TIFF ’21 Capsule Reviews, Round Seven

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

The end of the 46th annual Toronto International Film Festival looms but there are still plenty of great titles to catch before Sunday close. Original-Cin continues to offer 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.

Arthur Rambo

Arthur Rambo (Platform)

Thu, Sept 16, 8 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox; Thu, Sept 16, 9 pm, digital TIFF Lightbox.

French director Laurent Cantet’s cinematic studies of individuals and the society are insightful and humane, including the great Time Out (2002), about a businessman who hides the fact that he has lost his job, and the Palme d’Or-winning The Class, which follows a high school teacher. In Arthur Rambo, he traces a wild 24 hours in the life of a young French-Algerian writer, Karim D., who is on the verge of becoming an overnight literary sensation with his new novel about his immigrant mother. Then his old Twitter account under the pseudonym Arthur Rambo is discovered. It’s filled with crude homophobic, misogynist, and anti-Semitic insults.

Over the course of a single night, everyone from his publisher to his girlfriend turn on him for the “crap in his head” while Karim offers the usual range of apologies and explanations. While Cantet’s drama is an electric study of a character in freefall, it adds little content to the real events that inspired the script: author Mehdi Meklat, who was hailed as the voice of the French immigrant suburbs until 2017 when the exposure of his pseudonymous Twitter account turned him from hero to pariah. Two years later, Meklat subsequently wrote another book and an apology tour on French media. Cantet’s film feels like it also needs a next chapter, and a deeper reflection on the phenomenon it chronicles. LL

Last Night in Soho (Gala Presentations)

Thurs, Sept 16, 6 pm, Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

With its flashes of magical realism and upbeat ‘60s Britpop soundtrack, the first act of Edgar Wright’s trippy ghost story feels like it might boast a light touch, as you’d expect from a guy who gave us a classic zombie comedy (Shaun of the Dead). But this tale of a put-upon London fashion student named Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) who idolizes ‘60s Carnaby Street style — and when asleep, finds herself transported back to the life of an ill-fated wannabe pop singer named Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy) — quickly goes to a dark place. And as Sandy’s “manager”/pimp Jack (Matt Smith) tightens his grip, Eloise begins to live it by day. Once it morphs into more traditional horror, some of the magic is lost, and the denouement has holes. But it’s still an imaginative story well told. And did I mention the soundtrack is great? JS

Benediction (Special Presentations)

Thurs, Sept 16, 3 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Terence Davies (A Quiet Passion) directs a literally lyrical journey through the troubled life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon – the passages of the man’s troubled life separated with snippets of his anti-war and mordant verse. Played as a young man by Dunkirk’s Jack Lowden, and in his old age by Peter Capaldi, Sassoon is clearly traumatized by his experiences in WWI, and goes about seeking truth and happiness in all the wrong ways. He can’t find it in the short-lived relationships of London’s underground gay community, nor in a marriage and fatherhood, nor in a late-life attempt at conversion to Catholicism. It’s a long and full tale of failed self-realization, despite the poet’s fandom, that included fellow notables like Noel Coward, T.E. Lawrence, and Sassoon’s short-lived love, fellow soldier-poet Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson). JS

The Other Tom (Contemporary World Cinema)

Thurs, Sept 16, 6 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox; Fri, Sept 17, 3 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

A moving and provocative film by Mexican director Rodrigo Plá, The Other Tom (based on the novel by co-director Laura Santullo) uses non-professional actors as leads to lend verisimilitude to this tale of an immigrant single-mother in El Paso, Texas, whose charming but hyperactive son Tom is diagnosed and medicated by the school system. The drugs turn him into a “Tom” she doesn’t recognize. Appalled at the “zombie” Tom, she defies school authorities to take him off his meds, attracting the attention of child services and a genuine threat of losing him. The last act is a road movie on the run, where she gets to know the soul of the “real” Tom more deeply than ever. Julia Chavez and Israel Rodriguez are utterly believable as mother and son, and the movie effectively fleshes out the reality of the epidemic of over-medication of children simply for how they behave. JS

Belfast (Gala Presentations)

Thu, Sept 16, 12 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Kenneth Branagh’s biographical film about his childhood in Northern Ireland, shot in black and white and set to classic Van Morrison tunes, is a modest but emotion-filled memoir on that familiar Irish theme, exile. Belfast begins on an August morning in 1969, when nine-old Buddy (Jude Hill) is playing with friends in front of the working-class row houses when suddenly the street is inundated with torch-carrying Protestant militants determined to terrorize the Catholics out of the mixed neighbourhood. Though Buddy’s Protestant parents (Catriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan) and grandparents (Ciaran Hinds and Judy Dench) want no part of this sectarian ugliness, they are pushed by the hardliners to either “pay cash or commit” to the cause. Soon, police and the English army have occupied the neighbourhood, and Dad, who travels to England to work in construction, starts bringing home travel brochures to other Commonwealth countries. Sunnier scenes include visits to the local theatre where the screen explodes into colour, suggesting young Branagh’s future in cinema, though the use of the High Noon theme song is a bit of a clunker. Overall, Belfast strikes a tender minor chord. LL

The Gravedigger’s Wife

The Gravedigger’s Wife (Contemporary World Cinema)

Thur, Sept 16, 9 pm, Ontario Place West Island Open Air Cinema; Fri, Sept 17, 7 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Finnish-Somali writer-director Khadar Ayderus Ahmed crafts a tenderly moving story of love and devotion with The Gravedigger’s Wife. Guled (Omar Abdi) makes next to nothing digging graves for a living in the rocky desert of Djibouti. He and his shovel-toting buddies hang out outside the hospital emergency room, hoping to get lucky when one family’s loss will be his gain. Whatever he earns goes to care for his wife Nasra (Toronto-based Somali Canadian model Yasmin Warsame, like the rest of the cast, making her acting debut here), whose kidney infection is slowly killing her. He can never earn the price of her treatment and Nasra accepts her fate, trying to distract him by insisting they get dressed up and crash a wedding where the resourceful Nasra uses a goat as a prop wedding gift. Their adolescent son Mahad (Kadar Abdoul-Aziz Ibrahim) has become increasingly distant and Guled sees everything he loves slipping away. He despairs than he can’t change anything.

Ahmed includes aspects of the hero’s quest with hints of American writer O. Henry, the story’s stark Horn of Africa setting is rarely seen onscreen, especially as a setting for a domestic drama. A universal story of how characters meet an impossible situation has a simple framework that draws its power from moving performances from a cast of untrained actors, the harsh beauty of the landscape (beautifully shot by cinematographer Arttu Peltomaa) and powerful explorations of the nature of devotion. LB

Zalava (Midnight Madness)

Thurs, Sept 16, 1 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Fri. Sept 17, 7 pm digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

“Who will save the Zalavanians!” is what my next T-shirt will read. It’ll lack the woeful delivery given by Amardan (Pouria Rahimi Sam) the village exorcist imprisoned on the charge of bilking the gullible residents of Zalava. But it’ll be cool just the same. Who will save the Zalavanians indeed, now that the pragmatic police officer Massoud (Navid Pourfaraj) has locked up their only hope in a fight against a plague of demons? But Massoud has a right to question the legitimacy of an exorcist who goes about his business with the showmanship of an evangelical faith-healer. The demons in question can’t be seen, but they can be captured and held up for inspection inside a tightly sealed pickle jar. It’s all nonsense, of course, and Massoud is out to prove to the citizens of Zalava wrong… even if he has to open the pickle jar to prove it. Director Arsalan Amiri’s film floats between the realms of myth and reality and faith and skepticism. Zalava is earmarked as a horror film but delivers a kind of twisted suspense that, were it a North American film, would find a voice through a director like Brad Anderson or on an episode of The Twilight Zone. Not quite Midnight Madness, but a captivating thriller propelled by suspense, atmosphere, romance and a whack of unexpected humour. TE

Out of Sync (Contemporary World Cinema)

Thu, Sept 16, 5 pm digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

This strange, haunting film from Spain follows a sound editor (Marta Nieto) who creates sonic drama and realism in film post-production. But things start to change, and she begins hearing sound differently, delayed. Hands clapping are heard many moments after the vibration has stopped. Before long, our distressed protagonist seems to be hearing things from the past (or is it the future?) and her doctor cannot help. Not a good outcome for anyone, especially not someone who earns their living through sound. Part drama, part mystery, part supernatural fable, director Juanjo Giménez’s quietly intense film asks what happens when something as fundamental as our senses suddenly shifts, stranding us in a world that’s familiar but that we suddenly cannot quite perceive or navigate. KH

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