TIFF ’21 Capsule Reviews, Round Five

By Jim Slotek, Linda Barnard, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, Liam Lacey, and Bonnie Laufer

And… onwards. Original-Cin writers continue screening countless titles as the 46th annual Toronto International Film Festival continues, offering best bets (and must-avoids) for your movie-watching time and money. Check back each day to catch a new crop of capsule reviews, interviews and more.

Need details on purchasing in-person tickets or streaming titles digitally? Go here.

And wondering why our content isn’t organized by date of first screening? It’s because we O-C kids are observing TIFF-imposed embargoes. Yeah, we’re good like that.

The Forgiven (Gala Presentations)

Wed, Sept 15, 7 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Wed, Sept 15, 9 pm, RBC Lakeside Drive-In at Ontario Place.

Filmmaker John Michael McDonagh’s sumptuous adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s 2012 novel is note perfect, capturing its resonant ruminations on social inequity, racism, and cultural tourism set in a sweeping Moroccan desert Paul Bowles would recognize. Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain are spot-on as an unhappily married couple attending a bacchanalian weekend party hosted by a wealthy gay couple at their swank North African digs where the Muslim servants must reconcile their need for wages against the sight of non-believers drinking, drugging, and having lots of sex. When a careless accident shatters the wall between locals and visitors, Fiennes’ David must atone in a way he never could have dreamed, freeing wife Jo’s previously yoked spirit. Anyone unfamiliar with the book will follow along just fine; those who’ve read it might wish there had been some way of better reflecting the rich inner dialog of the characters. But then, who wants a four-hour thriller? KH

Snakehead (Discovery)

Tue, Sept 14, 6 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Powerful, raw, and real, Snakehead takes us into the world of human trafficking and Asian underworld crime. Based on a true story, this hard-hitting and often violent drama starring Shuya Chang, Jade Wu, and Sung Kang follows the character Sister Tse, a Chinese immigrant who comes to New York through a human smuggler known as a Snakehead. She gains favor with the matriarch of the crime family and quickly rises up the ranks. Soon Tse must reconcile her success with her real reason for coming to America. Snakehead is written and directed by Evan Jackson Leong. We’ve seen thrillers about the rise of a lowly criminal through the ranks of the underworld, most famously, in Brian De Palma’s classic Scarface. But Snakehead aims to put a different spin on the tried-and-true formula. BL

Bergman Island (Gala Presentations)

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGNAL-CIN

Tues, Sept 14, 7 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Sat, Sept 18, 9 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox

Does life imitate art? Is art where filmmakers work out their issues? Just the start of the questions that writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve seems to be offering for us to unpack in her playful Bergman Island. Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth star as couple Chris and Tony, both filmmakers. They have come to Fårö, the island where Ingmar Bergman lived, worked and ended his days, at the invitation of the Bergman Society. Tony’s participating in an event where his work is being celebrated, and the two will spend time living in residence at Bergman’s spare, lovely house as they both work on the screenplays for their next films. When it comes to the writing, he’s having a much easier time of it than she is. The movie becomes a film-within-a-film when Chris, looking for feedback, runs through what she has so far on a walk with Tony. Her story is about former lovers (played by Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie) with a complicated past who come to Fårö to attend a wedding. When all is said and done Hansen-Løve leaves us with lots of food for thought in this enjoyable movie. KG

Encounter

Encounter (Special Presentations)

Tue, Sep 14, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox, 7 pm.

There’s some predictable early hype about Encounter, starring Sound of Metal Oscar winner Riz Ahmed, who delivers a typically intense performance as an ex-marine named Malik, who feels compelled to save his two boys from an invasion of alien microbes, which have infected his ex-wife and her new husband. As the father and his sons head out in the night on a road trip to take them to a secret military base in the desert, adolescent Jay — who has put his military dad on a pedestal — finds reasons to be increasingly afraid. When Malik stops to make a phone call to a woman named Hattie (Olivia Spencer), Encounter takes a Shyamalan-sized eye roll of a twist which takes the film into another genre. Sophomore British director Michael Pearce (Beast) creates visually memorable, suspenseful scenes in the Nevada desert and interactions between the likeable kid actors and their semi-stranger dad feel authentic. In the deficit column, there’s a surfeit of generic violence and procedural elements which lack authenticity, and a seriously questionable balance of parental sympathy. LL

Ste. Anne (Wavelengths)

Tue, Sept 14, 9 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Thu, Sept 16, 1 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Thu, Sept 16, 6:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox.

With her sui generis debut feature, which has also been included in the upcoming New York Film Festival, Manitoba filmmaker and artist Rhayne Vermette offers a collage of experimental abstraction, conventional narrative, and supernatural elements. The story follows a young Metis mother, Renée (played by the filmmaker) who mysteriously disappears for four years before returning to her eight-year-old daughter Athene, who is being raised by her brother Modeste and his wife. Warm scenes of the extended family reunion gradually progress into tensions between Renée and her brother about the future of the child they both care for. Renée will not talk about her missing years, but she has somehow acquired a piece of land in the town that gives the film it’s title, where she plans to build a home for her and her daughter in defiance of the malevolent spirit has touched their lives. LL

Burning (TIFF Docs)

Tue, Sept 14, 4 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox; Thur, Sept 16, 1 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Fri, Sept 17, 3 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

It’s more than a little depressing to report that Burning, documentarian Eva Orner’s harrowing chronicle of the “black summer” of 2019-2020 when sweeping, never-before-seen bush fires in her native Australia incinerated 59 million acres, killed countless wildlife, and enveloped Sydney in a haze of smoke, plays as something familiar. But the usual pitched battles between scientists and politicians — the former ringing the alarm about irreversible, big picture consequences, the latter harping on the need for jobs in the coal industry — are by now as common as morning traffic. Interviews with journalists, activists, ecologists, and fire-fighting experts add gravitas to this story which paints prime minister Scott Morrison as the poster boy for negligent legislators. Despite its maddening familiarity, the images are still awful: scorched koalas, ruined landscapes, narrow escapes, flattened communities. A true horror movie. KH

Check out the TIFF films Orignal-Cin writers most want to see.