Toronto International Film Festival

In the last couple of weeks I caught about thirty movies and hung out with fellow cinemaphile pals. The screenings and the discussions and debates that ensued were both exhilarating and exhausting. I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation before I can re-orient myself to reality.

Toronto is a lovely city, especially in neon night-light, and it was a thrill to loll in cafés, sipping chai and people-watching, or roam downtown, looking for restaurants with good ethnic food (easily accomplished). And I even got a chance to dine at leisure with an impossibly elegant and erudite siren, which proved delightful.

As for the movies, here's a quick summary glance.

Faves:

• Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan)
• L'Enfant (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium)
• A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, Canada)
• Caché (Michael Haneke, Austria)
• The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania)
• The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan)
• The Quiet (Jamie Babbit, USA)
• The Sun (Alexander Sokurov, Russia)
• Instructions For A Light And Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria)
  

Pretty Terrific:

• Les Amants Réguliers (Philippe Garrel, France)
• The Forsaken Land (Vimukthi Jayasundara, Sri Lanka)
• Entre La Mer Et L'Eau Douce (Michel Brault, Canada, 1967)
• À Travers La Forêt (Jean-Paul Civeyrac, France)
• Vers Le Sud (Laurent Cantet, France)

Good & Solid:

• Perpetual Motion (Ning Ying, China)
• Something Like Happiness (Bohdan Slama, Czech Republic)
• Manderlay (Lars Von Trier, Denmark)
• My Dad Is 100 Years Old (Guy Maddin, Canada)
• Why We Fight (Eugene Jarecki, USA)

Others — some interesting, some disappointing:

• Le Temps Qui Reste (Francois Ozon, France)
• I Am (Dorota Kedzierzawska, Poland)
• Mary (Abel Ferrara, USA/France)
• Shanghai Dreams (Wang Xiaoshuai, China)
• Ballets Russes (Dan Geller & Dayna Goldfine, USA)
• Gilaneh (Rakhshan Bani-Etemad & Mohsen Abdolvahab, Iran)

I'll post individual jottings on some favorite films over the next couple of weeks. That's about how long it usually takes for film festival hangover to subside.