TIFF '23: What To See at This Year's Fest, Sept. 16

By Jim Slotek, Liz Braun, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Chris Knight, Liam Lacey, and Bonnie Laufer

It’s the penultimate day of the Toronto International Film Festival, the crowds are still here and the films are still unveiling. And as we have every day since this started, we’ve got a review roundup of films we’ve seen that are on offer today. Enjoy (or not, it’s your festival after all).

Fallen Leaves

Boil Alert (TIFF Docs)

Sat, Sept. 16, 11:35 am, Scotiabank 11.

A lot of environmental “accidents” seem to happen on Indigenous territory, and activist Layla Staats has many to choose from. This doc, with its moments of artistic personal commentary and metaphor, picks some of the most unconscionable – two of which are in the province of Ontario alone (the mercury poisoning of the English Wabigoon river system by a paper mill, and Neskantaga First Nation, near Kenora, which has been without drinkable water for nearly 30 years). Add to that the world’s largest radioactive spill, on Navajo land (a part of the Manhattan Project they don’t talk about much) and you get a sense of officialdom’s often jaw-dropping lack of concern with the damage wreaked on First Nations in the name of progress. JS

Dicks: The Musical (Midnight Madness)

Sat, Sept. 16, 9:30 pm, VISA Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

As far as festival movies go, Dicks: The Musical is a hit. It’s broad, campy, audacious, memorable and arrives with high expectations. But Dicks ultimately disappoints. It’s not a story about two jerks who learn not to be jerks, although that kind of happens. Instead, actors Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp have written a jokey, song-filled screenplay that lowers the bar on who gets in on the sexual-fluidity revolution with a story loosely based on The Parent Trap. The two play competing salesmen, Craig (Sharp) and Trevor (Jackson) who are dicks — arrogant, braggards, womanizers, and jerks. They discover they are identical twins separated at birth. One was raised by their flamboyant father (Nathan Lane), the other by their eccentric, oddball mother (Megan Mullally). Now the men (flamboyant, eccentric, oddballs themselves) set out to reunite their parents so they can finally be a family. But the plot is dropped midway through the film in favour of celebrating sexual freedom in all its variations. None of this is bad, judging by the packed house audience’s laughter, but it’s minor. The film eventually boils down to a free-for-all as if the whole process of making and being in a movie is a lark. TE

Fallen Leaves (Centrepiece, Luminaries)

Sat, Sept. 16, 5:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 3; Sun, Sept. 17, 12:15 pm, Scotiabank 10.

Everything about director Aki Kaurismäki’s latest deadpan comedy feels satisfyingly familiar, stamped with his trademark dry humour, careful compositions of bleak interiors with splashes of vibrant colour, and humble inexpressive characters pushing back the darkness with cinema, music, and romantic second chances. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is a middle-aged construction worker with a drinking problem: “I’m depressed because I drink and I drink because I’m depressed” he explains to his friend, Huotari (Kaurismäki veteran Janne Hyytiäinen), a youth-obsessed colleague with a fondness for melodramatic karaoke performances. At one of these karaoke nights, Holappa briefly meets Ansa (Alma Pöysti) along with a co-worker. Soon after, Ansa loses her job for giving away expired food to the homeless. She then loses a second job when a pub-owner boss is busted for selling drugs. In the interim, she runs into Holappa again and they go to a zombie movie (Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die). They hit it off, she gives him her number, but he promptly loses it, though he confides to his friend that he hopes to marry her, despite not knowing her first name. The couple connect again, and then break up because of Holappa’s drinking. Ansa takes a factory job, she adopts a mutt for company, until Huotari comes round again. While this is a typical bitter-coated sugar pill from the Finnish veteran, there’s one menacing modern touch: frequent radio reports from the Ukraine war of atrocities committed by Finland’s closest neighbour, Russia. LL

Gonzo Girl (Discovery)

Sat, Sept. 16, 3 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2.

Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut is not exactly about the late Rolling Stone journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It’s adapted from Cheryl Della Pietra’s roman à clef novel about her experience working as Thompson’s assistant. Set in the nineties, the film stars Willem Dafoe as Walker Reade, a former star journalist now in decline. He lives in a sprawling ranch house, is stoned every day, shoots guns and blasts fireworks, and is supported by a group of women (including a senior minder played by Arquette) who attempt to nurse new pages of prose from him to keep the bills paid. The role of neophyte assistant Ally Russo is played by Camila Morrone, an aspiring writer who is both starstruck and, in voice-over commentary, skeptical of the middle-aged roué. Dafoe, chewing the scenery entertainingly, does a persuasive job as the magnetic, megalomaniacal rock star writer. Ally is seduced into his world, trading prim college sweaters for sexy dresses, sharing drugs and confidences with him, and earning the enmity of his latest bed partner (Elizabeth Laill). She also attracts the attention of his Hollywood star hanger-on (Ray Nicholson as a Johnny Depp type). Performances aside, Gonzo Girl feels shapeless, the successive hazy party scenes and tottery hangovers increasingly wearying. Ultimately, Rebecca Thomas and Jessica Caldwell’s uneven script fails to make the Ally’s story either admirable or compelling. LL

Great Absence (Platform)

Sat, Sept 16, 4 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 4.

Writer-director Kei Chika-ura’s family drama deals with a son piecing together his relationship with his father while trying to solve a mystery. Takashi (Mirai Moriyama) has been estranged from his father Yohji (Tatsuya Fuji) for 20 years. But a call from the police brings him back.  Yohji has dementia and has been admitted to a care facility, but where is his father’s second wife, Naomi (Hideko Hara)?  One look around Yohji’s messy house suggests Naomi has been missing for a while. There are concerns that she might have committed suicide.  While Takashi and his wife Yuki (Yoko Maki) clean out Yohji’s house, Takashi deals with his memories of his arrogant, selfish father, recollections that bring new revelations and a search for Naomi that is frustrated at every turn. KG

Hell of a Summer (Midnight Madness)

Sat, Sept. 16, 4:30 pm, Scotiabank 7.

Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard step up as triple-threats by co-writing, co-directing, and co-starring in this generous send-up of 70s slice-n’-dice camp-counsellor horror movies. There's not much of a story beyond that of a poor sap named Jason (Fred Hechinger), an exhaustingly cheerful, painfully mistreated six-year camp veteran who hopes to one day direct (that's as meta as the film gets). Bryk’s and Wolfhard’s attempts to work in themes of beauty and fame feel forced like it was something they thought they had to do, even if it is only to set up a joke. They cite Shaun of the Dead as inspiration, but that only acknowledges inspiration for the send-up, not the horror. On the horror front, every angle looks vintage Friday the 13th, but toss in any title that features horny teenagers and a psycho-killer at camp and the view is likely to be the same. Hell of a Summer is a funny movie (although not quite Shaun of the Dead funny) but not a scary one. The film errs on the side of laughs rather than suspense. There is a killer, there are kills, and some of the kills come close to being gruesome, but overall, this is a tame outing in the genre. TE

Rustin (Special Presentations)

Sat, Sept. 16, 10:15 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 4; Sun, Sept. 17, 12:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2.

Bayard Rustin — the gay Black man behind the historic 1963 civil rights march on Washington — gets his turn in the spotlight as the visionary who brought a quarter million activists to the U.S. capitol, where Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech, spurring the passage of historic equal rights legislation. Produced by Barak and Michelle Obama’s film company as part of their Netflix deal and directed by theatre veteran George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), the modestly budgeted film is undoubtedly worthy, but also smart and entertaining, thanks to a snappy script by Julian Breece (When They See Us) and Dustin Lance Black (Milk) and a lively, charismatic performance by Colman Domingo. Rustin, a tall, bespectacled man with a broken tooth, a passion for spirituals, Elizabethan ballads, good-looking young men, and the peaceful resistance philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, is never at a loss for a witty or inspirational phrase, even among the civil rights leadership where oratory is a specialty. Both the script and Domingo’s terrific performance are somewhat constrained in scenes focusing on the backroom politics of the movement, with a cast including Chris Rock as the NAACP’s skeptical chief Roy Wilkins, Aml Ameel as Martin Luther King, and Audra McDonald as veteran organizer Ella Baker. Jeffrey Wright makes the strongest impression as Adam Clayton Powell, Rustin’s condescending adversary. LL

Telling Our Story (Primetime)

Sat, Sept. 16, 7:35, Scotiabank 11.

A four-part series on a different view of North American history couldn’t begin more wryly than an Indigenous take on the notion that First Nations were “discovered.” (Who discovered who is the question?). Wide-ranging, with ancient philosophies, practices, injustices and hopes, director Kim O’Bomsawin’s camera visits 30-plus communities and nations to paint a mosaic of people with thousands of stories that combine to form a history untold by the “discoverers.” The TV-bound doc is an eye-opener for those willing to think differently about the past (and by extension, the future). JS

The Critic (Special Presentations)

Sat, Sept. 16, 3 pm, Scotiabank 2.

Elegantly shot and wonderfully cast, the latest from director Anand Tucker (Shopgirl, Leap Year) fails in its execution; a word I should use cautiously given the violent nature of the tale. Perhaps writer Patrick Marber tried to wring too much out of Anthony Quinn’s novel Curtain Call. There certainly is a lot going on in the film’s 95 minutes, which finds 1930s London theatre critic James Erskine (Ian McKellen) in danger of being turfed from his position at The Daily Chronicle thanks to its new owner (Mark Strong), and concocting a bit of blackmail involving actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton). He reminds her that he can make or break her career, because that’s the kind of power critics have, don’t you know? (Don’t you? No?) Stir in James’ black secretary/lover (Alfred Enoch), Nina’s mum (Lesley Manville in a tiny role), and the newly formed British Union of Fascists in their black shirts, and you’ve got a story that’s too busy by half. CK

The Convert (Special Presentations)

Sat, Sept. 16 12:30 pm, Scotiabank 4.

There are some very fine scenes in The Convert, but overall, the film reminded me that I don’t much care for Lee Tamahori’s films. The promises of epic historical drama tend to end up wasted in decidedly non-epic ways. It’s a large screen that Tamahori works with and, except or an opening segment involving a ship caught in a storm, one he rarely makes full use of. The Convert deals with a lay preacher named Thomas Munro (played by an ageless Guy Pearce). Munro, haunted by his own demons, is brought to bring spiritual guidance to the (mostly) stuffy population at a British settlement on the New Zealand coast. Munro’s dedication to peace is tested when confronted with the warring factions between two Māori tribes. And then there is the conflict of race, culture, and oppression, brought about by the colonizers. It’s all very traditional to the point of pedestrian. Lost is the illusion of occurrences outside the frame, or beyond the scope of Munro’s existence despite a superb performance by Pearce. TE