Blog From The Bench

Toronto Film Festival 2007

Time, time, where does it go?

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 09

I knew I had to see Starting Out in the Evening from the moment it first came to my attention—I’m a sucker for the “aging, obscure artist takes talented youngster under wing” subgenre (and yes, that does mean I quite like Van Sant’s Finding Forrester). The film stars Frank Langella (the 1979 version of Dracula) as Leonard Schiller, a once-acclaimed novelist who has since fallen into obscurity and Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) as Heather, a zealous graduate student who has decided to use her Masters Thesis to singlehandedly revive his reputation in the literary world, as well as Lili Taylor as Schiller’s indecisive daughter and Adrian Lester as her longtime beau. Though a tad conventional in direction, look and narrative style, the film is overall quite good and very nicely acted—unsurprising considering the cast—and the film is a generally thoughtful parallel exploration of coming to grips with the residue of disappointments accumulated over a lifetime as well as a poignant portrait of witnessing the toppling of a literary idol (which can be devastating for us Lit majors).

When introducing the film director and co-writer Andrew Wagner broke down on stage for what seemed like an endless minute or so, prompting the elderly man next to me to comment “someone must have died.” Not so, we would come to find out, Wagner was merely announcing that Langella was in the audience and would be joining him after the film for the Q&A (which was greeted with thunderous applause from the predominantly grey-haired audience). Upon reflection, Wagner’s tears hits to the heart of my nagging issue with the film—Starting Out in the Evening is so preoccupied with lovingly depicting the twilight years and so overwhelmingly enamored with Langella’s presence that it ultimately throws the film off-balance, shedding an unnecessarily harsh and unflattering light on youth, particularly its vivacity and ambitiousness. Maybe I am overly sensitive because in this stage of my life I strongly identify with Ambrose’s Heather, but it was something that marred what overall proved to be a very good viewing experience.

Later that evening I found myself near the end of a line of hundreds of people that wrapped around the block Ryerson Theatre is situated on—my first indication that this was probably not the relatively low-profile French film I had thought I had bought tickets for. My suspicion kept growing as I saw all the photographers with waiting cameras as I walked into the entrance of the theater and took my a seat near the front of the theater. When the lights went down and it was finally revealed to me what I was sitting down to watching, Sigourney Weaver’s new film, The Girl in the Park, I was horrified. Or perhaps that’s an overstatement—but my heart certainly sank as writer/director David Auburn took the stage and introduced Weaver and costar Kate Bosworth who were quickly paraded onstage for a hand wave before exiting the stage and the lights went down.

In his introductory remarks Auburn remarked that he wanted to make a film dealing with trauma, but not the traumatic event itself, but what happens many years down the road. And that’s literally what he did in his film. The story of a mother and aspiring jazz singer (Weaver) who is never able to recover from having her young daughter being kidnapped in a nearby park while her back is momentarily turned, the story picks up sixteen years later (as the subtitle clearly lets us know), revealing Weaver to be a shell of the vibrant woman she once was, literally having abandoned her husband and son many years before. But things begin to change when she begins to help a young hooker (Bosworth)…and then irrationally begins to believe that it is her long-lost daughter.

It’s really stunning that it is none other than David Auburn, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his universally hailed Proof, at the helm of this mess. Actually, the film isn’t bad so much as painfully average. Granted, this is Auburn’s directoral debut, but the biggest disappointment is in the screenplay itself which parades out every tired cliché and plot twist one would expect from a film dealing with a parent’s post-kidnapping experiences. Here now is the scene where Weaver goes to a playground and begins chatting with children until the police are called in by eagle-eyed mothers, here is the scene where Weaver strokes her daughter’s photograph as the music swoons in an outpouring of emotion. And everything is tinted in blues and grays so it must mean that Weaver’s life is a depressing mess; now that the image has changed to gold tones things much be looking up for her. Bosworth, an actress I generally dislike, actually gives some life to her flighty character; Weaver employs essentially the same weary expression throughout the entire film. Largely wasted are talented supporting actors Allessandro Nivola (so good in Junebug), Keri Russell and character actor David Rasche.

I really don’t know what I was thinking—in my rush at the ticket counter I must have gotten this title mixed up with Dans la vie and Dans la vie de Sylvie (either which I would have liked to see), or maybe it was lingering memories of the lovely film The Girl in the Park from a few years ago. Regardless, Girl in the Park is getting awful buzz her at the festival, though on star power alone it will probably make its way to American theaters at some point.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10

Monday actually kicked off with an afternoon showing—my latest start yet, and with a film that I had seen before, no less. The film is Czech New Wave classic Closely Watched Trains, the winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1966, which was being presented by director Ken Loach (The Wind that Shakes the Barley) as part of TIFF’s “Dialogues” series. I had sent he film years ago but jumped at the opportunity to see it on a large screen (and besides, I had the time slot open).

I won’t go into much detail, but needless to say I had nearly forgotten how wonderful this film really is, marked by a sly, racy comedic sensibility (“it seems very Czech to me,” Loach commented) and subtle but exceedingly graceful direction. More or less the story of a young dispatcher’s apprentice at a local train station, the film slowly transforms into a coming-of-age story as we watch the film's protagonist as he clumsily attempts to navigate the world of women and sexual pleasure that he has just recently started to become aware of. But for all the acutely observed moments and sequences of daily life at the slow rural station there’s also a thread of social and political awareness that runs through the entire film before it overtakes the entire film during the unforgettable climax. Unfortunately I was only stayed for a few minutes to listen Loach’s articulate thoughts on the film—at the last minute scored tickets to one of my most anticipated films of the festival, and had to rush to get to the theater on time.

One of my favorite types of film are lush and ornate costume dramas that have a naughty side to them. Needless to say, director Catherine Breillat’s reputation preceded her and along with the very positive reviews that came out of Cannes I couldn’t wait to see Une vielle maîtresse (The Old Mistress), which I initially hadn’t been able to get tickets for. Breillat, who suffered a massive stroke last year and is still extremely frail, introduced the films, and even if she was sometimes hard to understand (her physical ailments slurred a heavy French accent) I did catch a few quips on how she wanted an actor as beautiful as Alain Delon in her film, and extremely poignantly, her description on how escaping into the world of making movies is an escape from her physical reality.

The film, much to my relief, was everything that I had hoped for. Visually sumptuous (Breillet had mentioned that she had been particularly inspired by the paintings of Manet and Delacroix), the film never lets the sheer beauty of the period Parisian locations or opulent costumes weigh down the story or shield the sexual heat. Starring fiery courtesan Asia Argento and newcomer Fu’ad Ait Aattou as the rakish eligible bachelor she has kept under her sexual spell for a decade, the film first deals with their tumultuous relationship and how it later threatens to prevent Ryno’s marriage to the sweet, innocent and extremely wealthy young woman he has since fallen in love with. The impossibly gorgeous pairing of Argento and Aattou—hers an earthy, erotic beauty, his this marble-smooth perfection of a Michelangelo statue—fuels the film and provides it its heat, and as a result the film manages to dance the precarious line between feeling faithful to a past point in history yet showing an awareness of current sexual sensibilities. Not a film for all tastes—there were more than a handful of walkouts—but this could very well be my favorite film of the festival so far.

-jesse