TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Diary 9: Sept. 15, 2000

TEETH DIRECTOR GABRIELE SALVATORES SHOWS OFF HIS PERFECT SMILE

Tried to sleep in some today - was up at 10ish, and spent a couple hours updating yesterday's section. Got to the first screening by 1pm, and left my fifth at 2:30am.

Fewer and fewer press and industry people are still here - the fest doesn't actually end, it just sort of tiredly fades away. Most of the good press screenings have happened, meaning more and more rush tickets for public screenings.

I got a chance for the first time to see a film at the Elgin - I'd seen musicals and stuff there, but never a film. A beautiful old building, renovated when Cats came to town, it's one of the old Loews movie palaces built when they worried about marble and velvet rather than green alien ticket machines and hyperactive neon installations.

It was thus somewhat fitting that the film was a Dogme 95 certified film, a set of Scandanavian guidelines for purifying filmmaking. I'm not sure that the Dogme group has talked about projection conditions -- perhaps the best way to see their films by their rarefied standards is in fact at home with a mono television. I will still fight for the big screen, thank you very much.

One of the benefits of these public screenings is that the directors of the films are usually there. The darkened pictures I post (including the ones on the right) are the result of truly poor photographic conditions - a dark room with backlit curtains. Still, its nice to have some sort of photographic account.

No chaos, no panic situations, no negativity. Just a good day for watching movies.




DENTI (Teeth)
Directed by: Gabriele Salvatores

Denti is the story of Antonio, a man with large teeth who has an obsession of not taking care of them. They are an element of himself that he dislikes enough to wish to destroy them rather than deal with their existence.

His teeth, then, are similarly despised as most things in his life, from his former marriage to his current relationship. When he accuses his girlfriend of having an affair with her dentist friend, she snaps his front teeth in half with an ashtray. The film then plays on the similarity between Denti and Danté, as Antonio's levels of hell are embodied by the numerity of dentists he must visit. The lowest level of his personal hell both causes pain and his eventual redemption, with his molar/moral divide coming to contact at last.

Not for the squeamish, there's something quite extraordinary about seeing gums savagely pierced by dental instruments on the big screen. A dark movie that is nonetheless quite comical and fun to watch, try, er, sinking your teeth into Denti.
Grade: B+/B



The King is Alive
Directed by: Kristian Levring

I'm going to repeat myself - all the best films are movies that are far from foolproof, skating that fine line between clever and stupid. In lesser hands, the story of some bus castaways putting on a play by Shakespeare would prompt farce. Levring, it seems, does not possess lesser hands.

I spent much of the movie marvelling about how the form and style of the Dogme film fit perfectly into the story, and how none of the players seemed like they were pretending, even when they were being theatrical. It is an enormously difficult task to make a film this challenging this well, and, gratefully, they pulled it off.

Inevitable comparisons will be made to the current fad of "survivor" or "reality" shows (remember, Survivor in the U.S. came out of a Scandanavian success.) This film exposes the breakdown of a stranded group with provisions and perversions, watched knowingly by a single, tacit eyewitness. The actions, even the play, are all elegantly presented without facade. The digital photography blown up to 35mm is excellent, providing strange colours and auras of dread around the faces of the characters glowing in the kerosene light. The film is an exciting achievement, proving Dogme to be far from fad or kitsch.
Grade: A




The Mechanism
Directed by: Djordje Milosavljevic

I really wanted to like this film - it had all the elements, with crazy hitmen, train stations, cabs, large coats and big gun-silencers. There's almost too much plot in this thinly (VERY thinly) indictment of insanity of the war in the Balkans. The allegory sadly chokes on itself, as pacing and story give way to the main "point" meant to be driven home. Dark, but not dark enough, funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny. A failed attempt, but an admirable one.
Grade: C



City of Lost Souls
Directed by: Takashi Miike

Yet another "Yakuza" (gangster) film, Miike crafts what amounts to a stylish and interesting film, but not one that can sustain a midnight madness audience. The actions scenes are interrupted by long streams of dialogue, often dragging the pace down to napping territory. Another film probably enjoyed better while not sleepy.
Grade: C+