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Music

TIFF Mini Reviews: Friday, September 7

Rating: NNNNN


CODE BREAKER

CRITICS’ picks indicates 4- and 5-N reviews

Festival series are abbreviated as follows:

CR — Canadian Retrospective: Jean Pierre Lefebvre, Vidéaste

CWC — Contemporary World Cinema

DIAL — Dialogues

DISC — Discovery

GALA — Gala

MAST — Masters

MM — Midnight Madness

NORD — Nordic Visions

OV — Open Vault

PA — Planet Africa

PC — Perspective Canada

R2R — Real To Reel

SPEC — Special Presentation

SPOT — Spotlight: Ulrich Seidl

WAVE — Wavelengths

Friday, September 7

MODELS

SPOT D: Ulrich Seidl w/ Vivian Busch, Lisa Grossmann, Tanya Petrovsky. Austria. 118 mins. Friday, September 7, noon VARSITY 8 Sunday, September 9, 12:30 pm CUMBERLAND 3. Rating: NNN

Three wannabe-but-never-will supermodels attempt to kick-start their careers in fashion backwater Vienna, far from the runways of Milan or Paris. Shot in colour-bleeding 16mm and blown up to grainy 35mm, this pseudo-documentary tracks the coked-up trio as they stumble from failed auditions to seedy nightclubs looking for approval – fame? love? – that never comes. Under their near-perfect, surgically enhanced exteriors, they’re hollow shells. Director Seidl often shoots the actors straight-on while they preen into mirrors. The effect is Warhol-like: as the models stare into the camera desperately trying to make themselves more beautiful, they only reveal their ultimate flaws. SD

JE RENTRE A LA MAISON

MAST D: Manoel de Oliveira w/ Michel Piccoli, Antoine Chappey, Leonor Baldaque. Portugal/France. 90 mins. Friday, September 7, 3:30 pm UPTOWN 1 Friday, September 14, 5:30 pm VARSITY 4 Friday, September 14, 5:30 pm VARSITY 5. Rating: NNNN

Having sworn off de Oliveira films years ago, I was surprised to find that this latest offering from the 94-year-old Portuguese director, who’s mostly known for being cryptic and editing-unfriendly, is both wonderfully lucid and moving.I’m Going Home is a poignant but never morose meditation studded with graceful touches of humour. Piccoli shines with tenderness and restraint as an aging actor forced to come to terms with the loss of his wife and daughter in a car crash as well as the slow but unmistakable signs of mortality besieging him. Add in an appearance by Catherine Deneuve and a tasty John Malkovich cameo. A delicate pleasure.JC

THE ICELANDIC DREAM

NORD D: Rbert I. Douglas w/ Thor Sverrisson, Jn Gnarr, Matt Keeslar. Iceland. 92 mins. Friday, September 7, 6 pm CUMBERLAND 2 Tuesday, September 11, 4:30 pm CUMBERLAND 1. Rating: NNNN

Perpetually dressed in a Cult T-shirt, 30-something Toti (Sverrisson) is a soccer-obsessed loser who figures he’ll achieve business success by importing Bulgarian cigarettes to Iceland. No one’s interested in his dodgy product until someone reads the fine print on the cigarette pack and notices that guarana – an herb that has the same chemical composition as caffeine and cocaine and a similar physiological effect – is a key ingredient. Sales boom, and Toti becomes the toast of Reykjavik, though his mates think he should settle down with a good woman and a good TV set. Shot digitally Dogme-style, with the actors improvising their lines, director Douglas’s deadpan humour recalls Finland’s Kaurismäki brothers’ (Ariel, Leningrad Cowboys) sly, bleak fatalism. Very, very droll. SD

IGNORANT FAIRIES

CWC D: Ferzan Ozpetek w/ Margherita Buy, Stefano Accorsi. Italy/France. 98 mins. Friday, September 7, 6 pm ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM Saturday, September 8, 1 pm UPTOWN 3. Rating: NNN

The grieving Antonia (Buy) discovers that her seemingly perfect late husband was having an affair with a man named Michele (Accorsi), whom she befriends along with his over-the-top buddies, who all live in the same Roman apartment building. It’s a soft-edged gay film where the straight woman gets a glimpse of the wacky world of homos and transsexuals. Buy has a way of looking uncomfortable and curious at the same time, which is a must if we’re to believe Ozpetek’s (Harem Suare, Steam) vision of the duo’s complicated and moving relationship.IR

SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK

SPEC D: Edward Burns w/ Burns, Heather Graham, Stanley Tucci, Rosario Dawson. U.S. 106 mins. Friday, September 7, 6:00 pm VARSITY 8 Sunday, September 9, 11:30 am CUMBERLAND. 2 Rating: NNN

Another of Burns’s off-centre romantic comedies, with the usual strengths and weaknesses. Here’s the question: why does someone who’s as good a director of actors as Burns not realize that his own screen presence tends to emit a loud sucking sound? He deserves high praise for Tucci’s performance as a philandering bastard and Graham’s as his put-upon wife, not to mention stalwart character work by Aida Turturro and Dennis Farina. (Of course, these actors generally do good work no matter who’s behind the camera.) Then Burns comes on as a guy with relationship problems and meets an impressively padded Dawson (Josie And The Pussycats) – a more beautiful version of Burns’s real-life ex, Maxine Bahns, who co-starred in his movies until he started dating Graham – and the picture just lies there till the real actors show up. JH

LA CIENAGA

CWC D: Lucrecia Martel w/ Graciela Borges, Mercedes Morán. Argentina/Spain. 102 mins Friday, September 7, 9:30 pm VARSITY 2 Friday, September 7, 9:30 pm VARSITY 3 Sunday, September 9, 9:30 am ISABEL BADER THEATRE. Rating: NNN

In this Argentine kitchen-sink drama, two cousins and their families spend a hot summer together in the provinces far from Buenos Aires. Each woman has four children and different problems and joys. Events accumulate rather than happen, and the climate and place are characters in the action. It’s all a metaphoric morass (ciénaga means swamp) where everyone is bogged down, some just trying to keep their drinks cold, others enduring a host of cuts and scrapes until their wounds are finally examined. All this ennui has hooks, though. Think The Celebration without the Dogme. PE

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