Oscar contenders, 2023. Films reviewed: Saint Omer, The Son, Living
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three potential Oscar contenders opening this weekend. There’s a writer in Paris attending a trial, a bureaucrat in London whose life is a trial, and a Dad dealing with the trials and tribulations of a mentally ill son.
Saint Omer
Wri/Dir: Alice Diop
It’s the early 2000s in a Parisian suburb. Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) is on trial for murder. She admits to leaving the infant on a beach to be washed away with the tides one moonlit night, but why she did it is not so simple. She’s a Senegalese-French woman from Dakar, in Paris as a student. She is beautiful, articulate, poised and intelligent; not your usual murder suspect. As her mother (Salimata Kamate) told her, education and politesse are the two most important traits. But after a series of events she ends up living in a small apartment as a grey-haired, married man’s mistress — no longer in university, with no friends, no job, no future. And virtually no one knows she was pregnant nor that she gave birth at home. She existed in a strange limbo world.
All of this is taken in by Rama (Kayije Kagame) a novelist and 
university prof in Paris. She is following the trial in person, for a new book she’s writing about Medea. Like Laurence, she’s a French intellectual, and a black woman of West African background. More than that, she’s estranged from her mother and is in her first trimester of pregnancy. In a sea of white faces in the courtroom, she feels both a connection and a revulsion toward Laurence. Could this be me on trial? she wonders. And will I be a fit mother?
Saint Omer is a devastatingly powerful courtroom drama as seen through an observer’s eyes. It’s the opposite of a Law & Order episode — no smoking guns or pot twists. Rather it’s Laurence’s retelling of her story before judge and jury Rama’s reactions that carries all the power. It’s intentionally filled with subtle ambiguity so you’re never quite sure whether Laurence is lying and being coached to do so, or if she’s completely sincere. With women holding most of the key roles — including the judge and the defence council — it strips away some misconceptions. The acting (by actress Malanda and artist/performer Kagame) is superb, and the filmmaking amazing. This is documentary filmmaker Alice Drop’s first drama. Somehow, she takes the drab wooden panels of a classroom and a courtroom and turns them into something pulsing with emotion.
This is a great movie.
The Son
Wri/Dir: Florian Zeller
Beth and Peter (Vanessa Kirby, Hugh Jackman) are a newly married, upper-middle class couple with a new baby. All I going well until they get an unexpected knock on the door. His teenaged son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) says he can’t take living his mom anymore (Laura Dern) a full-time nurse whom Peter divorced and abandoned a few years earlier. What a dilemma! He can’t turn away his own flesh and blood, can he? But Nicholas is difficult to live with. It seems he stopped going to school months ago — without telling his parents. And Beth finds him scary. What if he does something to our baby— how can I trust him? So they check him into a psych ward without his consent. But what can they do in the long run with this troublesome teen?
The Son is an overwrought melodrama about divorced parents forced to care for their troubled son. It deals with anguish, anger and regret but only from the parents’ perspective, never from the son’s. He’s just a pain in the ass… and possibly a threat! This movie falls in that sub-genre of sympathetic parents forced to deal with sons who “selfishly” choose to become drug addicts or mental ill. How dare they! Despite what the parents try, those bad sons are criminals and liars at heart who can never be trusted. This dreadful collection of 
never-watch movies includes Beautiful Boy, with Timothy Chalamet and Ben is Back, starring Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges. This one has equal star power, and is just as hard to watch. It’s especially disappointing because it’s Florian Zeller’s follow-up to The Father a few years back about an elderly man slipping into dementia (Anthony Hopkins, who also appears in this film), as its unreliable narrator. But don’t be fooled. The Son has no redeeming features and is truly one of the worst movies of 2022.
Living
Wri/Dir: Oliver Hermanus
It’s Londin in the 1950s. Williams (Bill Nighy) is a mundane municipal bureaucrat, the head of public works at County Hall. He spends most of his time at his desk — along with his subordinates Rusbridger, Middleton and Hart — keeping busy by ignoring piles of files and requests. Whenever troublesome locals appear, like a group of mothers requesting they build a tiny playground in a vacant lot, they’re quickly disposed of by sending them to another department in the endless bureaucratic labyrinth of city hall. The newly-hired Wakeling is quickly discouraged from working too hard — an empty inbox means you’re doing something wrong. The sole woman, Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), is thinking of quitting to take a managerial job at a local restaurant. Since his wife died, 
Williams has lived a humdrum existence sharing his home with his adult son and daughter-in- law. But everything changes when his doctor brings him some terrible `news: incurable cancer, 6 months left to live. Suddenly everything takes on new meaning as he decides to start enjoying life and making things better for others. But is it too late?
Living is a period drama about life in post-war London. It captures the spark that can be reawakened in even the most humdrum person’s existence. It follows the night Williams spends in the demimonde led by an alcoholic bohemian he meets in a cafe; the days spent helping Margaret, for the chance to share in her youth and vitaity; and a project he hoped to complete in his final days.
I approached this movie with trepidation, because it’s a remake of Kurosawa’s Ikiru, one of my favourite movies of all time, which I didn’t want to see ruined. Happily, Living it is wonderful film in its own right. Maybe only a writer like UK novelist Kazuo Ishiguro could transport a story from Tokyo to London, while staying true to its original meaning and structure, even while giving this very Japanese film a distinctly English feel. Bill Nighy (who usually plays silly characters in crap movies) is wonderfully understated in this one. And South African director Oliver Hermanus, who brought us the great Moffie, again puts his all into the film he’s making.
I recommend this movie.
Living, Saint Omer, and The Son all open this weekend in Toronto, with the latter two playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Crime. Films reviewed: The Noise of Engines, The Last Mark, The Outfit
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies — one from the UK and two premiering at this year’s Canadian Film Fest — that look at ordinary people pulled into the world of crime. There’s a customs official accused of sexual misconduct; a dominatrix targeted by a deranged hitman; and a mild-mannered English tailor pulled into the Chicago mob.
The Noise of Engines (Le Bruit des Moteurs)
Dir: Philippe Grégoire
Alex (Robert Naylor) is a young man from a small Quebec town near the US border. It’s a village with a mothball factory a formula 1 race track, and not much else. In this post-9/11 world, the government wants formerly boring customs officers to become ruthless killers in the war on terrorism. So to get away from his town, he takes a job as a firearms instructor at an isolated Canada Customs training school. But when he is caught in flagrante delicto with a large breasted employee he is dragged before the directrice for an interrogation. Though their sex was consensual, his co-
worker had a heart attack from a lack of oxygen due to the anti-covid face shield she was wearing (he ended up saving her life.) And when the much older Directrice’s invites him to sleep with her and her husband, he turns her down. She is furious and exiles him back to his village for punishment. But his troubles don’t stop there. The local police, in a series of Kafka-esque events, label Alex as a sexual deviant, and accuse him of increasingly absurd crimes, such as leaving lascivious drawings on post-it notes in the local church. However life isn’t all bad. At least he has one friend in the village, an Icelandic drag-racer (Tanja Björk) who wants to practice her French and see the local sites. Can Alex survive a two week leave in small-town Quebec? Will the police ever leave 
him alone? And what will become of his relationship with new Icelandic friend?
The Noise of Engines is an absurdist drama about the stultifying effect corrupt bureaucrats and policemen have in small-town Quebec. Aesthetically beautiful — from its stark scenery and retro settings to its modernistic music and elegant titles — this debut feature is a pleasure to watch. The while film is almost dreamlike (and sometimes nightmarish) to the point where you’re never quite sure whether anything is real or if it’s all in Alex’s imagination. Shot both in Quebec and in Iceland it swerves between comedy and horror, settling somewhere in between. I like this movie.
The Last Mark
Dir: Reem Morsi
Peyton (Alexia Fast) is an escort and a professional dominatrix. One night, in a seedy motel room with a client she hears unexpected intruders entering the room. Hidden under the bed she witnesses two professional killers shoot the man she was just having sex with. She escapes but not before they see her. It’s up to the killers to silence the unfortunate witness. Keele (Shawn Doyle) volunteers to catch and kill the witness. He is an older professional reaching the end of his career, while Palmer (Bryce Hodgson) is his new replacement, a psychotic murderer who chops off his victims heads just for the fun of it. But there’s a twist. Peyton left her ID behind, and Keele recognizes her last name — the same as a woman he had a fling with decades earlier. Is it possible that she’s his daughter? He asks Eli (Jonas Chernick) his longtime fixer to do a bit of research — is she related to him, or just another target? In the meantime, Keele kidnaps her and locks her in an isolated cabin, far from the eyes of his head-chopping partner. Can the two if them learn to get along? Do they have anything in common? Can they trust one another? And will he save her or kill her?
The Last Mark is a classic typical, crime dramady, about an odd 
couple pulled together by coincidence. This is the director, Reem Morsi’s first full-length feature, and it holds together well. The cast is good all-around, even the smaller roles, especially Bryce Hodgson as a psycho-killer. This is a Canadian production and cast, but the story is set somewhere vaguely outside of Detroit (though it was shot in Sudbury). It’s violent but not gory, and even moving at times. It’s never slow or boring, and the characters are just quirky enough to keep you interested but still believable. This movie’s pretty good.
The Outfit
Co-Wri/Dir: Graham Moore
It’s the mid-1950s in Chicago. Leonard (Mark Rylance) is a bespoke tailor, originally from London. He apprenticed on Saville Row before opening his own shop. Now in Chicago he works with his assistant Mable (Zoey Deutsch), an ambitious ginger-haired young woman from the neighbourhood. She collects exotic snow globes with the idea of someday living in the cities in her glass souvenirs. And she’s dating Richie (Dylan O’Brien) a brash young gangster, on the sly. And that’s trouble. You see, the whole neighbourhood is under the thumb of Richie’s dad, a local kingpin, who is also Leonard’s best customer. He doesn’t want Richie to mess things up. As a favour, he lets them use his shop as a safe house, leaving important messages in an innocuous wooden drop box at the back. But one day, a recorded cassette mysteriously appears in an envelope. Apparently it was recorded by the Feds… but how did it get there? Was it a secret plant in the FBI? A rival gang? Or the Outfit (a syndicate for 
organized crime groups) And how did they record it — is there a rat within their own ranks? Francis (John Flynn) first lieutenant in the gang, is sent in to investigate, soon followed by the kingpin himself, along with his bodyguard. As suspicion grows, and bullets start to fly, it’s up to Leonard to try to smooth the waters… but is he too late? And who is the rat? The kingpin, his son Richie, his lieutenant, or possibly even Mable or Leonard himself?
The Outfit is a clever suspense drama about loyalty, suspicion and lies within a crime gang and how it effects the people all around it. Mark Rylance is terrific as the stiff-upper-lip “cutter” (he doesn’t want to be a called a tailor) and his behind-the-scenes machinations. Like a stage play, the whole film is set within the three rooms of his shop over the course of a single day, but doesn’t feel claustrophobic, just precisely made, like the hundreds of pieces of cloth Leonard sews together to make a single suit. Graham Moore who wrote The Imitation Game also directed this excellent period drama. No spoilers here, but this film has more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at. It’s more clever than emotional, which makes for a fun — though at times violent — mystery/drama. I like this one, too.
The Outfit opens this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. The Noise of Engines has its Toronto premiere on March 23rd and The Last Mark its Canadian premier on April 1st, both at the Canadian Film Festival.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Shasha Nakhai about Scarborough
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s typical day at a literacy clinic in eastern Toronto. Three new kids are there with their parents trying to find a place for them in the complex school system. Sylvie’s there with her mom — her dad is in hospital and her 4-year-old brother Johnny is hard to handle. Bing is bullied by other kids who questions his sexuality, even as his mom works all day in a mani-pedi and his dad’s in a mental hospital. And little Laura was abandoned by her abusive mom, forcing her dad to raise her — someone who knows nothing about taking care of kids. Luckily, a kindly teacher named Ms Hina is there to smooth out the bumps and care for the kids… even when it looks like nothing can help them. And Bing, Sylvie and Laura become good friends. But can they overcome the obstacles in their precarious lives at a public 
school in Scarborough?
Scarborough is a wonderful, new, feature-length drama that premiered last fall at TIFF and the ReelAsian film festivals to rave reviews and appreciative audiences. Using an ensemble cast and first-time actors, it explores life in a working class, multicultural neighbourhood in Scarborough, where people struggle with poverty, homelessness, racism, and a largely indifferent social system. Based on the award-winning book by Catherine Hernandez, it’s directed by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson. Shasha Nakhai is a Toronto-based filmmaker whose work has aired on the BBC, CBC, ZDF and Arte and screened at the Museum of Modern Art. She has worked on documentaries like The World Before Her (2012), Driving with Selvi (2015), and League of Exotique Dancers (2015).
I spoke with Shasha Nakhai in Toronto via Zoom.
Scarborough is opening in Toronto on February 25th at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Daniel Garber talks with Jeff Harris about #TIFF21!
(Short version)
(Extended version)
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo by Jeff Harris.
TIFF is the one of the world’s biggest film festivals, where independent filmmakers from around the world show their latest work young actors give breakaway performances, and forgotten names try for their come-backs. Celebrities, publicist, the press and autograph seekers live in a weird symbiotic relationship. And movie lovers have a chance to see the best new movies of the year before they are released. But what’s it like during a pandemic when people are still tiptoeing around? How is TIFF right now? What is working, what isn’t? What’s surprising, and what movies are good, bad, or indifferent?
Well to answer some of these questions — and many more — I’m discussing this year’s festival with a long-time collaborator, marking his fifth time on this show.
Jeff Harris is an award-winning photographer and a freelance journalist who for 20 years has been covering TIFF for Macleans and The Walrus.
I spoke with Jeff in Toronto, in person.
Separated. Films reviewed: Dear Comrades!, A Glitch in the Matrix, Two of Us
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Festival and award season has begun, so this week I’m looking at three new movies – from the US, Russia and France – now playing at Sundance or already nominated for upcoming awards. There are people who believe perception is separate from reality; a Communist official separated from her daughter; and an elderly woman separated from the love of her life.
Dear Comrades!
Co-Wri/Dir: Andrey Konchalovskiy
It’s summer in a small Russian city on the Don River, and the people are angry. Food prices are soaring while wages are going down. Thousands of factory workers take to the streets carrying red flags and pictures of Lenin. Is this the Russian revolution of 1905? Or is it 1917?
Neither… it’s the Soviet Union in 1962!
Lyuda (Yuliya Vysotskaya) is a single mom who lives with her and her daughter Svetka (Yuliya Burova) who works in a train factory, She’s an ardent Stalinist. And because she’s an apparatchik — a high-placed local official and member of the Communist Party — she lives a good life. This means access to hair salons, 
nylon stockings, negligees, and Hungarian salami. She’s having an affair with a married official.
The food shortages and wage cuts don’t really affect her.
But her life is shaken up by the walkout at a locomotive factory (where Svetka works) and spreading across the city of Novocherkassk. And their meetings — they’re trying to figure out how to handle this — end up with bricks through the window and Lyuda and the rest forced to 
sneak out through a sewer tunnel. In comes the KGB who want to bring guns ammunition into the equation: the instigators must be stopped. Mayhem and killings ensue. Lyuda is a hardliner, but when her daughter disappears she has to decide whether her loyalty is to the state or to her kin.
Dear Comrades is a moving drama about a real event and the massive cover-up that followed it. It’s shot in glorious, high-contrast black and white, similar to 
Polish director Pawilowski’s Ida and Cold War, but with magnificent, classic cinematic scenes involving hundreds of rioters and soldiers in the public square. Yuliya Vysotskaya’s performance as Lyuda runs the gamut from cold official to angry mother to disillusioned and drunken party member as her entire existence and beliefs are called into question.
This is Russia’s nominee for best foreign film Oscar and definitely deserves to be seen.
A Glitch in the Matrix
Dir: Rodney Ascher
Have you ever had the sensation that everything around you — other people, your job, what you see and hear — is an illusion, that you’re living in a programmed reality? If so, you’re not alone. A new documentary talks to people who are convinced they are trapped in a world like the Wachowskis’ 1999 movie The Matrix, where everything they perceive is just a computer simulation. And anyone else — other than one’s self — is either a part of this conspiracy, or a victim of it, or they don’t even exist outside of your head. And it is only detectable by paying attention to weird glitches in the system, like odd 
examples of deja vu, or coincidences that are too absurd or fantastical to be merely random events.
The doc interviews people rendered into 3-D animated avatars who tell about their own experiences. It also gives a full history of these beliefs, dating back to Plato’s concept of shadows on the wall of a cave, through Descarte’s epistemological example of an “Evil Demon” deceiving us, all the way to the present. This includes a rare recording of a 
speech given by author Phillip K Dick in the 1970s, who says the ideas in his books are not science fiction but science fact. His stories inspired movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall.
A Glitch in the Matrix is a fascinating, informative and bizarre documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival a couple days ago. Aside from the animated interviews and narration, it presents a veritable tsunami of visual references to movies and TV shows video games that deal with these topics. I’m talking hundreds of clips, from the game 
Minecraft, to The Truman Show, to the kids’ book Horton Hears a Who, all of which propose that there are worlds or universes who don’t know they are just tiny self-contained units within much larger realities.
Do I believe I’m living in a glass dome or floating in a sensory deprivation tank? No. But that didn’t stop me from enjoying this mind-warp of a documentary.
Two of Us
Co-Wri/Dir: Filippo Meneghetti
Nina and Madeleine (Barbara Sukowa, Martine Chevallier) are two elderly women who live in Paris (Nina’s originally from Berlin). They first met as children in a public park in Rome, and kept in touch ever since. And for the past 20 years they’ve been passionate lovers who share one floor of an apartment building, floating back and forth between the two homes separated by a hallway. And they’re planning on selling them leaving Paris and retiring somewhere in Rome. The only thing holding them back are Madeleine (or Made as Nina calls her)’s two adult children and her Anne and 
Frédéric and her grandson Théo.
She was married to an abusive husband for Amy years until he died, though her actual relationship was with her lover Nina. But she’s never told her family the truth — she’s too worried about what they’ll think. But when Mado has a sudden stroke rendering her speechless, Nina is suddenly separated from her de facto wife. Mado’s family just think of her as the kindly neighbour Mme Dorn who lives down the hall. They bring in a paid caregiver who blocks her entry into the other apartment. When Nina demands to spend time with her lover, Anne and Frederic begin to regard Nina as a crazy woman who won’t leave their mother alone and cut off all contact. Will Nina and Mado ever see each other again? And can their relationship be saved?
Two of Us is a wonderful and passionate drama about two elderly lovers. It’s the young, Paris-based Italian director’s first feature, but it feels mature and masterfully done. And it co-stars the great Barbara Sukowa (If you’re into German cinema, you may remember her from movies in the 70s and 80s by Fassbinder and more recently by von Trotta), Sukowa is just as good now as she’s ever been. And Chevalier conveys volumes even when she can’t speak. The movie is full of pathos and tears and frustration and joy, you feel so much for both of them.
Two of Us is France’s nominee for best Foreign Oscar, and it’s definitely worth seeing.
A Glitch in the Matrix starts today, and Dear Comrade and Two of Us are both opening at the digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
They’re just movies. TIFF 17 Tips plus Blood Honey
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF — The Toronto International Film Festival — opens next week, and if you’ve never been there, I think it’s a good time to check it out. There are hundreds of movies from all over, many having their world premier, attended by directors and actors. There are feature length films, shorts, animation, documentaries, art films and more. Midnight Madness has late-night screenings of horror, action and the kind of movies that won’t you won’t see at the cineplex. Today I’m going to calm your fears and address your reservations about the film festival. And I’m also going to talk about a Canadian psychological horror/thriller about bees opening today.
How to survive TIFF
Photos by Jeff Harris
Standing in line.
A lot of people don’t want to go to TIFF because they hate standing in long lines. I feel the same way. But if you have a ticket – individual tickets go on sale Monday – you don’t have to stand in line. Just show up on time and you’re guaranteed a seat. But what if you don’t have a ticket? If the movie is sold out you can stand in the rush line, which lets you buy a ticket at the door. If there are less than say 30 people, and it’s a big theatre like the Princess of Wales, you’ll have no 
trouble getting in. And standing in line is the best way to meet people. Normally reserved Torontonians open up to the strangers standing beside them during TIFF.
It’s expensive.
This is true (if you didn’t buy ticket packages back in June or July). But don’t give up. They’re trying to attract those fabled “millenials”. So if you’re 25 or younger you can get tickets to world premiers for the price of an ordinary 3-D movie.
It’s hard to get tickets
If you’re not hung up on seeing gala hollywood movies and big stars, there are many tickets still available. Your best bet is to try for a daytime ticket on a weekday. You can look online. 
And on the last day, Sunday, Sept 17, they have a free showing of the movie that wins People’s Choice.
What to bring
If you’re seeing many movies, treat it like going on a trip. Be sure to hydrate yourself, bring food and drinks. Because the weather is constantly changing I recommend layers and an umbrella. You might go from blistering heat outside, to 
freezing cold inside.
Don’t care about movies but want to feel the excitement
Make your way down to King St W — between University and Spadina — to soak it all in. In the first weekend the street is closed to traffic, so you can stand in line for corporate samples, gawk at celebs or just hang out with the tens of thousands of others who come to show off their stuff. Maybe you’ll be discovered. There’s a carnival atmosphere that’s a lot of fun to soak in.
Next weekend is the best time to check it out.
Blood Honey
Dir: Jeff Kopas
When Jenibel (Shenae Grimes-Beech) was a little girl she lived in a tiny community in Northern Ontario. Reachable only by boat or byplane, it sits among lakes and trees torn straight out of a Tom Thompson painting. But when her disturbed mother committed suicide she was sent away to boarding schoo. And now she’s back at the Hive, as the people who live on the island refer to it. Her family lives in a beautiful old mansion, but 
makes most of its money selling their prized honey.
There’s her belligerent brother Neil (Kenneth Mitchell), her deranged Dad (Gil Bellows) and her loving sister Linda, who has Down Syndrome (Krystal Hope Nausbaum). Also on the island are acquisitive land developers, a demented old lady and other assorted locals. They all get together in Jennibel’s living room to sing old favourites by the rinckity piano she still remembers how to play. Things are tense, but at least her childhood friend Bruce is there to keep 
her company – in and out of bed.
But things get worse when dad commits suicide by bee. (He throws himself into the honeycombs until swarmed to death.) And in his last breath he makes Jenny promise to sell the island so the family can get a fresh start. Family friend Bert (Don McKellar) is the estate executor — he will enforce the will. But family bickering is rising to a fevered pitch. And—I forget to mention – Jennibel suffers from “waking dreams” where she can see dead people and communicate with her late 
Dad and Mom. Is she delusional or psychic? When she begins to suspect the others are all gradually poisoning her with the dreaded red honey harvested on the island, she knows she has to escape from the Hive. But how?
Blood Honey is an over-the-top psychological thriller shot on location in beautiful northern Ontario. The acting and script ranges from very good to not very good at all — sometimes from scene to scene. But it’s never jarring enough to lose interest. It’s more weird and creepy than scary or gory, though there are a few shocking parts. This movie is not believable in any way, but it doesn’t have to be. And there are a few plot turns that I never expected.
Blood Honey opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. And for more information on tiff go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Toronto filmmaker Pat Mills about his new comedy GUIDANCE
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for cultural mining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
David Gold (Pat Mills) was once a child star on a TV sitcom, but those days are gone. Now he’s reduced to voice work, recording motivational slogans. And he could certainly use some motivation himself; he’s 
underemployed, an alcoholic, has penis issues, diagnosed with skin cancer, and has a cruel landlady threatening eviction. His cure? Denial, tanning salons and self-medication (with a mickey tucked in every pocket), and 
watching VHS tapes of his sitcom from back when he was still a star. But somehow, through a combination of luck and subterfuge he lands a job as guidance counsellor at Grusin High, a Degrassi from hell, helping troubled youth by offering them his very unusual 
form of “guidance”.
Guidance is also the name of a very funny new comedy now playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and opening today in select cities across North America. Guidance was written and directed by and starring Toronto filmmaker Pat Mills. This dark comedy is his first feature. He told me about the lead character, the film’s origin, child actors, losing his virginity, being mistaken for a girl, Corey Haim, mimicry, Kids in the Hall, dyslexia, bullying, Zahra Bentham, Ottawa, Degrassi, Centennial College, Disnification… and more.
I spoke to Pat at CIUT 89.5 FM.
New Rules. Films Reviewed: Wild, Félix and Meira, Regarding Susan Sontag
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Do rules restrict us? Or set us free? This week, I’m looking at three new films about women. A religious woman who longs to be free of the rules that restrict her; a woman in crisis who, to save her own life, follows strict rules to hike and cam; and an intellectual who applied academic strictures to new topics like high camp.
Wild
Dir: Jean-Marc Vallée (Based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir)
It’s the mid-late 20th century. Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) is a young college student in Minneapolis. Her single mom (Laura Dern) wants to educate herself, too, so they’re in the same lecture halls doing English lit and women’s studies. Her mom asks her help understanding concepts like Erica Jong’s “zipless F*cks” (F-words.) Aw, Ma! So Cheryl reads her Adriene Rich, falls in love with a nice guy named Paul, and marries him. But then something terrible happens. And before you know it, Cheryl is taking tons of serious drugs and having countless Zipless Fs with strangers. I want to live like a man, she tells herself. But is what she really wants?
Her daily life spirals toward oblivion, until she’s rescued and brought back to reality by her husband and her best friend. She decides to start her life anew by doing something dramatic. So she decides to head out on a walk up the Pacific Crest Trail or PCT from the Mexican border to Canada.
Aside from her over-packed backpack, and too-tight boots, she has to overcome
the potential dangers of wild animals and skeezy men, rednecks and deadheads. She interacts with the hikers along the way, people who have read the quotations she leaves in the record books. Cheryl passes through dried out deserts and snow-filled valleys, hiking ever-northward in a quest to find herself, and to learn to live by her mother’s optimistic words: always look for the kinder way of doing things.
Wild is worth seeing. It’s full of beautiful scenery and assorted unexpected characters. The movie itself is fairly flat, with no real suspense, conflict or climax. Which is fine… but doesn’t move you to tears. It’s an on-foot road movie. I enjoy her chronicling of what happens along the way (as well as the flashbacks that explain why she’s there.) Most of all, it’s a chance for Reese Witherspoon to show off her acting skills. But does she? I can accept her as a woman recovering from drugs and emotional loss. But what I don’t feel is her soul. She seems opaque, superficial. I haven’t read the memoirs it’s based on, but Movie Cheryl just seems like a woman facing hard times. She’s not Book Cheryl: a poet a writer, a feminist or a thinker; just a character that things happen to.
Félix et Meira
Dir: Maxime Giroux
Young, pretty and quirky, Meira (Hadas Yaron) lives with her stern husband Shulem (Luzer Twersky) and their baby. She comes from an insular, Chassidic community in Montreal, where her first language isn’t French or English, it’s Yiddish. She likes drawing pictures and listening to reggae music…but only when her husband’s out of the house. He’s strict and conservative, and quick to tell her what she’s doing wrong. In response, she’s as likely to listen as to drop dead, on the spot. Well, at least pretend to. She’s depressed. When the men burst into joyous songs at the Sabbath dinner table, she just fiddles with her matzo balls. She doesn’t like the headband or the wig she has to wear; she doesn’t like the dullness and tedium; she doesn’t like any of it anymore.
A couple of blocks away, but in a separate solitude, lives Félix (Martin Dubreuil). 
He’s single and carefree, likes painting and music. He tends to his dying father suffering from Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t care about money, and supports himself by selling the tapestries off the walls of his father‘s mansion. But when he dies, Felix is at a loss. Religion plays no part in his life, so he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, what he’s supposed to feel. On an impulse, he asks the woman he sees at the local pizza parlour. She studiously ignores him, and tells him to leave her alone. but eventually he wins her attention. Je m’appelle Meira she says.
Though reticent at first, she starts to appear at his doorstep, so she can listen to some music, she says. Something clicks. Meira longs to be a single woman, to wear blue jeans, to do as she wants. She looks with dread at the 14-kid families around her. One’s enough. Alienated Felix admires her calm, her grounded-ness, her 
traditions. He finds her exotic, shy… different. She’s not like the women he usually meets. To her, Felix represents an unseen world. Shulem suspects something is up and sends her off to Brooklyn. But Felix and Meira vow to meet again someday, to experience each other’s lives. But are their cultures too distant to bridge their differences? And is what they’re doing morally right? Can she give up everything just to be with him? And…are they even compatible?
Felix and Meira is a sweet, gentle drama of tolerance and coexistence with the Other. It jumps neatly between the two sides, gradually revealing their hidden truths and desires. Most interesting is the unexpected shifts in its portrayals of the three characters, especially Shulem. Hadas Yaron (Fill the Void) is fantastic as Meira, again playing an ultra-orthodox Jewish woman, and Martin Dubreuil – who I’ve never seen before, is a sympathetic face to watch. I liked this understated drama.
Regarding Susan Sontag
Dir: Nancy D. Kates
The late Susan Sontag was one of the most prominent American intellectuals, widely known for her essays On Camp, On Photography and Illness as a metaphor. But she kept her personal life under wraps. This new documentary reveals all. Did you know she was considered a pin-up girl for young lesbian women? Or that she read Kant and Proust at age 15, before she even know how to pronounce their names? Or that she appeared as an actress in an early French New Wave film. This doc chronicles her first visit to a San Francisco lesbian bar, her life in Paris, Oxford and Manhattan, her friends and lovers. And the controversies she faced — both in intellectual culture and in the mass media. Loaded with new interviews, and childhood photographs, film clips, TV footage, it’s informative and fascinating.
Wild is now playing in Toronto: check your local listings. Félix and Meira was selected for TIFF’s Canada Top Ten. It’s playing on Sunday, December 14th at 1 and 4 pm at the Empress Walk cinema as part of Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s Chai Tea and Movie series. Got to tjff.com for details. And you can see Regarding Susan Sontag on HBO Canada.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with TIFF Kids jury members Reid and Grant
Toronto is known for its film festivals, but TIFF Kids, which is on now, is different. This festival programs films specifically for children and young adults. But what kind of films do they show, how do they choose them and which ones win the awards? To tell us more about children’s films I turned to the experts themselves, the TIFF Kids jurors. Reid is a ten-year-old from Toronto who is in Grade 5 at Kingsway College School. He likes hockey and movies. And Grant, from Windsor Ontario, is 12 years old and likes Harry Potter movies and sports. I spoke with Reid and Grant in studio at CIUT.
A French Connection? Movies reviewed: Finding Vivian Maier, L’autre vie de Richard Kemp, Triptyque
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-
brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
With Quebec elections coming up, this week I’m looking at movies with a “French connection” (francophone, that is.) These movies all share a dark, mysterious and introspective mood.
There’s a doc about an artist who never showed her art, a Quebec drama about two sisters – one loses her voice, the other writing; and a French thriller about a detective thwarted from catching a serial killer… by himself!
Finding Vivian Maier
Dir: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel
When John, a third generation Flea Marketeer, buys a box of negatives at an auction, he doesn’t realize at first what he has. It’s a vast collection of never-printed negatives taken by an unknown photographer named Vivian Maier. She plied the streets of Chicago for decades documenting street life. Her shots are beautiful, poignant, the black and white photos aesthetically astute.
But who was she? Where did she come from? And why is she unknown to the
world?
Turns out the photographer, Vivian Maier, died recently. She left behind over 100,000 photos, plus audio tapes and some super-8 reels. But none of the photos had ever been professionally printed, and almost no one had seen them but the photographer herself. Maier was a very tall woman with a mannish haircut and a vaguely French accent. She wore heavy boots, old-fashioned hats, and always carried a rolleiflex camera. An eccentric, she was given to hording any items she found. Most surprising is how she earned her living… as a nanny and a maid.
This is a fascinating and intriguing documentary that pieces together parts of her life – though most is left unknown – while showing lots of her incredible photographs. We hear from her former bosses, the grown-up kids she had nannied, even a few Alpine relatives.
Her story is similar to the case of Henry Darger, another eccentric artist (who worked as a janitor) who hoarded his own intricate drawings that were only discovered after death. And, as in that case, the filmmakers are tied to the one who owns all the art. There’s an ulterior motive: to get rich from the work of a previously unknown artist.
Still, this doesn’t detract from the beauty and mystery of her story or of the appeal of the street photos themselves. It does make you wonder, though. Is a photographer who never selects which photos to show and who never successfully prints the pictures she took – an artist? Or is the posthumous curator the real artist here? Either way, Finding Vivian Maier is a great story.
L’autre vie de Richard Kemp (Back in Crime)
Dir: Germinal Alvarez
Helene, (Mélanie Thierry), an elegant psychologist out for a morning run, finds a dead body washed up on shore. She’s questioned by a scruffy police detective named Richard Kemp. She is cold and dismissive. Kemp (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is troubled because it shares the M.O. with a case, never solved, from early in his career. An unknown killer – known only as the earwig — kidnaps his victims, punctures their ears, and throws them 
into the ocean. Was the killer back again?
Though their first meeting is frosty, eventually Helene and Richard hit it off. (She’s a widow with a son, he’s divorced.) But while investigating the case on a bridge, he is struck from behind and thrown into the water. When he climbs out things have changed. The streetcar driver won’t accept his Euros: they’re “foreign” money. At home he sees a stranger 
with a key to his modernistic apartment. He soon discovers the truth: it’s 25 years earlier, and the man he saw – is himself!
He rents a room in a highrise across from the curvy building his younger self rents. Maybe young Richard will do it right this time. But he makes the same mistakes again. So he decides to follow the earwig’s trail himself – he knows the MO, maybe he’ll catch him or at least save the 
victims. But he ends up as a suspect being chased by his younger self.
So he turns to the only one he can trust: Helene. Can he win her to his side, convince her his plight is true, and will they rekindle their future romance? This is a neat, dark detective story with a bit of a time travel twist. I like this one.
Triptyque
Dir: Robert Lepage
Marie and Michelle Lavallee are two Montreal sisters, the crème de la crème of Quebec culture. Marie (Frédérike Bédard) is an internationally-known singer. Michelle (Lise Castonguay) is a noted poet and author. But fame does not shield them from tragedy. Marie discovers she has a brain tumour. She seeks the help of Austrian brain surgeon Thomas (Hans Piesbergen) who, secretly, suffers from a hand tremor.
Michelle, diagnosed with schizophrenia, is committed to a mental hospital 
and kept on medication. Once released, she seeks solace in a Montreal bookstore. No coffee, no WiFi, just actual books by Quebecois artists and intellectuals. But, inhibited by her medication, she finds herself unable to write.
After her surgery, Marie is left with aphasia – she can’t recall words. She can 
sing the notes but not the lyrics. And her memory is faulty: she can’t remember her own father’s voice. But she has found love. All three characters in Triptique have to work through their losses, fill the gaps, and right the wrongs.
This film is an abbreviated version of part of Lepage’s epic stage drama Lipsynch which played in Toronto two years ago. It trades the intricate stage design for which he’s so famous, for an intimacy and closeness you can’t get on a stage. And it captures Montreal’s bitterly elegant winter cityscapes as only a movie can.
Triptyque and Lepage’s other films are now playing in a retrospective at TIFF; for details, go to tiff.net; l’Autre Vie de Richard Kemp (a.k.a. Back in Crime) is having its North American premier and is one of many great pics at CineFranco, Toronto’s francophone film fest (go to cinefranco.com for tickets); and Finding Vivian Maier opens today in Toronto, check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
culturalmining.com 
leave a comment