Henry O'Brien
Trying to find a theme at TIFF—The Toronto International Film Festival—can be a fruitless exercise. Concocting some platitude to describe a festival that has nearly 300 movies would be silly just from the fact that’s just so many films and not all of them are going to have a thematic throughline.
That being said, mood is a whole different story. And since this is a film website, I can safely say the mood of many of the films at Toronto is varying degrees of chaos or the feeling of reacting to the chaos in the world around us. Three films, from international contenders to a college romcom, all stare at the chaotic future in the face and ask where do we go from here?
Arco
Capturing all the majesty and beauty that made Steven Spielberg and Hayao Miyazaki the legends they are, French animator Ugo Bienvenu crafts a world that feels both awe-inspiring and terrifying all at once in his directorial debut, Arco. The film asks the charming question that what if rainbows are actually time travelers from the future? But it also features grave warnings about where Earth will go as the increasingly-looming climate catastrophe is upon us.
The movie follows the titular time traveling Arco, who lives near the end of this millennia, traveling back to 2075, where he meets a plucky young girl named Iris. In a story that harkens back to E.T., the two kids attempt to get Arco back home. Bienvenu has a clear understanding of the near-future world he wants to depict. There are charming side characters like Iris’ family’s robot assistant Mikki and a trio of Three Stooges-esque brothers who desperately seek to find Arco, but Bienvenu makes the future idyllic and bleak all at once. Nearly everything around society, from schools to the police, is automated and there are glass domes shielding every home from increasingly-frequent natural disasters.
What makes Miyazaki and Spielberg such distinct children’s storytellers is that they are able to respect a child’s feelings and imaginations; they don’t shy away from showing the scary side of the world just as they will show the beauty of it. Bienvenu threads that needle and then some with images that can make one wonder in awe, curl in mild freight or ponder in some form of existential dread or reverence.
Arco feels a fresh reprieve from the stale and predictable animated works coming from the States. And with Natalie Portman as an executive producer and member of the cast for the film’s English dub, Arco should have a legitimate push for the Oscars in a similar to vein to Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow.
Poetic License
Maude Apatow is her father’s daughter. And to be clear, I mean this as a compliment. Her debut feature Poetic License, which stars her mother Leslie Mann, Cooper Hoffman, and Andrew Barth Feldman, has a similar charm and feeling to any of Judd Apatow’s great films like The 40-Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up. But the younger Apatow gives enough of a Gen Z sensibility to Poetic License makes it feel distinct.
Apatow also has the benefit of having a wonderful cast at her disposal to make the Raffi Donatich-penned script, which details a burgeoning love triangle between an ex-therapist and soon-to-be empty nester (Mann) and two college seniors (Hoffman, Feldman) come to life. Hoffman in particular continues to stand out in all of his films, providing Poetic License with a spunk, false confidence and humor whenever the film starts to drag. And as Hoffman’s character confronts his extreme narcissism and manipulative tendencies, the actor maintains his presence throughout. Plus, you can’t really beat having the Method Man as an economics professor who has to pretend to like pickleball.
But how Apatow makes the family formula her own is fascinating, identifying a certain sect of young person who goes to an elite college like the one depicted in her film. Feldman’s character grapples with looking to get a cushy entry-level job at Morgan Stanley after completing a summer internship there, acknowledging how he will sell his soul. Apatow and Donatich also question the romantic intentions behind both Feldman and Hoffman’s characters, leading to a madcap romcom shenanigans in the third act.
Poetic License does have its contrivances and warts that are typical of any first time director; the characterization of the high school senior daughter (Nico Parker) feels slight and laborious compared to the spontaneity of the main plot. But how it depicts lost souls who feel equally restrained and lost in this nightmare world they are about to enter makes Apatow an intriguing voice for Gen Z.
Sirāt
I saved Oliver Laxe’s latest work as the last one in this capsule because chaos and doom are embedded in this movie at almost every level. Sirāt takes its name from the Bridge of Sirat, the Islamic path that leads to heaven but has hell right underneath it. The opening title card for the film describes the thin and dangerous line that the Bridge is, and how one can so easily fall into disaster and despair.
The movie follows a father (Sergi López) and son (Bruno Núñez Arjona) looking for a female family member at a desert rave in Southern Morocco. They tag along with a group of ravers to find her and the movie becomes an enthralling and engaging roadtrip. That is, before unspeakable tragedy arises in the blink of an eye.
The second half of the film becomes one of the more upsetting experiences I’ve ever had in the theater, as multiple shocking deaths happen. But what makes the moments so spine-tingling is their immediacy. Laxe lets you sit in the shock and despair of it all for long stretches of time before landing another devastating blow and leading up to a finale that’s as suspenseful and depressing as it gets.
Conversations between characters, in reference to the presence of soldiers in the desert who break up the rave, hint that the end of the world is upon them. But it doesn’t really matter whether or not that is actually true, what matters is that these characters, in a land they seem woefully unfamiliar with, are experiencing their hell, and only chaos and doom lie ahead.
I think the highest compliment I can give Laxe’s film is that I never want to go to a desert rave.
