I always tell people that in Toronto, the unofficial start of fall is not marked by the start of school, but the start of the Toronto International Film Festival. Running until next Saturday, September 15, this annual event is often seen as a predictor for the upcoming awards season. While I won’t be able to catch all of them (only seeing two), those I’d love to see include:
Dangerous Liaisons: A retelling of the classic set in the glamourous 1930s Shanghai with an all-star cast that includes Zhang Ziyi and Cecilia Cheung. The film premiered at Cannes earlier this year to raving reviews and will be making its North American debut in Toronto. However, as a well-known story that has been told on stage, film and print, it may have a lot to live up to. Many still have the Glenn Close/Michelle Pfeiffer/Uma Thurman film from more than 20 years ago in mind.
Love, Marilyn: This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the iconic star’s death. During her life, she left many personal letters and journals that prior to this film, were only known to those closest to her. Directed by Liz Garbus, this film combines movie outtakes and home movies, rounded out by stars such as Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Adrian Brody and Elizabeth Banks enacting Ms. Monroe’s writings and those of her friends and family.
Viola: This is actually one of the two films that I was able to get tickets for. Argentine director Matías Piñeiro continues his obsession with Shakespeare in this film, a take off of Twelfth Night – though without a trailer, it is not know how much of the play, including whether there is any cross dressing or mistaken identities is in the film. According to the film’s description on the TIFF website, it is complete with “an exhilarating, kaleidoscopic charade, as a host of intersecting characters, who may or may not be lovers in the present or future, enact a game of dalliances, intrigues and revelations”.
Anna Karenina: Gorgeous, sweeping scenes of pre-revolutionary Russia, beautiful costumes (they even inspired some of the pieces in Banana Republic’s Holiday 2012 collection), this film, with its stellar cast of Keira Knightley and Jude Law tells the story of an unhappy marriage, an affair and the constraining, rigid rules of aristocratic Russia. This is definitely one of the films that would likely make it onto the nominees list come awards season.
Argo: Based on a true story, Ben Affleck’s film, about the 1979 incident where militants take over the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 people hostage. Six manage to escape and hide at the Canadian embassy. In order to get out of them out of the country, Tony Mendez (Affleck), a CIA “exfiltration” expert comes up with a crazy idea to pose as a filmmaker from Canada who is making a science fiction film and in the country to location scout (and hopefully film), with the hostages posing as Mendez’s crew.
Thérèse Desqueyroux: This is another film that I will be seeing. Based on a 1920 French novel by François Mauriac and starring Audrey Tatou (Amelie) as a late 1920s housewife, Thérèse Desqueyroux, this is a remake of a 1960s film and is a story about a lonely country marriage, dreams of a glamorous city life and poisoning when Thérèse’s husband, Bernard, almost dies. Her family does their best to keep her from jail, but it means house arrest, an even worse punishment as it isolates her from a world she longs for. Though this film takes place over 80 years ago, issues of isolation as a stay-at-home mother remained for decades to come, and to a certain extent, even today. It is interesting that the film was last made in the early 1960s, just as Betty Friedan’s Feminist Mystique was published.
