TIFF Post Mortem - Part 1
I had an absolute glorious TIFF. While seeing 12 films in a little over a week did do a number on my academic pursuits, the whole experience of going into a fest full bore (for me anyways, nothing on those who hit 30 films) was really enriching, with the sense of one movie informing the next. I’m rescutinating this basically dead blog as a way of more substantively parsing and discussing the films I saw. Starting from the bottom, here are my three least favourite films of the fest.
12. Love is a Perfect Crime
Luckily, I only saw one film that I thought was absolutely awful. On the other hand, it was easily the worst film I have seen since I took a chance last year on “As If We Were Catching a Cobra” (one of the worst films I’ve EVER seen). It’s the story of a professor who has sex with a lot of students (apparently French universities are just filled with LUDICRIOUSLY good looking women, even when said universities appear to be basically in the middle of nowhere). In the opening scene we see him take a girl home. He is then unable to wake up that girl (or remember her name). Later we learn she is missing. Doesn’t take a lot to guess that he dumped the body in a frozen crevace. He then starts falling for the dead girl’s step mom (also, natch, super hot). He falls in love with her because she is a real adult, not like all the girls he sleeps with. Then it turns out she’s actually an undercover cop…but in this process has genuinely fallen in love with him. He ends up committing suicide by blowing himself up by leaving the gas on and lighting up his 248th cigarette of the movie.
This would be flimsy enough, but for some reason there is also the fact that he lives with his sister, who is extremely possessive of and has a bizzare sexual connection with (that is never explained or explored, but IS consummated). And then there’s the student who DESPERATELY must sleep with him (which is so over the top it ends up being one of the brief bits of humour in this film). Oh, and a result of the sex crazed student accosting him, he gets a serious nosebleed due stress, which in turn causes him to be pulled over by a police officer, which causes him to…kill the traffic cop and dump HIS body in the same crevace.
Hopefully the above illustrates the utter absurdity of the film. You might be inclined to think it provides an interesting portrait of man’s desires and ability to constrain them, or how notions of what is “civilizied” are shaped, or any other number of themes that shallow films often attempt to use as cover. Nope. The normally excellent Mathieu Amalric gives zero clues as to what motivates his behaviour or anything beyond the inconsistent feelings that change rapidly from one scene to the next. Karin Viard does well as the torn sister (even if the character makes no sense) and Sara Forestier brings the same delightful spark she showed in Les Noms de Gens to super sexed students, but even leaving aside the film’s overall exceptionally unforgiving look at women, these two supporting roles can’t hope to save a film that is a thorough disaster.
On the plus hand it gave me a nice excuse to rant.
Half of a Yellow Sun certainly isn’t a bad film. It has some excellent performances and tells an interesting story. But it has a number of flaws that ultimately mean that the film is one we fail to connect with the emotional story on display. The film tells the story of 1960’s and 70’s Nigeria, and in particular the Nigerian-Biafran war. I knew very little/next to nothing about this part of history, and while it was interesting to learn the film seems to assume the audience has more familiarity with the history. That’s fine not to lower yourself to my level and have it pitched at more knowledgable auidences. But what’s less forgivable is how the film fails to provide sufficient background and depth for us to become attached to the characters, so that we feel their pain, rather than just witnessing it. Thadie Newton in particular is fantastic but there’s a difference between watching a character on screen suffer and sharing in her pain. For the vast majority of the film, it was the former.
I was extremely excited to watch this one, based on an exceptionally endearing trailer. And no doubt the film was exceptionally cute and frequently very fun. But it’s rather formulaic, and while it might appeal to Danish children who are not thoroughly stepped in superhero culture, for adults more familiar with the genre it’s all a little too similar.
Antboy is Spider-Man, but with a 12 year old Danish boy who gets the powers of an ant. And it’s exactly that. At first, I found it a cute homage. But as beat after beat seemed to explicitly echo the first Sam Rami Spiderman in particular (in this case, rather than dodging/beating up a bully in the hallway, our hero dodges and beats up a gym team teacher…who is being a bully) it felt less and less fresh. When the film engagaes in original invention – such as a glorious sccene where, using stuffed animals, our hero imagines saving the girl/fighting the villain – the film is fantastic. And even when it’s a complete retread the actors are cute enough to make it far from terrible. But those glimmers of creativity and verve suggest there could have been a much better film here.
Next post I'll talk about the films that I thought were good/very good/excellent, before moving on to the true standouts of the fest.
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