opening night, only one film was screened tonight: the Canadian thriller Inescapable.

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This was a special screening of the movie, before it opens nationwide across Canada and possibly the U.S. It would be nice to be able to say nice things about the movie, since Canada doesn’t produce the quantity of films other countries do – but Inescapable is just too mediocre to recommend.

Much like another recent movie, Inescapable involves an ex-government agent/father whose daughter is kidnapped in a foreign country, so he must go there and track her down in a one-man brigade. (Just replace France with Syria.) Whether it’s the larger quantity of conversation and pontificating or the lack of a budget for many action scenes, Inescapable does occasionally feel like a Canadian Taken. Unfortunately, more often than not, it more feels like a Canadian Not Without My Daughter.

Admirable work from the three leads (Alexander Siddig, Joshua Jackson, and Marisa Tomei) keeps the movie afloat for the film’s duration, but the writing is downright sloppy. Characters suddenly have knowledge they didn’t have in the scene prior, characters disappear and are nonchalantly mentioned as dead in the next; it felt like the editor had excised entire scenes that were fundamental to the plot, leaving gaping plot holes and mind-blowing continuity errors.

If there’s a reason to see Inescapable, it’s the acting, especially from Siddig as the father forced to face his Syrian past in order to retrieve his daughter. Beyond that, it’s simply adequate.