September 12, 2002

It was a good day, but a somewhat testy day at TIFF 2002...

Maybe people were tired… maybe they were aware of the anniversary… maybe I just found the jerks, but there was more malignancy in the air today than I remember ever feeling before.  There continued to be access problems, today with two obvious overflow movies that screened in one theater each, Ken Park (the new Larry Clark) and L’Homme Du Train (the new Patrice Laconte). 

It didn’t help that after I decided to actively avoid the stage-to-screen 9/11 adaptation of The Boys, it turned out that Try Seventeen was a piece of excrement.  The film had been touted as a big potential acquisition project.  And I guess that I can understand.  It has a lot of familiar faces in a cheekily-made movie about coming of age.  But I would have preferred dentistry… and did… just a short while later.

Alan Rudolph’s The Secret Lives of Dentists was a wonderful surprise.  Rudolph’s career has been a rollercoaster ride, but Secret Lives is the film in which Rudolph seems to finally emerge from the shadows of Altman and into his own light as a filmmaker.  Gone are so many of the taletale signs of flattering imitation.  Instead, Rudolph takes his various brush strokes and gives them their own space.  Secret Lives is the cleanest Rudolph film that I can recall, yet it remains as emotionally complex, intellectually layered and as freeing for the actors as the best of his previous work.

The film stars Campbell Scott and Hope Davis as a married couple who share dentistry,  three daughters and something unhappy lying just under the surface of their marriage.  This is much the same territory, though not tonally, of last year’s Toronto fest film, Novocaine… only this time it is not only far better, but excellent above and beyond that comparison.

Like so much of Rudolph’s work, this film is about the deepest feelings and people who can’t seem to speak their feelings out loud, even to the closest people in their lives.  But it’s a lot more fun than that makes it sound.  Campbell Scott gives his second great performance of this festival – the first being the Academy Award Nomination worthy lead of Roger Dodger.  Hope Davis is exceptional as the wife.  The child actresses do well.  And the supporting performances of Denis Leary and Robin Tunney shine.

As of this report, the film hasn’t been picked up, which I can’t quite understand.  It seems to me that this is one of the most commercial, truly “indie” films here at the festival.  Yes, there are no openers in the cast.  But it’s a great word-of-mouth film and it will grow if handled well… even if it tops out at $14 million domestic.  Heck, if The Three Marias can get distribution, this film screams for distribution. 

Another director with a history… but not behind the camera… is Matt Dillon, whose CITY OF GHOSTS is getting good word-of-mouth.  Not so much in this corner.

The picture looks good and Dillon does a nice job behind the camera.  On the other hand, the film needs to be cut by no less than 20 minutes – Dillon shows an unfortunate tendency to allow his actors, who deliver for their pal, to improv and ham it up… which is fine if you cut that stuff out of the picture.  Dillon also suffers First Time Directors Disease, which manifests itself in too many close-ups.  The result is that scenes are either made up of large landscapes or all these close-ups.  Dillon also fails to find much depth behind his camera choices.  They aren’t bad.  But they aren’t more than functional.  Yet, there is a good chance that Matt will get past all of that and may become a for-real director.  For now, City of Ghosts is not headed for anyone’s must-see list.

Aussie David Caesar channels the not-quite-dead career of Guy Ritchie with a hoodlum comedy called DIRTY DEEDS.  Caesar can do the job of shooting a film… but he is showing off more than anything else.  Look for him behind the camera for Jerry Bruckheimer, who likes to use cheap, new directors to re-created the look that has become his trademark, sometime soon. 

The film employs some great Aussie talent, including Bryan Brown (who is also a producer on the film), Toni Collette, and Sam Neill.  John Goodman also gives a good performance.  However, it all goes for naught, as the film only works in fits and starts.

My guess is that we will find Dirty Deeds as an HBO or Showtime “Original Movie” sometime next year, where it will be considered to be high quality.  And in that arena, it will be.  In this arena, it’s an overly hyper mediocrity.

I love Patrice Leconte.  In fact, it drives me nuts that I can only see a small percentage of his career work on videotape here in America.  For me, his best work are his fatalistic looks at uncomfortable, unavoidable love.  In that context, L’HOMME DU TRAIN was a little bit of a letdown. 

The film stars the great Jean Rochefort, who is also at the center of the festival documentary, Lost in La Mancha, and French pop singer Johnny Hallyday.  Hallyday plays a near-silent tough guy with Mickey Rourke eyes… which is to say that his plastic surgeon has pulled the tarp a little too tight. 

As the movie evolves, we experience the two men finding that the other seems to be the natural flip sign to the coin of their personality.  It’s interesting stuff and Rochefort, as the chatty one, keeps the audience involved.  It just doesn’t have the clarity of Leconte’s best work.

I didn’t see Larry Clark’s latest pubescent pornography extravaganza, which he co-directed with Ed Lachman, and which includes, I gather, a teen age boy masturbating to ejaculatory fruition.  I didn’t see the film because there was more trouble at screenings today… more trouble, in fact, than caused all the Ebert/McCarthy hubbub of a few days ago.  Fortunately, it looks like I will see Ken Park on Friday and Irreversible on Saturday, as not to overload my delicate sensibilities.

Also not attending today’s screenings was Nick Nolte, a festival hero for his work in Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief, who was pulled over for driving while under the influence in Mailbu yesterday.  One too many vitamins, I gess.

Finally, I was sad to hear about the passing of Kim Hunter and Johnny Unitas very much.  Both are most famous for work done behind a mask.  Both were icons of their time.  And both will be missed.

READER OF THE DAY:  THE ELKS MAN writes:  “I just got home tonight from spending a few days in Toronto.  I want to party with you.  I saw nine films over the couple of days that I was there.  

I agree with you Secretary is very bad.  There is like a twenty idea there stretched out to 105 minutes.  There is very little in the way of characterization.  The supporting actors are non-existent.  I just found it so annoying that every performance started LIKE THIS when they should work up to that.  To show how much I hated it, I even skipped the q & a.

Morvern Callar had some things in it.  Samantha Morton was excellent as the title character; she always kept me interested in the story no matter how alienating the storyline was.  Also there was wonderful use of silences throughout the film by the director Lynne Ramsay.  But it was hard for me to like the film but it was so moody and distant and alienating.  I just didn't care.

I also agree with you that the documentary Lost in La Mancha is standard in form but WHAT A STORY!  I mean I felt so bad for the crew when the torrential rain started washing the film equipment away in the Spanish desert, I just said what can happened next?  It's too unbelieveable to be a fiction film.  Everyone gave Terry Gilliam a standing ovation at the public screening.

Aki Karismaki's The Man Without a Past is certainly the cheeriest film I have seen about being homeless.  The film is also very observant about human nature; it seems to comment on makes the most of the simple actions of people.  I found it very appealing.  Also Kati Outinen is quite an actress because she seemed so different from her role in the movie and her appearance at the public screening.

Jet Lag was a sweet film.  Jean Reno and Juliette Binoche gave very enjoyable performances.  It was just meant to put a smile on your face and it did just that so I was happy.  I needed a light film after all the seriousness and alienation of the other stuff I had seen.

Autofocus was excellent.  It drew you in on many levels.  Greg Kinnear was great as he gradually brought out the worst parts in his character the more he became involved in his adventures until he was a real jerk.  I enjoyed the recreation of the Hogan Heroes set (the dream sequence was funny.) 

Love Liza was very good.  Philip Seymour Hoffman gave a wonderful performance  in the film.  Kathy Bates also was wonderful.  The ending sort of seemed arbitrary but it did allow the last haunting image.

Then I got to see the two new films by Philip Noyce.  The Quiet American is wonderful.  Michael Caine gives an oscar worthy performance.  Brendan Fraser was quite good also.  The cinematography in the film just made you feel like you were a part of the action. Christopher Doyle also lensed the other film directed by Noyce which I saw called Rabbit-Proof Fence.  It's a wonderful film.  I wouldn't call it heart-warming necessarily because of the content but it does show anything is possible.  The child actors seemed very natural in front of the camera.  Kenneth Branagh gives a great villainous performance in the film.

E ME:  Tomorrow will be the last Toronto column until Monday’s wrap-up…. Anybody out there hearing about anything I NEED to see?   And tell me about this weekend’s box office to come… I have no idea what’s going on!