TIFF Day 5 (posted on Day 9)

Every Little Step 4 cats The director of this documentary got incredible access to every aspect of the audition process for the revival of A Chorus Line – he combines this with audio and interview footage from the 70’s during the original musical’s inception, and present day interviews with people who were part of both productions.

Ashes of Time Redux 4 cats Wong Kar Wai in the house! Biggest rockstar reception I saw anywhere, including the Canadian galas – the Ryerson went nuts when the TIFF speaker introduced him. I haven’t seen the original version of the film, so can’t say how well the Redux part of the film was, but good god is it a beautiful film. It’s his only martial arts film, and tells the story of great fighters, each told in its own seasonal vignette. The fight scenes are shot like paintings, broad strokes of movement and shifting light, and the score accentuates the big mood with sweeping orchestral pieces, featuring Yo Yo Ma. This is the film that inspired Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon – it’s 15 years old, but you can’t tell that at all on the screen.

Adoration 3.5 cats Another big Canadian premiere at the Elgin – this one wasn’t as crazy as Blindness, but it was still madness. Speaking of mad, Arsinee Khahjian is off her rocker in this film about the line between truth and fiction in a day of viral communication. A student is encouraged by his French teacher (Khahjian) to write a piece in POV style, so that his classmates will believe it’s his own story. The ruse is far more effective and its impact wider than either expect – in part because of the way in which elements of the lie dovetail with the student and teacher’s personal histories. Truth and fiction seem to have the most effect, though, on the boy’s uncle (Scott Speedman) who has raised him since the death of the boy’s parents years ago. The leads give strong performances, but the usual Egoyanian timeshifting gets confusing this time around, I think because the story is about a story that itself plays with time – it’s like there’s one layer too many. Egoyan uses the internet to be something of a postmodern Greek chorus, and while I don’t know that internet oriented stories are ever going to be all that interesting to film, he does as good a job as possible to prevent the computer usage scenes from killing the film’s tempo. Sadly, though, the score really really bugged me – while it was gorgeous music, the whole time I felt like it was pushing on me and on the movie to have a tone and mood that wasn’t on the screen. (So if you like the music, then I think you might give it 4 cats)

This is it for me while in Toronto – the rest of my films will get posted from home. Now I’m off to checkout, and catch my last two films of the fest. Ciao for now!