(UK, 98 min.)
Dir. Stephen Frears, Writ. Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope
Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan
Programme: Special Presentations (North American Premiere)
“Fucking Catholics,” quips Martin Sixsmith one of Philomena’s many lines that is
alternatively provocative and hilarious. Philomena
boasts one of the best scripts of the year in Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope’s
adaptation of Martin Sixsmith’s non-fiction work The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. Philomena’s tale is heartbreaking as Martin assists Philomena track
down the child that was taken from her by the church when she was a teenage
mother. Coogan and Pope’s screenplay is a compelling character study and a bold
social commentary alike as the film reveals the coldness of the Catholic Church
and shows how some overzealous, not to mention criminal, piety betrayed members
of the faithful.
Director Stephen Frears makes a comeback after a slight trio
of misses in his filmography as Philomena
takes the audience on an emotional journey that has viewers in stitches one
moment and shedding tears the next. Relying primarily on the strength of the
actors and the calibre of the script, Frears provides a tale that plays like a
crowd-pleaser but offers an eye-opening study of a deeply flawed system. Judi
Dench gives a four-hankie performance as Philomena Lee while Steve Coogan gives
a surprising dramatic turn as the stodgy straight-man with the quick tongue. Dench devastates in a performance that is bound to be an award-season talking
point as the actress portrays her daft character with a jaw-dropping range of
emotion. Philomena also has some good
turns by some very, very nasty nuns. Philomena
could very well make atheists of us all, but the final note of forgiveness and plainness,
conveyed so eloquently by Dench, offers the perfect sentimental with which to
end this profoundly stirring story.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Child’s Pose (Pozitia copilului)
(Romania, 112
min.)
Written and directed by Calin Peter Netzer
Starring: Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache, Florin
Zamfirescu, Natasa Raab, Ilinca Goia, Vlad Ivanov, Mimi Branescu
Programme: Contemporary World Cinema (North American
Premiere)
Child’s Pose won
the Golden Bear for best film at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and then went
on to become Romania’s submission in the Oscar race for Best Foreign Language
Film. The film might struggle to make the final shortlist since its slow pace
might be too arduous for even the most discerning of viewers, but the film
could go all the way elsewhere with its fascinating lead performance by
Luminita Gheorghiu as a mother with unwavering devotion to her spoiled and
irresponsible son (Bogdan Dumitrache). Gheorghiu gives a captivating turn as
the Romanian matriarch manipulates every character onscreen and pulls strings
to manipulate charges brought against her son. Her final scene that breaks
through Cornelia’s icy surface and fully realizes both the mother’s love and
her guilt is a tour-de-force of raw
emotion.
Child’s Pose
brings much of the same formal minimalism that has brought rapturous attention
to Romanian cinema in recent years. The handheld camerawork and arbitrary zooms
mix with bare-bones realism to make for a difficult, if thought-provoking
experience. Netzer’s character study is tinged with irony and it isn’t afraid
to use the shaky camera to view its upper-class matriarch with a critical eye.
Cornelia is a woman who can work the system with her hefty wallet, but such
cold behaviour has a human cost, as virtually all of her personal relationships
are strained and unsympathetic. Child’s
Pose is worth the effort of its taxing pace. Like the Romanian New Wave of
which it is a part, it takes a slow beginning to bring good rewards.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Child’s Pose
screens again on Sunday, Sept. 15 at 2 pm at Scotiabank 2.
Third Person
(Belgium, 130 min.)
Written and directed by Paul Haggis
Starring: Liam Neeson, Mila Kunis, Adrien Brody, James
Franco, Olivia Wilde, Maria Bello, Kim Basinger and Moran Atias
Programme: Special Presentations (World Premiere)
Academy Award winner Paul Haggis returns with another
multi-narrative ensemble film akin to his sleeper hit Crash. Third Person might be less like Haggis’s Crash and more in the vein of Fernando
Meirelles’s 360 as it trots the globe
in a sprawling star-studded tale. It would be difficult to say much about
Haggis’s complicated puzzle without giving much away, so it’s best to keep
details about the three core threads of the film—one in New York, one in Rome,
and one in Paris—as the only baggage one brings into the film. Each story
reveals the secrets of the other as Haggis ties the stories together with
shared traits, chance encounters, and global connectivity in the fast-paced
streets of the three iconic cities.
Haggis gets uniformly strong work from his cast, most
notably Brody and Neeson, while Wilde offers an impressive dramatic range that
she hasn’t hit before. Kim Basinger delivers the film’s most emotionally
compelling moment in spite of receiving the film’s most deceptively
underwritten role. However, the strong ensemble is outshone by the intricate
editing by Jo Francis, which includes cutaways to clues that are so often so
fleeting they’re barely perceptible.
Third Person, for
all its ambition and impeccable craftsmanship, struggles to come together as
the treads and characters eventually converge. Third Person doesn’t carry the same emotional payoff as Crash does, but it’s bound to be as
strong a conversation piece since the post-screening discussion might yield
more rewards than the experience of sitting through the film itself. (My three
festivalgoers and I all had differing opinions of how the pieces fit together.)
The ambition of Third Person could
equally be its downfall, though, as the demands of mentally engaging with every
second of a film that runs two hours and ten minutes could prove too exhausting
for some. The film demands repeat viewings, although the lack of immediate reward
might not provide enough incentive to revisit it. The real debate of Third Person might be whether it’s
brilliant or simply convoluted, but it certainly enjoys some flavour of each
since it almost guarantees to prompt a discussion that is as roundabout as the
film itself.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Third Person
screens again on Friday, Sept. 13 at 8:45 pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox 1
