(Canada, 92 min.)
Written and directed by Igor Drljača
Starring: Jasmin Geljo, Masa Lizdek, Filip Geljo, Ma-Anne
Dionisio
Programme: Contemporary World Cinema (North American
Premiere)
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| Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
Take your time with The
Waiting Room. This new film from Igor Drljača (Krivina) slowly swallows you as it moves back through time and
memory. The film is a black comedy puzzler guided by an outstanding performance
by Jasmin Geljo as Jasmin, a Bosnian-born actor playing the role of the immigrant
in Toronto. The Waiting Room is a
subtle slice of humour as Drljača and Geljo delve fully into this character and
explore the past that brought him to Toronto. Drljača steeps the film in
performance as Jasmin wrestles with a game of identity play as The Waiting Room wipes the smile of this
jovial actor’s face and presents the audience with a crying clown.
The Waiting Room brings to the Toronto International Film Festival the latest film from Time Lapse Pictures, the production company founded by Drljača and Albert Shin, whose previous features Krivina and In Her Place (still the year’s best Canadian film) make the team one to watch. Like the team’s other features, The Waiting Room is an unexpected turn that smartly looks at Canadian film from a different angle and situates our place in the world with a local/global focus. The film uses the Bosnian diaspora to chart a personal odyssey through the fraught myth of Canadian multiculturalism as Jasmin struggles to escape a role thrust upon him, but finds inspiration by returning home.
The running joke of The
Waiting Room is that Jasmin is a talented actor who headlined a successful
sitcom back in Sarajevo, but pieces together a living taking small thankless
parts as token foreigners on top of his day job. These bit roles, which are
usually a line or two, frequently play upon difference. They cast him as
unlikable villains—drug dealers, hoods, and assorted criminals. Jasmin usually
approaches these roles by asking the directors (mostly hacks) if they have any sense
of how they want the characters to be. “Just interpret it,” they usually say,
and Jasmin plays the parts quietly and humanely, favouring realism over a
theatrical flair. Usually, though, the directors and casting directors ask for
a bit more gusto and, inevitably, cultural flavour. They basically ask him to
Bosnian it up.
He accepts these directions with resigned humoured. Throwing
it an exaggerated accent (he already has one) and a few curses in Bosnian,
Jasmin gives the audience what they want: a loud, disorderly “other.” Jasmin
repeats these lines over and again, and the repetition brings him further from
his real self—i.e. the “Bosnian” the casting agents and directors seek. His
fatigue eventually empowers him, and his artistic embellishment soon become
laugh-out-loud chirps at the hack artists. In between these auditions and
performances, The Waiting Room gives
snippets of the true Jasmin, both in Toronto and legit Bosnia, as he lives his
restless life in Canada and remembers his life before the war. These scenes
show a man of a different humour, but there’s always a hint of comedy in the
way Geljo approaches the part. The actor has a lighter side that bubbles under
his sombre surface (Jasmin always looks angry or unhappy) and finds warmth and
irony in the roles that the filmmakers call upon Jasmin to play.
In the mix of the complexly structured film is Jasmin’s
teenage daughter with whom he visits in fleeting scenes. These scenes don’t fit
any obvious place in the narrative or chronology and, as the pieces of Jasmin’s
memory fade and inspire his performance, the scenes with his daughter shift
their meaning. She could be real, dead, lost, present, or absent. A victim of
the Bosnian war or the child he never had, she symbolizes a loss that drives
his quest for closure. Whether she inspires his performances or haunts them,
she’s a pivotal talking point for the film.
The Waiting Room
emphasizes performance by contrasting the various incarnations of himself that
Jasmin plays in his life in Toronto, his life before the camera, and his life
he revisits in memories. The actor dresses up in drag to play a pregnant woman,
or blackens his face to play a chimney sweep, and, in a mix of voice-overs,
line readings, and direct addresses, Jasmin digs deep within and uses the
performance of his cultural identity to create a fulfilling role when paid gigs
fail to provide one.
His final role in the film, which also happens to be his
first one in the film, lets him return to Bosnia via a character and rear
projection. Tasked with playing a father driving his family to the beach during
the Bosnian war, Jasmin (and Geljo) finds a role with appropriate dramatic
weight. The Waiting Room diverges
tonally from the black comedy of its first acts when the final turn lets Jasmin
assume this introspective role. The film lets the actor regain his silent
dignity as he drives the car on the fake road, and Geljo’s introspective
performance informs Jasmin’s own performance with the fragments of his life
that precedes it. The Waiting Room
effectively how an actor’s experience informs and enhances his art, and the
film doesn’t come together until all the pieces fall in and contextualize this
trip that he takes in the installation. The
Waiting Room is a challenging journey, but it’s worth the wait.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The Waiting Room screens:
-Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 9:30 PM at TIFF Lightbox 2
-Thursday, Sept. 17 at 4:30 PM at Jackman Hall
Please visit www.tiff.net for more
information on this year’s festival.
More coverage on this year’s festival can be found here.
