I’m all for zeitgeist films, as well as low-budget realist experiments, and The Girlfriend Experience just ekes into ‘excess’ territory for both of these to the point where it is no longer believable or real at all. Almost immediately after the credits play out, Soderbergh dives head first into real world topicality, showing a group of 30-something year-old business men debating an Obama/McCain debate which most likely just happened a day or two before this scene was shot. We see this group of men intermittently throughout the film (one of them is the boyfriend of Sasha Grey’s Chelsea), and all of their scenes involve discussions of either the looming election, the tanking economy, or pedestrian relationship observations. Of those three, the economic crisis is the most ubiquitous in the film, as its presence is felt in every escort, shopping spree, personal training session, and business gathering. The problem I had with the economical doom and gloom wasn’t its topicality, though, but that it just doesn’t feel natural. Rather, it seems like both a cop out, and an obligation.

The film, like all of the multi-platform projects that Soderbergh will make in this contract, is a quickie. The haste brings positives with the negatives, of course. As bad as Sasha Grey’s performance often is, I still love that she was in the film; choosing her to play an upscale New York escort who has a commitment crisis with her long-term boyfriend is instantly layered based solely on the inspired casting. A drawn out casting session, I believe, would have resulted in picking a safer, blander choice, although the acting would have been much better, too. But, having so much real world, current-events banter comes off as grasping at straws; an easy way out. You don’t have to write dialogue when you can read off front page headlines.

A number of significant events detailed in the film are dissected and mixed around to make the rather cliche narrative arc feel more ‘fresh’, but its a phony tactic that frustrates more than intrigues. I became annoyed when characters were speaking about an event that I was unaware of, how X was feeling after Y happened, not knowing who X is or what caused Y until 10+ minutes later, only to back-track and explain what was already said, but less confusingly this time. It is a gimmick that has no role in the strengthening the film’s point other than concealing that there probably isn’t one. That said, that last shot, however empty, is pretty grotesquely perfect. Sasha Grey’s stilted line-delivery didn’t erase the natural aura that she has which makes her completely watchable. I don’t believe that a single word that she says when she is analyzing Man on Wire would actually come out of her mouth, but that’s not to say that I don’t believe that she means it. Her brash sense of escaping her life with a married man is both childishly naive and surprising in the maturity she exudes in these scenes. I was often embarrassed for all involved with this film while watching it, but I was never bored or indifferent to the events that play out. These two Soderbergh quickies, the other being Bubble, are my two favorite Soderbergh films.

It’s funny that in the Q & A after the film, MacIvor spoke about the mixed-to-negative reaction that this film got when it premiered in Toronto and other major Canadian cities, about how it surprised him that a common criticism was that it was a ‘typical Canadian film’ in the negative sense of homeliness and lack of ambition, because it’s not like this is a stereotype or myth that lacks truth, and it, of course, does apply to Wilby Wonderful. The script and direction play off just as you would expect if someone had told you that they were making a Canadian version of American Beauty. That film is bad enough, but at least it is not homely, and it certainly has no shortage of ambition. Obviously this criticism doesn’t apply to every single Canadian filmmaker, Cronenberg and Egoyan are clear exceptions, but it does make one wonder why a national cinema would be so defined by TV-movie-of-the-week inoffensiveness. Perhaps the stereotype of Canadians as peace-seeking lumberjacks isn’t so far from the truth, but what is more baffling is that they are aware of this typecasting of their cinema (at least most of the people in my theatre were), but think that this film somehow transcends all this. It doesn’t.

Which is not to say that it has no merit, I actually quite liked this film despite these shortcomings. Its uninspired cinematography, pacing, and absent sense of urgency doesn’t get in the way of the performances, for instance, which are, in some cases, stellar. Rebecca Jenkins, in particular, is flat-out revelatory. Looking at her C.V., I’m both flabbergasted and unsurprised that it is filled up almost entirely of idiotic T.V. shows and straight-to-video clutter. As a single mother of a teenage girl (played by Ellen Page before she was ‘discovered’) who can’t keep a man to save her life, she gives the performance the grace and intense humanity that, I’m convinced, was impossible for an actress to inject into a role this blandly written. Really, though, I’m still affected by some of her facial expressions and line deliveries. Speaking of Ellen Page, girl can’t act; she’s a movie ruiner. Whether the role calls for it or not, she repeatedly comes across as a bookish brat; unsympathetic, unemotional, just ungood. Sandra Oh is initially irritating, but I came around by the end, and thought that her portrayal of a real estate agent-in-crisis on the verge of marital meltdown (sounds familiar, eh?) was hilarious and genuinely jittery.

Daniel MacIvor is apparently a big deal in Canada, big enough to get a retrospective in Toronto’s best cinema, as least. He’s a playwright first, but has directed this film, and Whole New Thing. He acts in both of his directed films, as well as others that he’s written. The writing here is unspectacular, though, so I can only imagine that he stepped it up for his other feature, otherwise his ability to not disappear into Canadian obscurity is truly commendable.

What a first feature this is! I had a slack-jawed grin for almost the entire duration of Buñuel’s hilarious and absurd inaugural slap in the face of religion and the upper class (inaugural ‘feature-length’ slap, at least). While much of the symbolism in the film would hardly be extreme in recent contexts constructed by Antichrists and Holy Mountains, the structural graininess of pre-WWII celluloid intuitively evokes a slightly conservative viewing palette (Guy Maddin’s sense of humor capitalizes on this), and makes the radical nature of the film still potent today. Always ready for a good Jesus bashing, this film satisfies so many of my cynical urges: throwing clergyman out of second-floor windows, slapping careless women, and shooting bratty children dead in their steps. Luis Buñuel’s captial ‘S’ Surrealism is triumphantly and intelligently absurd, while faker ‘surreal’ filmmakers like Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Michel Gondry come across as insignificantly quirky in comparison.

Offering up an interpretation of the film’s narrative and symbols not only seems unmanageable for anyone without a sturdy background in the founding ideologies of Surrealism, but unnecessary. More than Buñuel and Dalí’s prior, and similar, Un Chien Andalou, this film’s subtext is more viscerally accessible. The prologue explaining the behavioral nature of scorpions is just as much of a non sequitor as the cow in the bed or the burning kitchen, but they are intuitively linked to the goings-on in the film in ways that makes the film richer rather than obtuse, such as the cutting of the eye at the beginning of Andalou, which I cannot find purpose in other than as a memorable shock tactic (not to say that it is empty and meaningless, but that it is detached from the narrative thread, and can only be integrated through an academic interpretation).

Palme d’Or
Prediction – Antichrist (von Trier)
Winner – The White Ribbon (Haneke)

The original favorite reigns. The hype and foresight of this makes its victory boring, but I’m still excited to see it.

Grand Prix
Prediction – Wild Grass (Resnais)
Winner – A Prophet (Audiard)

The Audiard sounds like by-the-numbers blah-ness, a safely, well-made movie. Guess I’ll have to see it, now.

Jury Prize
Prediction – The White Ribbon (Haneke)
Winner – Fish Tank (Arnold)
Winner – Thirst (Park)

I have my own reservations about what I’m expecting from Fish Tank, but Chan-wook Park has no business winning an award in this, or any major festival. Tarantino inexplicably placed Old Boy higher than Tropical Malady in 2004, and again his film is winning an award that many other films surely deserved more. Fanboys rejoice.

Best Director The Time That Remains (Suleiman)
Winner – Kinatay (Mendoza)

Shocker, I’m mixed about Serbis, but this one did catch my eye, and despite mixed reviews, was deemed the first ‘interesting’ film in the festival when it screened. Looking forward to it.

Best Screenplay
Prediction – Face (Tsai)
Winner – Spring Fever (Lou)

Bigger shocker. I thought nobody liked this.

Best Actor
Prediction – Tahar Rahim (The Prophet)
Winner – Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

Okay.

Best Actress
Prediction – Katie Jarvis (Fish Tank)
Winner – Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist)

If Antichrist had to win something other than the palm, I’m glad they honored Gainsbourg, who, from the sounds of it, gives the quintessential von Trier performance.

Camera d’Or
Prediction – Huacho (Almendras)
Winner – Samson and Delilah (Thornton)

I should have guessed this one.

Un Certain Regard Prize
Prediction – Dogtooth (Lanthimos)
Winner – Dogtooth (Lanthimos)

This sounds awesome. The Un Certain Regard section seems to follow the press’s critical consensus more than the main competition does, hopefully that works out better than Hunger.

Un Certain Regard Jury Prize
Prediction – Police, Adjective (Porumboiu)
Winner – Police, Adjective (Porumboiu)

I love 12:08, and I’m thrilled that this has been well-received. Can’t wait for it.

Lifetime Achievement – Alain Renais

Seems like a cop out award. If I were approaching 90 and made a film that everyone seemed to love I’d much rather that film get honored than a useless lifetime tribute that could have happened whether Wild Grass was great or shit.

2010 Palme d’Or prediction – Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul)

Here’s to all of these films playing in Toronto this September.

Oy, some experiments just go too far without ever realizing exactly what’s happened. While the initial idea of an AIDS opera is mildly appealing, this film mishandles the conceit to the nth degree, where ‘n’ is equal to the number of split-screens used in any given frame. Fig Trees‘ press notes and singers inform the viewer that the idea for the film is based on Gertrude Stein’s ‘Four Saints in Three Acts.’ Non-opera buffs will just have to trust that Greyson is being faithful to his sourc and ‘referencing’ is with justice, as I certainly know nothing about it, and suffered for it. Fig Trees doesn’t stop at being a documentary-opera combo, either, but also tries its hand at fairy tales, student-grade avant-garde, absurdism, kitsch, performance art, and political protest; AKA: The Greatest Film Ever Made.

The little boy in the image above isn’t going trick-or-treating after he makes the indented musical scale on that guy’s neck; he’s just one of the three incarnations of an albino squirrel that pops up every few minutes in the film – first as a stuffed toy squirrel, then as this opera-lip-syncing adolescent, and finally as an actual albino squirrel that was caught on camera in Toronto’s Queen West Park. The creature’s appearances (and there are many) are usually played for laughs, because every AIDS doc needs some comedy, as well as an artist’s sensibility: cue the split-screens and amputee keyboard player (yes, the one from Spadina and Dundas). Split-screens allow the viewer to see every singer at the same time, and, since everything that the singers are singing is subtitled in scrolling, sing-along text – since we’re supposed to actually learn about AIDS while hearing our opera – we get the pleasurable task of reading four or more different lines of lyrics at the exact same time, which forced me to ignore what the music sounds like altogether in my panic to try and get every perspective on just why Zackie Achmat stopped taking his medication (fortunately, someone’s been keeping up with CNN).

Palindromes are also omniscient in the script, allowing multiple opportunities for opera singers to sing sentences that are spelled the same forwards and backwards, appropriately accompanied by mirrored landscapes that are straight out of a post card. As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that Fig Trees might sound like it has awesome cult potential, or maybe even make a great drug movie. And it would, perhaps, if not for the fact that it is about AIDS, and tries to discuss it seriously, and remembers this for long stretches of time which would act as serious buzz-kills. In trying to do everything, a trait that a good chucnk of my audience fell over themselves for, it nixes potential audiences one by one, leaving only those extremely dedicated to liking it, or moderate opera fans (I can’t see a hardcore aficionado taking this seriously for a minute).

This is a dynamic list, so it’ll be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2001 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

1. La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel)
2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
3. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
4. Where Lies Your Hidden Smile? (Pedro Costa)
5. The Man Who Wasn’t There (Joel & Ethan Coen)
6. I’m Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira)
7. Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis)
8. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
9. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
10. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke)

 
Other 2001 films I’ve seen

• ABC Africa (Abbas Kiarostami)
• Along Came a Spider (Lee Tamahori)
• Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
• America’s Sweethearts (Joe Roth)
• American Pie 2 (J.B. Rogers)
• Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk)
• A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard)
• Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott)
• Brief Crossing (Catherine Breillat)
• The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro)
• Domestic Disturbance (Harold Becker)
• Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)
• Down to Earth (Chris & Paul Weitz)
• Dr. Dolittle 2 (Steve Carr)
• En construcción (José Luis Guérin)
• Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat)
• Frailty (Bill Paxton)
• Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
• Hannibal (Ridley Scott)
• Hardball (Brian Robbins)
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Chris Columbus)
• Heartbreakers (David Mirkin)
• Hearts in Atlantis (Scott Hicks)
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell)
• Honey for Oshun (Humberto Solás)
• Human Nature (Michel Gondry)
• In Praise of Love (Jean-Luc Godard)
• In the Bathtub of the World (Caveh Zahedi)
• In the Bedroom (Todd Field)
• Jeepers Creepers (Victor Salva)
• Jurassic Park III (Joe Johnston)
• K-PAX (Iain Softley)
• L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta)
• La Libertad (Lisandro Alonso)
• Late Marriage (Dover Koshashvili)
• Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic)
• Life as a House (Irwin Winkler)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
• The Majestic (Frank Darabont)
• Monster’s Ball (Marc Forster)
• Monsters, Inc. (Pete Docter & David Silverman)
• Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann)
• The Mummy Returns (Stephen Sommers)
• O (Tim Blake Nelson)
• Ocean’s Eleven (Steven Soderbergh)
• Oporto of My Childhood (Manoel de Oliveira)
• The Others (Alejandro Amenábar)
• Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay)
• The Pornographer (Bertrand Bonello)
• Rat Race (Jerry Zucker)
• Rush Hour 2 (Brett Ratner)
• Save the Last Dance (Thomas Carter)
• Scary Movie 2 (Keenen Ivory Wayans)
• Serendipity (Peter Chelsom)
• Session 9 (Brad Anderson)
• Shallow Hal (Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly)
• Shrek (Andrew Adamson & Vicky Jenson)
• Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
• Storytelling (Todd Solondz)
• Summer Catch (Michael Tollin)
• Sweet November (Pat O’Connor)
• Swordfish (Dominic Sena)
• Training Day (Antoine Fuqua)
• Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe)
• The Wedding Planner (Adam Shankman)
• Zoolander (Ben Stiller)