Toronto Film Fest 2006, Day Ten
Sep. 17th, 2006 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedThe fest is over for another year, and I mostly survived. (Was up till 4 a.m. after the final midnight, and I reckon it's going to take me a few days to completely recover from the sleep deprivation, but I'm mostly functioning. I'm totally looking forward to finally having a home-cooked meal tonigh, though. And doing much laundry.
Title: Invisible Waves
Director: Pen-ek Rataranuang
Country: Thailand/Netherlands
P's Rating: Okay
As with all Rataranuang's films, this one plays out slowly, with the viewer only gradually being doled out bits of the story. It follows Kyoji, a chef, who in the opening scenes kills a woman who appears to be his lover, only to be sent to Phuket in Thailand by his boss. Kyoji's cruise to Thailand is a series of deadpan disasters--he truly has the worst cruise cabin in the history of the world, from taps that turn on the wrong spout to a door that locks him in his cabin. But on the cruise he meets Noi, a young woman travelling with her baby and who gives him companionship on the journey. When he arrives in Thailand, things go from bad to worse, until Kyoji is finally forced to realize that his boss, whose wife it was that he killed, is the author of his misfortune and is looking to have him killed. And his boss just might have a connection with Noi. This isn't a bad film, but it could have been so much better. There are sections that just drag, and the cinematography, by the usually brilliant Christopher Doyle, looks utterly crap with its uniformly murky blue palette.
Title: Big Bang Love, Juvenile A
Director: Takashi Miike
Country: Japan
P's Rating: Okay
Miike is not only an insanely prolific filmmaker (producing up to seven films a year) but he also seldom repeats himself. He's made gangster films, horror films, kid's films and even a horror musical. And he's certainly not following any formula with Big Bang Love, a stylized juvenile delinquent drama with homoerotic overtones. From the start, it's a striking-looking film: on a stark set, a young boy is told about his coming initiation into adulthood as a young, tattooed man does a violently agressive dance. Unfortunately, the rest of the film never quite reaches the fever pitch of those opening scenes. The rest of the film revolves around Jun and Shiro, two teens both imprisoned for murder. Shiro protects the quiet Jun, even while he fights with every other inmate and jailer. Then one day Jun is found strangling Shiro. Or so it seems. The rest of the film follows two deadpan investigators as they try to determine what happened. It's often quite beautiful to watch, in a brutal sort of way, but also seems a bit opaque.
Title: Sheitan
Director: Kim Chapiron
Country: France
P's Rating: Not-so-good
I picked this one mainly on the strength of it being the last midnight screening and because the friend who programs the midnight films promised Vincent Cassel would be in the house (he wasn't, alas), but without much hope for it actually being good. Which means I wasn't terribly disappointed that it turned out to be a bit of a dog's breakfast. This year, the midnight screenings were full of films in which people travel to the country and then are horribly killed, maimed or otherwise traumatized, and this was the French entry in the genre. This time, it's three guys from Paris, a female friend and a girl who one of the guys has picked up in a club who make the trek to the country. Cassel plays the mentally deficient but increasingly sinister groundskeeper who terrorizes them. My problem right from the start was that the guys are unsympathetic lunkheads, and the girls come across as idiots for hanging out with them, so really, I was rooting for the crazy country people to off them. There are some inspired loopy moments along the way, like the disembodied hands that appear when one girl is taking a bath not to strangle her, as you'd expect, but to give her a shoulder massage. But ultimately I just couldn't wait for the film to end to I could stop spending time with such annoying characters.
Title: Invisible Waves
Director: Pen-ek Rataranuang
Country: Thailand/Netherlands
P's Rating: Okay
As with all Rataranuang's films, this one plays out slowly, with the viewer only gradually being doled out bits of the story. It follows Kyoji, a chef, who in the opening scenes kills a woman who appears to be his lover, only to be sent to Phuket in Thailand by his boss. Kyoji's cruise to Thailand is a series of deadpan disasters--he truly has the worst cruise cabin in the history of the world, from taps that turn on the wrong spout to a door that locks him in his cabin. But on the cruise he meets Noi, a young woman travelling with her baby and who gives him companionship on the journey. When he arrives in Thailand, things go from bad to worse, until Kyoji is finally forced to realize that his boss, whose wife it was that he killed, is the author of his misfortune and is looking to have him killed. And his boss just might have a connection with Noi. This isn't a bad film, but it could have been so much better. There are sections that just drag, and the cinematography, by the usually brilliant Christopher Doyle, looks utterly crap with its uniformly murky blue palette.
Title: Big Bang Love, Juvenile A
Director: Takashi Miike
Country: Japan
P's Rating: Okay
Miike is not only an insanely prolific filmmaker (producing up to seven films a year) but he also seldom repeats himself. He's made gangster films, horror films, kid's films and even a horror musical. And he's certainly not following any formula with Big Bang Love, a stylized juvenile delinquent drama with homoerotic overtones. From the start, it's a striking-looking film: on a stark set, a young boy is told about his coming initiation into adulthood as a young, tattooed man does a violently agressive dance. Unfortunately, the rest of the film never quite reaches the fever pitch of those opening scenes. The rest of the film revolves around Jun and Shiro, two teens both imprisoned for murder. Shiro protects the quiet Jun, even while he fights with every other inmate and jailer. Then one day Jun is found strangling Shiro. Or so it seems. The rest of the film follows two deadpan investigators as they try to determine what happened. It's often quite beautiful to watch, in a brutal sort of way, but also seems a bit opaque.
Title: Sheitan
Director: Kim Chapiron
Country: France
P's Rating: Not-so-good
I picked this one mainly on the strength of it being the last midnight screening and because the friend who programs the midnight films promised Vincent Cassel would be in the house (he wasn't, alas), but without much hope for it actually being good. Which means I wasn't terribly disappointed that it turned out to be a bit of a dog's breakfast. This year, the midnight screenings were full of films in which people travel to the country and then are horribly killed, maimed or otherwise traumatized, and this was the French entry in the genre. This time, it's three guys from Paris, a female friend and a girl who one of the guys has picked up in a club who make the trek to the country. Cassel plays the mentally deficient but increasingly sinister groundskeeper who terrorizes them. My problem right from the start was that the guys are unsympathetic lunkheads, and the girls come across as idiots for hanging out with them, so really, I was rooting for the crazy country people to off them. There are some inspired loopy moments along the way, like the disembodied hands that appear when one girl is taking a bath not to strangle her, as you'd expect, but to give her a shoulder massage. But ultimately I just couldn't wait for the film to end to I could stop spending time with such annoying characters.
