I was tired when I arrived in Toronto this year and never quite recovered. Which isn’t to say that I was disappointed by the festival. In fact, the average film quality this year was better than any of the past fests I’ve attended. But the pangs of home-sickness and the bouts with movie fatigue kicked in a few days earlier than I would have liked, and by Saturday night I was ready to get on a plane.
I intend to post capsule reviews of every film I saw, but it’ll probably take another week before I get through them all. In the meantime, here’s a snapshot of the festival.
Masterpieces
This will likely end up on my short list of favorite films of the decade:
- Dans la ville de Sylvie (Jose Luis Guerin)
Stand Outs
All will be on my Top 20 of 2007 (by order of preference):
- Secret Sunshine (Chang-dong Lee)
- Le Voyage du ballon rouge (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
- Une vieille maitresse (Catherine Breillat)
- Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon (Eric Rohmer)
- Fengming, a Chinese Memoir (Wang Bing)
- At Sea (Peter Hutton)
- Useless (Jia Zhang-ke)
- Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
- Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
- The Man from London (Bela Tarr)
- Schindler’s Houses (Heinz Emigholz)
- My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
- Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (John Gianvito)
Stand Out Older Film
From the Canadian Open Vault
- Les Bons Debarras (Francis Mankiewicz)
Strong Recommendations
If TIFF weren’t so strong, these could all be Stand Outs (by order of preference):
- Help Me Eros (Lee Kang-sheng)
- Naissance des pieuvres (Celine Sciamma)
- Avant que j’oublie (Jacques Nolot)
- Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud)
Solid Films
I enjoyed each of these for a variety of reasons and would recommend them all (by order of preference):
- In Memory of Myself (Saverio Costanzo)
- La fille coupee en deux (Claude Chabrol)
- Mourning Forest (Naomi Kawase)
- Contre tout esperance (Bernard Emond)
- Encarnacion (Anahi Berneri)
- One Hundred Nails (Ermanno Olmi)
- Wolfsbergen (Nanouk Leopold)
- Ne touchez pas la hache (Jacques Rivette)
- Mutum (Sandra Kogut)
- XXY (Lucia Puenzo)
- No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Frustrations and Disappointments
Three this year (by order of preference):
- Redacted (Brian De Palma)
- Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur)
- L’amour cache (Alessandro Capone)
Wavelengths
Among my favorite shorts from the Wavelengths programs were films by: Ute Aurand and Maria Lang, Hannes Schupbach, Bruce McClure, Pip Chodorov, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Daichi Saito. I also still like the Ken Jacobs and Charlotte Pryce films that I mentioned back in May.
Walk Outs
None, but only because I was sitting in the center of the aisle and only a few feet away from the director of L’Amour cache and didn’t want to make a scene.
Skips and Reschedules
I skipped three films this year: La citadelle assiegee, because I decided to join Girish for dinner; Margot at the Wedding, because the buzz was lukewarm and I wanted to spend the afternoon writing; and Import Export, because it was a late night screening and I was exhausted. I wish I could have seen the Seidl film because everyone said it was great. Due to some schedule shuffling on the last two days, I also missed Dans la vie, Munyurangabo, L’Acadie, L’Acadie?!?, Ploy, and Sad Vacation.