DAY 9
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 15
The homestretch with 35 films down and two days left.
Day 9 of 10 lies ahead starting off with a wickedly dark Married Life - then a lot of mad scurrying around town to get to the various venues - the first and last time uptown to the Cumberland 3 in the heart of festival Four Seasons hotel stardom and Yorkville if you know where to look and the first time then back downtown to the Scotiabank then cross down the street sideways to the Elgin and finally uptown for the first time at the Varsity.
MARRIED LIFE
9:15 a.m.
Scotiabank 1
With overtones of All That Heaven Will Allow Sirk and the ominous tension of Dial M for Murder Hitchcock, the audience is taken for a noirish ride into the hidden secrets and deceits behind married life and the premise you cannot build happiness upon the unhappiness of others. Married Life is based on John Bingham's 1953 novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven. Set in 1946, Harry Allen [the everyman Chris Cooper has fallen out of love with his wife Pat [Patricia Clarkson - what would TIFF be without Patricia Clarkson?] and has confessed this to his long-time and best friend Rich [Pierce Brosnan who still looks as dapper as ever] and over dinner and drinks the apple of his eye and paramour Kay is introduced to Rich - and it had to be the dazzling blonde Rachel McAdams [as Kay] - someone who could instantly command the attention of everyone including the two men at the table.
I didn't know there was a murderer at the table
The trouble with Harry is he is too in love with Pat to cause her suffering at the expense of his happiness so the sinister plan is set in motion for Harry to achieve both.
THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS
12:45 p.m.
Cumberland 3
Come on Frank you know I love surprises
Director Bruce McDonald is a Canadian icon well-known for Roadkill, Highway 61, Hard Core Logo, Picture Claire [with Juliette Lewis], The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess, and now The Tracey Fragments based on the novel by Maureen Medved. Starring the mercurial Ellen Page who came just off the set of X-Men: The Last Stand, she launches herself 100 percent into this 14 day shoot in Winnipeg [ followed by seven months of editing ] to produce the multiscreen marvel that is The Tracey Fragments.
My name is Tracey Berkowitz, 15, and I am a normal girl.
Or as Tracey Zerowitz she is a marginalized young teen by the other more developed girls at school because of her own flat chest and outsider mentality. Tracey is barely coping with a pair of barely in control parents - and she has trained her nine year old brother Simon to behave like a dog - barking and playing fetch.
And in her fantastic world, she is in love with the new kid Billy Zero, the cool Andy Warhol Paul Morrissey-ish figure.
Tracey rides the buses of Winnipeg for hours on end depending on her mood just to kill time and observe the lying lowlifes of humanity who insinuate themselves into her life - and she is always on the lookout for her brother Sonny who she often thinks she catches flashes of after losing him one day in the park.
Tracey's life and personality splintering apart as seen by the constant multi screen images that dominate the movie - the angular shots shoot back and forth in time - embodying her Reality Bites MTV attention deficit. Besides being shot in Winnipeg, added Canadian touches include the Broken Social Scene score.
Ellen Page, embodying a young Patti Smith, lives and breathes Tracey Berkowitz in The Tracey Fragments. Nearly destroying a phone booth in one scene, she gives a maximum effort that sizzles. Bruce McDonald proves he can shoot commercially with an artistic eye in some of the beautiful love scenes envisioned by Tracey with Billy.
This is the fifth starring movie from Ellen Page that we have seen: starting for us with Love That Boy, then Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand, and now with this TIFF's wow Juno, and The Tracey Fragments she is already a must-see talent on the rise.
MAD DETECTIVE
3:00 p.m.
Scotiabank 1
note: It takes 22 minutes to go back downtown from the Cumberland to Scotiabank
shark's fin soup, steamed fish, half a roast chicken, a bowl of steamed rice
Chinese detective movies tend to be the fare of what is seen on OMNI television or you can get something innovative. Director Johnny To last year offered at TIFF06 both Election 1 and Election 2. This year with longtime collaborator Wai Ka-fai they offer Mad Detective.
Detective Bun solves murder and disappearance cases in the most unusual way. At the get together for his boss's retirement, Bun cuts off his ear and offers it as tribute.
In the afterwards, he is forced to retire but his mind is still active. Did we mention Bun sees the inner personalities of the people before him.
Whether or not he is psychotic, a detective on the Hong Kong force looking to solve a case of a detective who disappeared after a shootout in the park and the subsequent series of murders using that gun looks to the talents of Bun.
Mad Detective is a strange film - not only does Bun look at his new acquaintance as a cowering boy, his friend's partner has seven diverse personalities including a sexy woman and a fat gourmand. As well, Bun goes out to dinner with a wife that only he can see and the restaurant owner always puts up with the charade, thinking Bun is only mourning a long lost wife. Meanwhile, Bun's real wife is still very much in the picture.
Bun is still working on cases on his own - the walls of his room plastered with newspaper headlines and articles of the crimes - it's a descent into a beautiful mind. Yet Bun's wife still asks him about solving a particular case and he comes up with the solution: the nephew.
Ultimately, wrapping up the case of the missing detective involves digging deep into psyche and betrayal, and an ending in a hall of mirrors that has to be seen to be believed, let alone understood.
CHACUN SON CINEMA
6:00 p.m.
VISA Elgin
In this delightful two hour presentation of skill and love, various internationally reknowned directors each present a three minute short in this compendium tribute to the 60th anniversary of Cannes. Some lovely and lyrical, some political in the line of Amos Gitai and Wim Wenders, and some just strange, can you say Lars Von Trier being Lars Von Trier, David Cronenberg as the law Jew on earth about to commit suicide live on air, Atom Egoyan. It was so nice to see Jeanne Moreau reminisce about Marcello Mastrioanni, and the parade of movies L'Avventura, 8 1/2, Alphaville, Charlie Chaplin and other classics referenced in the background to these short treasures.
Les Bons Débarras
9:30 p.m.
VARSITY 1
Les bons débarras is a true French Canadian classic from 1979 and Charlotte Laurier who is the waif 13-year-old Manon was present for the question and answer.
With Francis Mankiewicz as director and Michael Brault cinematographer little could go wrong.
Set in the outback of Quebec, Manon lives with her single mother who is pregnant by the chief of police. Les bons debarras features Charlotte Laurier's first ever performance as the gamine with the face of an angel and the joual spewing mouth of a guttersnipe. Her loud swearing and abrasive personality is a dizzying contrast to the moments she spends reading deep into the Emily Bronte gothic romance novel Wuthering Heights.
Manon is very possessive of her mother Michelle [played with such exasperation and desperation by Marie Tifo] and intensely jealous of any man who comes between her and her mother. They together live with her brother Guy, a large man with the mind of a child, and the epitome of the Quebecois drunken lout, doing menial woodchopping to keep the family alive but going out every night for more beer.
Manon's plotting to keep her mother to herself only illuminates the fact that she is only a child living in a fantasy.
The scenes in Les Bons Débarras are very long and natural, and Charlotte Laurier replied in turn that as a child there were not many takes of each scene, she just had to come to full speed as quick as she could and there were only usually three takes, five at most, just to keep the scenes fresh and spontaneous.
Les Bons Débarras has always been a favourite film of ours, [studied and reviewed], and seeing it again on the screen after many years brings the magic of the film and the festival.
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