TIFF ’21 Capsule Reviews, Round Eight

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

The home stretch is here; time to binge-watch titles gathered for the 46th annual Toronto International Film Festival, which winds down this weekend. So much great content, so little time. In the waning days, let Original-Cin guide you toward best bets. Be sure to see previous days for a full complement of capsule reviews.

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Julia

Julia (TIFF Docs)

Fri, Sept 17, 9 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; Sat, Sept 18, 1:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Oscar nominated (for the documentary RBG) co-directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West turn their attention to another beloved American female icon. This easy-going bio-doc looks at the life and impact the late chef, author, and TV host Julia Child had on cookery and culture in North America. Child was born to wealthy parents in the early part of the 20th century and went on to create a remarkable life for herself, working for the military, traveling and meeting her beloved husband, Paul Child.

It was his work that took them to France, where she found her passion, on her first day, with her first meal, and followed that into training as a chef at the Cordon Bleu, and then co-writing the classic Mastering The Art of French Cooking. Back in the U.S. and in her fifties, her career took another turn as she ended up on TV as the star of her own cooking show. It was the era of convenience food, frozen dinners, and a move away from cooking from scratch. But Child, with her odd delivery and jovial nature, inspired people to get back into the kitchen. The documentary is also an appreciation with former colleagues and celebrity chefs including Sara Moulton, Ina Garten, and José Andrés talking about the importance of what she did and her enduring legacy. Impressive as it all is, the thing that sticks at the end of the film is just how much fun she had along the way. KG

Ahed’s Knee (Special Presentations)

Fri, Sept 17, 5 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

A caustic critic of the Israeli military culture and state propaganda, filmmaker Nadav Lapid follows his last three international successes (Policeman, The Kindergarten Teacher, Synonyms) with his version of Federico Fellini’s 8/12, a portrait of a filmmaker in a personal and career crisis. While taking a break from casting his next movie, a celebrated art house filmmaker (Avshalom Pollak) travels to a remote desert village for a library screening and question-and-answer session of one of his previous films. His handler for the evening is a flirtatious young librarian (Nur Fibak) who explains that, before he can be paid, the ministry of culture requires he signs a form, agreeing to speak only on acceptable subjects.

On his free afternoon, the filmmaker calls friends and sends back video messages to his terminally ill mother. He’s busy casting his next film, an abstract work about the real-life Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamini who, in 2017, was jailed eight months for slapping an Israeli soldier. After her sentencing, a prominent right-wing politician declared she deserved a bullet, at least in the knee, which gives the film its name, and its subject — the breaking of people, physically and psychologically, in the name of the state. The melodramatic ending is a misfire but the heart of this rapidly written and shot film has the urgency of a graffiti scrawl, full of jolting whip-pans, tableaux, and pop-up musical numbers. In particular, extended flashbacks of a traumatic episode during the filmmaker’s stint in the army’s intelligence unit is a splenetic tour-de-force. LL

Sundown (Special Presentations)

Friday, September 17, 5 pm digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Tim Roth stars in Mexican writer/director Michel Franco’s film about a wealthy British man named Neil Bennett. He’s on vacation with his sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her adult children in a wonderful hotel in Acapulco. A family death cuts their vacation short. When they get to the airport, Neil has forgotten his passport and insists the rest of the family take the flight as scheduled, and he’ll follow. He hops in a cab, but instead of returning to their hotel, he lets the fast-talking cabbie take him to a budget hotel near the beach. For the next while, Neil lounges around at the beach, drinking beer, saying little, and gets involved with Berenice (Iazua Larios), a local shop owner, all while casually lying to his frantic and concerned sister.

There are consequences to his actions, of course, and some of those reflect the tricky cultural and class differences in Mexico that might be overlooked by a foreigner. This is Franco’s follow up to last year’s New Order, a brutal and terrifying dystopian movie about a class revolution in Mexico City that still rattles me. Sundown, which focuses on Neil — and the collateral damage that his choices set in motion — is, emotionally speaking, the opposite. Roth (also at the festival with Bergman Island) is terrific as usual, but Sundown is as detached as its lead. In the end, it’s hard to know what Franco is driving at. KG.

The Devil’s Drivers (TIFF Docs)

Fri, Sept 17, 2 pm, digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Bedouin cousins play cat and mouse with Israeli authorities, driving undocumented Palestinian labourers through a small gap in the border wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territories in documentary The Devil’s Drivers. Part thriller, part portrait of resilience, filmmakers Mohammed Abugeth and Daniel Carsenty spent eight years on the doc that references the Faustian bargain drivers make with each trip. Drivers elude detection with snap decisions behind the wheel, cloaking their cars in dust clouds as they race across the South Hebron desert.

The filmmakers also focus on the humanity of their subjects, seen both as risk takers and devoted family men who are trying to earn a living when there’s little work in the West Bank. Seen as a security threat, single men can’t get Israeli labour permits. There are plenty of construction jobs across the border, but if they’re caught trying to sneak through, everyone in the car faces arrest. Hamouda, who was imprisoned for smuggling workers, is back home and still driving, tormented that he missed the birth of his son while he was inside. His cousin Ismail vows to give up the risky driving jobs until financial pressure forces him to step back in with tragic results. LB