The Brothers Bloom
Director/Country/Time: Rian Johnson, USA, 109 min.
Cast: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz
Program: Special Presentations
Headline: Con men grow up, cease to be fictional constructs
Noel's Take: It's hard to make a movie about the existential trials of a man who feels like a character in a story without getting pretty meta and even a little cutesy-poo, so if you're not up for a movie that features a woman who "collects hobbies" (for example, juggling chainsaws on stilts), an Asian sidekick who only knows three words of English (apparently "campari," "fuck" and "me") and an opening Ricky Jay narration in rhyming verse, then The Brothers Bloom is definitely not for you. Me, I found it involving and occasionally dazzling, if too self-serious at times, and too airless throughout. For his follow-up to Brick, Johnson wanders through lands well-colonized by both major filmmaking Andersons (that would be Wes and P.T.), though in a way The Brothers Bloom is also the next generation of Brick as well, in that the characters in Johnson's debut film were interpreting high school through noir archetypes, and the characters in The Brothers Bloom are aware that they're living storybook lives, and are trying to find ways to change. Brody is a bit too hangdog as Ruffalo's younger brother, ever stuck in the role of the believable straight man in their labyrinthine cons, and Ruffalo is a shade too ruthless. (I kept wishing they'd switch roles.) But Weisz is delightful throughout as a ridiculously rich and lonely woman who signs on with the Blooms because she craves adventure—and doesn't much care that she's their latest mark. Weisz also gets to deliver the line of dialogue that explains Johnson's style, when she describes the manipulations of photography by saying, "It's not reproduction; it's storytelling." Nothing in The Brothers Bloom is drawn from real life, and very little about it is applicable to real life. But that's not necessarily a deal-breaker. Brody responds to Weisz's speech about photography by saying, "It's a lie that tells the truth," and though that line may only be resonant with him—as a guy who believes so deeply in the roles he plays for Ruffalo that it pains him to see the cons end—he remains a pretty heartbreaking character. (But only if you care about him in the first place.)
Scott's Take: Noel does a better job than I could in explicating all of the things that The Brothers Bloom has going for it: As with Brick, Johnson has a flair for exceedingly stylized, movie-movie dialogue and an ability to work out the kinks of a labyrinthine plot, all while tying these character constructs to very real emotions, in this case the desire of a lifelong con man (Brody) to achieve the innocence and happiness of a mark. The film asks, quite poignantly at times, how do you live a fulfilling life when you see the strings and know all the angles? And yet The Brothers Bloom works more in theory than it does in practice. After the whiz-bang pre-credits sequence—which, admittedly, owes something to Magnolia, right down to the Ricky Jay narration—and a fine introduction to Rachel Weisz (who's terrific), the film grows steadily more labored, bowing from the overstuffed plotting (which, credit to Johnson, at least seems well worked-out) and a mannered style that keeps these characters at arm's length. Films can have a strange alchemy sometimes: All the elements can be in place and the whole thing can still blow up in your face.
Noel's Grade: B+; Scott's Grade: B-
35 Shots Of Rum
Director/Country/Time: Claire Denis, France, 100 min.
Cast: Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Grégoire Colin
Program: Special Presentations
Headline: Denis does Ozu
Scott's Take: Claire Denis is one of the most magical filmmakers in the world, a moody and intuitive artist whose best work—Beau Travail and Friday Night among them —has a pure, elliptical quality that transcends the page, as if she's flying without a screenplay. Denis' last feature, The Intruder, pushed that elliptical style into out-and-out incoherence, but she finds her footing beautifully with 35 Shots Of Rum, which is grounded a bit more in nuts-and-bolts character work than usual. The story is right out of Yasujiro Ozu (Late Spring, Tokyo Story): A widowed father (Alex Descas) has a close relationship with his grown-up daughter (Mati Diop), but she's getting older, too, and it's time for her to find a life (and love) independent of him. Denis and her ace cinematographer, Agnès Godard, take an indirect route to the heart of this relationship, first establishing little things like the father's workaday job as a train conductor and the warm, quirky cast of characters that populate their apartment building. Then she lowers the boom in the final stretch, when the devotion between father and daughter yields an intensely bittersweet end. Kudos, too, to the typically impeccable soundtrack, with a score by frequent Denis collaborators Tindersticks. Grade: A-
Serbis
Director/Country/Time: Brillante Mendoza, The Philippines, 94 min.
Cast: Gina Pareño, Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz
Program: Vanguard
Headline: Goodbye, Blowjob Inn
Scott's Take: Only two films into the festival and already an unsimulated sex scene involving a transsexual. Welcome to Toronto! When this film premiered at Cannes in May, several critics likened it to a Tsai Ming-liang (The River, What Time Is There?) film, specifically Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai's ode to a dilapidated old movie house populated mainly by men cruising for other men in the dark. But in all other ways, Serbis (Service) is its own movie, a vibrant slice-of-life about family three-generations deep that both runs the theater and resides in it. (Mendoza's oft-frenetic handheld camera style is also worlds away from Tsai's single-take, static master shots.) Mendoza juggles many different subplots—principally, a matriarch's bitter bigamy suit against her husband—and he doesn't really care to resolve them; instead, he steadily and confidently establishes this theater as a living organism, screening softcore movies (with hardcore extracurriculars) to society of outcasts. It's like Ship Of Fools with blowjobs and boil-lancings. Grade: B+