Toronto film festival: Saipan standout Éanna Hardwicke is a soulful gay man looking for a missing friend in a striking yet muddled debut It’s not normal to regularly contemplate mortality in your twenties, to ask questions about where we might go after we die and whether any part of our legacy will even matter in the years following. But for gay men in the 1980s, death was everywhere. In David Turpin’s intermittently impactful debut Ancestors, the director tries to make a connection with those men who lived through the very worst years of the Aids crisis. Turpin, born in 1982, might not have the first-hand experience but he bears the scars passed on from generation to generation and like many young gay men coming of age in the years after, likely experienced a watered-down version of the shame and fear those before him once felt. Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: Cynthia Erivo takes on the role Jodie Comer made famous for a pointless adaptation of a story about rape and retribution that loses the power it once had Suzie Miller’s award-winning 2019 play Prima Facie employs a familiar narrative device: a hotshot London barrister finds herself on the other side of the bar, subject to the very legal tactics she once so ruthlessly employed. Not as a defendant, but as the accuser in a rape case. We’ve seen versions of this before – a powerful figure suddenly caught in a struggle against a system they helped perpetuate – but Miller’s play distinguishes itself by putting the onus on to one actor. Prima Facie is premiering at the Toronto film festival and is seeking distribution Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: Tim Blake Nelson writes and directs a challenging, and unsettling, look at empathy and forgiveness that strikes a haunting note There are troubling questions posed in Tim Blake Nelson’s effectively glum prison drama The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, a film that will rank among the most overwhelmingly feel-awful experiences of this year’s Toronto film festival . It’s a story told in a disarmingly folksy manner with plucked guitar strings and down south homespun wisdom before it quietly reveals itself to be about something far more serious and startling, elements of an escape thriller but mostly an unsettling moral drama. It’s likely to upset and enrage some but even those who might feel offended will at least feel something , a quality not to be sniffed at during a festival that can often pick politeness over provocation. It’s the new film from actor turned writer-director Nelson, whose work has often tended to confront and dissect difficult issues. He went to Auschwitz in The Grey Zone, transported Shakespearean tragedy to high school in O, and handled both rape and suicide in his debut Eye of God. It’s a fine line between grimness for the sake of grimness and being unwilling to shy away from grimness, and at times I wondered whether I was being overly prodded, whether certain scenes were bordering on exploitative. I left rattled by what I’d seen and what I was being forced to reckon with, but I think Nelson just about justifies himself and how far he goes partly because he does, in crucial moments, avoid showing more than is needed. The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd is premiering at the Toronto film festival and is seeking distribution Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: the actor gives one of her best performances to date in a smoothly made globe-trotting drama of a woman’s life after the loss of her husband There’s a jump scare about 30 minutes into the glossy romantic drama Love of Your Life that’s about as effective as anything you’ll see in a horror movie this year. The film is focused on the life and loves of Maya (Margaret Qualley), a twentysomething Boston nurse who meet-cutes with the nerdy and idiosyncratic Charlie (Gabriel Basso) during the purchase of a nightstand. We follow the initial giddy rush of their courting as they progress all the way to an impromptu wedding over the course of a few years, marked by Maya’s change in age announced in text. But just as we’re about to process the unsettling introduction of Charlie using Chekhov’s inhaler, a news report interrupts the sunny tone. Spoiler: it’s March 2020. Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: Shakespeare in Love director John Madden’s feelgood – and bad – comedy-drama is powered by excellent performances and authenticity So far at this year’s Toronto film festival, I have seen three films involving someone with dementia and two featuring someone who has Aids. It’s not just a sign that the lineup could perhaps benefit from some more light relief but also that certain conditions and illnesses still tend to be covered more often than others on screen. Last year’s festival saw Scottish hit I Swear bring an unprecedented level of awareness to people who live with Tourette’s and while there’s perhaps less of an obvious edge to John Madden’s more politely framed comedy-drama Onwards and Sideways, it too acts as both narrative movie and potential educational tool. Our knowledge of Parkinson’s is usually restricted to the celebrities who have it, from Muhammad Ali to Michael J Fox to, most recently, Carly Simon, but for many of us, it’s still seen in an abstract way, a handful of symptoms we know about, but so many more that we don’t. Continue reading...

Toronto film festival: To be a parent or not to be a parent is the question propelling this often insightful yet largely run-of-the-mill riff on a Judd Apatow movie It’s a question still casually and routinely asked to couples everywhere regardless of familiarity, one that many fear and some feel actively offended by: are you guys gonna have kids? Despite living in an age where we’re supposedly more accepting of people who make choices that don’t conform to whatever dusty old standards our parents and their parents had to live by, there’s still an odd regressive judgment attached to those who dare to say no or even maybe. There’s the sad tilt of the head and maybe a “but you’d make such great parents” on top, as if either would make a difference to one of life’s biggest decisions. It’s a question that writer-director Lauren Miller Rogen knows all too well and as the wife of Seth Rogen , it’s one that has an answer that immediately becomes a headline . Continue reading...