A.V. Club Blog

Since this is my introductory post, I feel obligated to hit you with a little

local color before diving into the films. But truth be told, this is the seventh

straight year I’ve come to Toronto and nothing has changed: The streets

around festival central are lined more or less with the same businesses (a boon

if you’re into Asian noodles, corner hot dogs, all-night Internet and gaming

cafes, and strippers; not so much if you want just a little variety), the weather

is mild and temperate, and we’re even staying in the same room

as last year. This could suggest stability or stasis in the city—goodness

knows, the complexion of my Chicago neighborhood changes by the minute—but

it more likely indicates just how pitifully myopic critics like myself can be.

Though I’ve never been to the Cannes or Venice Film Festival, I imagine

those alluring backdrops at least prompt a few casual strolls around the area,

if not a reason to skip out on screenings altogether. At Toronto, it’s all

about seeing movies: The city itself becomes little more than the inconvenient

sprawl between theaters.

Just like last year, I landed during a mid-afternoon lull in the press screenings,

so I needed a slot-filler before catching my first big title, which in this case

was the new Pedro Almodóvar. I could only improve on last year’s

kick-off, The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes, a formally precise but deadly

dull Quay Brothers film that very nearly drained my energy for the whole festival.

(Opening a festival with an excruciating film is a little like pulling up with

a leg cramp 10 steps into a marathon.) Fortunately, the German demon possession

drama Requiem

turned out to be a significant improvement, if only for dialing down the hysterics

on the same true story that inspired the awful Christian horror film The

Exorcism Of Emily Rose. In fact, the two approaches are so different

that I didn’t get the connection until the end, though throughout I kept

thinking, “You know, if this movie was remade in Hollywood, it’d probably

look a lot like that piece of crap The Exorcism Of Emily Rose.”

The basic storylines are, of course, the same—young woman from an extremely

religious family tries to go to college, suffers from what appears to be strange

epileptic fits, comes to believe (via the influence of family, priests, and the

nature of her spasms) that she’s possessed, and then goes through an exorcism—but

Requiem never attempts to get "inside" her hallucinations and

it certainly doesn’t indulge in the science v. religion courtroom theatrics

of Emily Rose. Really, it’s better for what it doesn’t do

than what it does—that is, until the wonderful final scene and shot, when

she takes her ultimately tragic fate in her hands.

Now to the main event: Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver

continues perhaps the hottest streak in international cinema, and it probably

ranks alongside Talk To Her and Live Flesh on my list of favorites

by the director. Much has been said about the maturity of Almodóvar’s

films since The Flower Of My Secret and All About My Mother,

and it benefits this particular film greatly, because I think the Almodóvar

of old might have leaned on a splashier, more strenuously “outrageous”

approach to this material. The story piles on the melodramatic twists of a telenovela,

with elements of murder, betrayal, and the supernatural combined into a kind of

grand soap opera. But when those twists are revealed, Almodóvar pulls back

on the reins a bit, choosing to let their implications register as deeply felt

character drama rather than something loud and brassy. And who knew Penélope

Cruz, so painfully stilted in her English-language roles, could be this good?

The night closed with another of my most-anticipated titles: Climates,

the new film by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose previous film Distant

knocked me flat. In many ways, Climates recalls Albert Brooks’ great Modern

Romance, following a totally incompatible couple that breaks up, flounders

apart, and gets together again, mostly through the force of the man’s creepy,

borderline pathological obsession. And it’s not unfunny, either: Ceylan’s

deadpan style could be likened to Jim Jarmusch, especially once the film ventures

into a snowbound city straight out of Stranger Than Paradise. Though

Climates isn’t quite as haunting and resonant as Distant,

it’s astonishing to behold on a purely cinematic level. Ceylan’s films

have a tactile quality that feels almost three-dimensional at times; the shots

are exquisitely framed (he uses a telephoto lens like no other) and the ambient

soundtrack is so carefully laid out that you feel immersed within every scene.

Amazingly, the film was shot on hi-definition video, but it’s absolutely

essential to see it in a movie theater; the experience would probably flatten

out considerably on DVD or video. Hopefully, Zeitgeist Films will do something

more with it than New Yorker Films did with Distant a couple years ago;

it opens in New York on October 27 and rolls out from there.

Tomorrow brings Asian cinema galore, including new films by Hong Sang-soo, Hirokazu

Kore-eda, Apichatpong Weerathesekul, and Bong Joon-ho. And also… BORAT!