Toronto Dispatch. 3.

I am not doing my job.

I say this because even though I have seen a dozen films since the Toronto International Film Festival opened this past Thursday (that's twelve films in three days, folks), I have not seen many films that are either must-sees or of some sort of journalistic importance - possibly more newsworthy than of cinematic significance. Included on this list is the opening night film, Water, the third installment of Deepa Mehta's "element" trilogy. Another is Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, although I did see the line up outside the film's party at one of many tony restaurant/lounges in Toronto's Yorkville District. Other raves from fellow critics include Im Sang-soo's The President's Last Bang, The House of Sand and the documentary, Ballets Russes.

Another way I am not doing my job is getting the scoop on a trend I am seeing in this year's films - the Village Voice's Dennis Lim gets that nod, as he wrote about "adaptations" in the September 10th edition of the festival publication, The Festival Daily. I'll still write about that in my next entry as the adaptations, both of novels and people's life stories, just keep rolling out each day. Instead, I'll write about the other theme I'm picking up on. Siblings.

My first film was Shane Black's directorial debut, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. We'll all write about its rapt self-awareness of its form and function as an LA gangster noir, but sisters figure into the twists and turns of the chewy plot that the normally chewy Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr act out with welcome restraint. Then, more obviously, there's the Argentine film, Hermanas (Sisters), a portrait of two opposite sisters set against flashbacks of their family's political activism before the military dictatorship was in power from 1976 to 1983.

There are a pair of siblings in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, but by the time the film is released later in the year (we were screened a "work-in-progress" print), Orlando Bloom's sister (Judy Greer) may see her role somewhat reduced. Right now, the narrative, about (among many other things) a failed sneaker designer who travels to Kentucky to help arrange his father's funeral, is frustratingly aimless. We were told that some scenes would be shortened or even taken out. Hopefully, the final cut will give Elizabethtown to its sorely needed focal point.

Australian Rowan Woods gets Cate Blanchett into some sister's shoes in Little Fish, a somewhat small film compared to what we are used to seeing her in - and that goes for her costars, including Hugo Weaving and Sam Neill, as well. (When did Neill start looking like Robert Wagner during the Hart to Hart years, by the way?) She is the troubled, ex-heroin addicted older sis to a troubled, soon to be drug-dealing younger brother (Martin Henderson). It's an odd sensation to see Blanchett play such an immediate, current day character, but she and the rest of the cast perform solidly, despite the film's slow pace.

Other siblings at odds appear in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (which also belongs in the "adaptation" category as it was taken from a cult graphic novel.) I'm still mulling over how this exactly fits into the Cronenberg oeuvre (aside from that heavy sense of tension and dread he creates in every frame), but between Viggo Mortensen's laser-cut performance as a man whose secret past is dredged up after a violent hold up and William Hurt's played-for-laughs turn as a Philadelphia mobster, A History of Violence is an argument for nurture over nature - at least in a brotherly sense - and then turns that notion on its ear again and again in the story's larger universe.

L'Enfer (Hell), the sophomore effort from No Man's Land director Danis Tanovic, was filmed from a script intended for Krzysztof Kieslowski and is based loosely on the second part of Dante's Inferno. The fates of three sisters (Emmanuelle Beart, Karin Viard, Marie Gillain) are set in motion by various men in their lives, most notably and absently, their father. Tanovic balances the ensemble players, each of whom are made to suffer for known and unknown sins, with care and skill. The carnival music-scored title sequence of birds and unhatched eggs in a nest as seen through a kaleidoscope is the most memorable and fitting opening credit sequence so far.

Speaking of openings, I'll be critical about this once and hopefully be able to let it go. This year's festival trailer, a new-agey ditty with well-manicured hands and Enya-like music wafting around the screen like misdirected modern dancers, got on my nerves the first time I saw it, let alone the twelfth. It's not nearly as bad as the Sundance 2005 trailers, however. That I will never be able to let go.

As for not doing my job, I just have to remember what my friend Jon Mosier said to me before I left for Toronto. "You get to watch movies all day? Oh, boo hoo!"

Posted by dwhudson at September 11, 2005 8:42 AM