I left Toronto Thursday for a gig in Minneapolis. Unfortunately, I planned that last day around a mid-day screening of
Claude Chabrol's uber-bourgeois
A Girl Cut in Two. In this geriatric male fantasy, young ,weak-willed weathergirl Ludivine Sagnier services both her lovers: a much older celebrity novelist and a handsome sociopathic heir cum mama's boy. For the former, she also dons submissive fantasy outfits.
Benoit Magimel as the junior dandy borrows way too freely from
Robert Walker's murder swapper in
Hitchcock's
Strangers on a Train, then shamelessly chews the scenery. The portrayal is as overdone as the film itself, and Chabrol is responsible.
Today, the festival, more or less noncompetitive, announced the ancillary awards that are doled out. All, it turns out, went to movies from either Canada or Latin America.
I was shocked to learn that
Rodrigo Pla's Mexican film
La Zona garnered the FIPRESCI (international critics) prize. (They selected from the Discovery section.) After a fabulous opening shot in which a crane carries the camera from a trashy trailer in poor man's land over a security wall into a wealthy, restricted residential community, the film rings false (and rather commercial for a critics prize).
During a power outage three youths from the wrong side scale the electrified barrier, enter a house, and kill an elderly woman in the course of a robbery. Some self-anointed neighborhood vigilantes shoot two of the culprits but a third escapes and is nowhere to be found. The vigilante movement escalates; the majority stifles those who speak out. The angelic teen son of one of the mob leaders hides the much-sought-after boy and is appalled when the worked-up residents attack him mercilessly. A lone cop challenges such frontier-like justice, but the wealthy have his boss in their pockets. A Mexican colleague confirmed the ludicrousness of the situation--plus the film lacks depth.
Guy Maddin's exceptional
My Winnipeg [pictured above] deservedly took the Toronto-City Award for Best Canadian Feature Film and its $30,000 booty. A surreal essay on the director's hometown, the film links bizarre "historical" anecdotes (frozen horse heads poking out of the snow, a stacked Golden Boy contest) with Maddin's psychic baggage, including a domineering mother whose face is blown up as large as the breast in
Woody Allen's
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex. Maddin has deep affection for Winnipeg, even if he claims that "demolition is one of the city's growth industries."
I did not see the other winners. After all, there are 350 films. Here goes:
Best Canadian Short Film:
POOL,
Chris Chong Chan Fui, Canada/Malaysia ($10,000)
Citytv Award for Best Canadian Feature Film:
Continental, un film sans fusil,
Stephane Lafleur ($15,000)
Diesel Discovery Award:
Cochochi,
Israel Cardenas,
Laura Amelia Guzman, Mexico/United Kingdom/Canada ($10,000)
Artistic Innovation Award (chosen from Visions strand):
Encarnacion,
Anahi Berneri, Argentina ($10,000)
Cadillac People's Choice Award:
Eastern Promises,
David Cronenberg, Canada/United Kingdom ($15,000)
First runner-up:
Juno,
Jason Reitman, USA
Second runner-up:
Body of War,
Ellen Spiro,
Phil Donahue, USA
# posted by Howard Feinstein @ 9/15/2007 07:31:00 PM
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