Filmfest diary 1.02: Starting out

As a premise to the reviews that I will be providing in this post, and in the future, I would just like to state that I am certainly not qualified to be a film critic, nor do I consider myself a "film buff". I do not have enough education or training in the art of film that I am able to provide a detailed critical analysis of the movies I see, nor can I reasonably rate films on scale of 1 to 5 (or 10), as I have not put very much thought into the minute details of what makes a film achieve a certain score. In short, I don't have any type of complex pedagogy of film review, and I don't think that anybody should be scoring anything out of a certain number without first having thoroughly thought out a series of measures that contribute to such a score.

That being said, I do consider myself a fan of movies. I love watching them, I like discussing them, and I like telling people what I think of them. Therefore, the reviews you will see here will be exactly that - my personal opinion of the films that I have just seen. I will say what I liked about them, and even occasionally mention fancy movie terms such as 'directing', 'screenwriting', and 'cinematography' if I feel it is relevant to my opinion. However, I will not give any film a score. Instead, I will say whether or not I thought the film was worth seeing, and under what circumstances I would recommend it to other people (e.g. "if you liked movie x, then you will love movie y"). That, in my opinion, is the extent of my reviewing privileges. I did consider doing a "thumbs up/thumbs down" approach, like the system that is employed by film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper (and formerly Gene Siskel), but I decided against it, as this in itself is still a scale, albeit a limited one.

But, I digress. This post is about my initial thoughts on the Toronto International Film Festival (henceforth referred to as TIFF) and the first movie of the festival that I watched.

As I previously mentioned, I'm more of a fan of movies than a "buff". Consequently, I have been fairly ignorant of the film festival scene. My first festival experience was when I happened to be in Berlin at the same time as Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival. I saw a couple of films and enjoyed the overall experience, telling myself that I should attend more of these. I didn't really know much else about which festivals were "big" (all I knew was that the "big 3" in Europe are Cannes, Venice, and Berlin). Therefore, coming to Canada with a main objective of working at a ski resort, I didn't really research any of the festivals that were taking place - they were merely afterthoughts to my plans. So, it came as a bit of a shock to me when I found out that TIFF is actually one of the two most prestigious film festivals in the world (next to Cannes), and considered by some to be the most important. You could certainly tell by the mania that has swept the city of Toronto.

I got to the cinema about 45 minutes before screen time, and the line outside was already pretty lengthy. My first reaction was "wow, it's already that long?" but then I realized that it was partly because the cinema complex was not large enough to hold the amount of people lining up for the various movies showing on opening night, so they had to make an additional line outside the cinema that had ticket holders to all the night's movies. This made it quite confusing, as there were movies starting at different times, so there would often be workers who made announcements as to who could move forward at certain times. In the end, I finally got into the theatre, and took a seat at the very back. I was very pleased with the small theatre, which had a good raised seating plan (very important for us short folk).

Starting Out in the Evening
Director: Andrew Wagner
Country: USA

The movie, based on the novel of the same name, is about an ageing author, Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), who becomes the subject of a master's thesis by young graduate, Heather Woolfe (Lauren Ambrose). Heather has a passion for literature uncommon for her age and an unusual fixation on Leonard's work and on Leonard himself. Complications arise as Heather tries to resurrect Leonard's career. There is also a side-plot involving Leonard's daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor) as she reaches 40, and tries to make some important decisions in her life.

A good part of the first half of the movie is spent establishing the principal characters of the movie. Unfortunately, this seemed a bit rushed and, at times, quite pretentious, and on the verge of straight out forced (in terms of dialogue). It almost felt like the movie was a victim of its own title - it only really started to feel like the movie it was meant to be towards the end. However, I guess it's a lot better to see a movie with a bad start that ends well than a movie that starts off brilliantly but is ruined by the last 10 minutes. This is how I felt with Starting Out in the Evening - it was a movie that was redeemed by the way the end was handled (although I guess that may have to do with how well the book was written).

Apart from the ending, which I loved because it didn't resort to any cliché of a May-December romance, what I liked the most about the movie was Frank Langella's performance. The acting overall was pretty solid, but Langella was superb as Schiller, the seemingly burnt out writer determined to finish one final novel before he dies.

This film is a hard one for me to decide how to recommend it. I did like it, but I didn't love it, and it kind of falls into an "in-between" category in that it's certainly not a cheap cheesy Hollywood chick flick, but it also has enough unlikable elements to deter the indie movie crowd. I would say that it's one of those rental movies for a slow week if you feel like a romance that has a bit of character.

Q&A: I didn't actually stay for the Q&A for this one. I wasn't in the mood for one after the movie ended - I was feeling quite tired, and wanted to get home to relax. As I exited the theatre, the crowd was still as huge as it was when I entered, and there was a small queue of people trying to get into the theatre for the Q&A session. Yup, this festival has certainly begun.