Toronto Dispatch. 2.

You see enough movies at a massive film festival like Toronto, certain patterns or themes begin to emerge. One colleague is beginning to see a vomiting motif, while I declare my theme to be "Children in Peril."

It begins with David Gordon Green's Southern noir Undertow. Something of a departure from his usual narratives but certainly no different in its cinematography (he partners up again with Tim Orr), Undertow is the story of two boys on the run from their psychotic uncle (Josh Lucas, channeling Matthew McConaughey and Robert Mitchum at once) through the backwoods of the Carolinas.

Next up is Clean, the latest from Oliver Assayas. The part of Emily Wong, the drug-addicted former rock and roller protagonist/anti-hero was written especially for ex-wife and occasional muse Maggie Cheung. Emily finds herself suddenly widowed when her musician husband OD's after they quarrel. Nick Nolte plays the husband's father, who has been raising Emily's son for nearly all of his young life. After spending six months in jail, Emily decides to go "clean," to restart her life and to get her son back - but she may go to any length to do so. Assayas is in full Late August, Early September mode here, presenting internal heartfelt drama and one of the most fully realized woman characters at the fest. And you can be sure that, since this is Assayas, there is at least one scene on a scooter.

I've already mentioned the Kore-eda Hirokazu film Nobody Knows, in which four children are abandoned by their mother in a Tokyo apartment, and Childstar, Don McKellar's satire about bratty, spoiled child actors and runaway production. Ousmane Sembene's Moolaadé heads off in the opposite direction. Here, Senegalese villagers parent too much (rather than none at all) and too archaically by upholding the tradition of female circumcision. One woman in this small African village grants a moolaadé (protection) to four girls who escape the ceremony. She herself refused to let her now-teenaged daughter be mutilated and the tension begins to mount within her household and the village. Hardly graphic but entirely affecting and inspirational, Moolaade is well worth seeking out, and has one of the best endings of any film I've seen all year.

Keane, on the other hand, has an ending that comes way too late. Lodge Kerrigan's latest is about a near-schizoid man (Band of Brothers' excellent Damian Lewis) whose daughter was abducted from Port Authority six months prior to where the film picks up. He then meets a single mom and her little girl (who happens to be the same age as his missing daughter) with whom he imagines he could start anew. Reminiscent of the Belgian film Le Fils in subject matter and shooting style (a missing child, a handheld camera claustrophobically following the protagonist's head), Kerrigan gets us into Keane's mind by sticking with him too long and almost too painfully. That's not to say that all players involved, especially Lewis, don't do a terrific job of immersing themselves in this world. It's just that there might be one too many scenes of Keane spiraling down his own doomed drain.

Lastly, Danny Boyle's Millions played to a packed press and industry screening, and while the children here are technically in peril, the film is more about the meaning of money and charity through the eyes of a very special little boy. Damian (an utterly charming Alex Etel) and his family have just moved to a new housing development. Damian's a tad weird - the heroes of his classmates might be Manchester UK footballers, but he prefers religious saints. He's out playing in a field near the train tracks when a bag containing 300,000 pounds falls seemingly out of the sky. He decides to give the money away to poor people, and so, begins his odyssey, donating money, arguing with his finance savvy brother (he thinks they should buy property) and encountering the menacing bank robber who is the real source of the cash. Boyle has always been a vibrant and energized visualist and his style is extremely well-suited for a story about children. Watch out, Tim Burton.

Posted by dwhudson at September 14, 2004 1:27 AM