TIFF ’23: What To See at This Year’s Fest, Sept. 15

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

Eight days ago, we started our journey with the 2023 version of the Toronto International Film Festival, providing up to a dozen reviews on a daily basis.

And this weekend represents the clubhouse turn. There’s still gems out there, today through Sunday when awards will be handed out, including the coveted People’s Choice Award.

Sleep

About Dry Grasses (Centrepiece, Luminaries)

Fri, Sept. 15, 7:30 pm, Scotiabank 2.

Another drama filled with Checkovian longing and frustration from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, About Dry Grasses focuses on a bachelor teacher, Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), who faces allegations of inappropriate behaviour with a student. When a love letter is discovered in the school bag of the teacher’s pet, 14-year-old Sevim (Ece Bagci), the teacher humiliates her by keeping the note. The girl, along with a friend, subsequently complains about both unwanted touching and attention from both Samet and his easygoing roommate, Kenan (Musab Ekici). Partly in reaction to the charges, Samet pursues a relationship with a fellow teacher, a politically engaged intellectual Nuray (Merve Disdar) who has returned to her hometown after losing her leg in a terrorist bombing. Nuray has shown an affectionate interest Kenan, another reason that impels Samet to seduce her. At 197 minutes, About Dry Grasses is a marathon, filled with circular dialogue and stark landscapes. The protagonist — with his fixation on an adolescent girl and his casual cruelty — is far from likeable though he eventually achieves a significant shift toward empathy for the people around him. But easy redemption isn’t in the cards here. In one strange Brechtian moment, the movie opens to reveal an actor on a sound stage, surrounded by crew, as if to warn against identifying too closely with his worldview and reminding us, instead, of the broader political and social context of this drama. LL

Fingernails (Special Presentations)

Fri, Sept. 15, 5:30 pm, Scotiabank 1.

Bear with me on this one. Imagine a present not unlike our own, but a little more analogue (no cellphones or digital cameras), and where there exits a chemical test that can tell you whether or not two people are in love. You need to pull out one of your fingernails for the test, but no one ever said knowledge was painless. Director Christos Nikou has delivered strange sci-fi-meets-psychology before (his 2020 film Apples imagined an epidemic of amnesia) and has worked with fellow Greek Yorgos Lanthimos, whose film The Lobster carries some of the same DNA. But there’s not enough here to carry an almost-two-hour story, even one buoyed by the excellent acting talents of Jesse Beckley and Riz Ahmed, playing two workers at The Love Institute who might be falling for one another. How will they ever find out? CK

Sleep (Midnight Madness)

Fri, Sept. 15, 11:59 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre; Sat, Sept. 16, 9:30 pm, Scotiabank 4.

Postpartum or paranormal? Writer-director Jason Yu weaves a wonderfully claustrophobic tale about an expectant mother (Jung Yu-mi) whose husband’s (Lee Sun-kyun) increasingly bizarre sleepwalking habit becomes life-threatening. And kind of violent and gory. Fellow Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho called Sleep, “The most unique horror film and the smartest debut film I’ve seen in 10 years.”  LB

The Burial (Special Presentations)

Fri, Sept. 15, 5:30 pm, Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre; Sat, Sept. 16, 9 pm, Scotiabank 1.

The Burial will have you rooting for the little guy. Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx join forces to tell the real-life story of Mississippi funeral director Jeremiah O’Keefe (Jones) who is about to lose his family-run funeral business to a corporate giant. After a handshake deal goes south, O'Keefe enlists the help of charismatic, smooth-talking attorney Willie E. Gary (Foxx) to save his business. When these two unlikely characters join forces, you can’t help but love them both. Tempers flare, stories are shared, and plenty of laughter ensues as the pair bond while exposing corporate corruption and racial injustice. I laughed out loud and was moved to tears. The Burial is a truly inspirational and triumphant story that doesn’t disappoint. BL

The Nature of Love (Centrepiece)

Fri, Sept. 15, 9:15 pm Scotiabank 10.

Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) is in a sexually moribund but intellectually fulfilling marriage with Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume). But the purchase of a Quebec countryside chalet puts her under the spell of a burly handyman named Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal). Ditching Xavier for someone with whom she has nothing more in common than mutual lust leads to uncomfortable post-coital encounters with Sylvain’s blue-collar family and Sylvain feeling like a lab rat in the presence of her elitist friends. There is no one in the audience who doesn’t know how this relationship will turn out. For that matter, there is no character in the movie, other than these two, who doesn’t know how it will turn out. Whatever statement about the “nature of love” the movie is making seems out of step and prosaic. JS

Working Class Goes to Hell (Midnight Madness)

Fri. Sept. 15, 8 pm, Scotiabank 12; Sun, Sept 17, 6:45 pm, Scotiabank 10.

Working Class Goes to Hell spends an hour and a half in purgatory before it gets to hell. An unconfirmed observation, but I’m betting this film is the least Midnight Madness-like film ever to play at Midnight Madness. If I’m wrong, then it comes as a close second. Not that Working Class Goes to Hell isn’t worth seeing. It’s a strong story of a town in conflict. Town officials have closed the village factory, putting much of the population out of work. In their questionable wisdom, a new hotel is going up with the intention of drawing in tourists to what is perhaps the most unlikely tourist destination since Chernobyl. There are some payoffs in this bleak and sometimes rambling tale of power, workers union and small-town politics, but I don’t imagine it’s enough for the late-night TIFF revelers who toss around beachballs and still imitate a pirate whenever the piracy warning comes on screen. TE