The Film Verdict: European Films at TIFF Reviews

Weekly Critics’ Choice EUROPEAN FILMS AT TORONTO

Strikes Can’t Keep the Shine Off Movies at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival

VERDICT: The sweet and compassionate ‘Solitude’ is a modest drama with a big heart.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 11, 2023

Kevin Jagernauth, September 14, 2023

No matter what happens, it’s the movies that matter, and that was never more true than at the 48th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Even before the red carpets were rolled out, there were considerable challenges on the horizon. The ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes raised ques-

tions about which actors, if any, would be attending to promote their latest work. Then, just over a week away from opening day, came the shocking news that TIFF’s long-standing, nearly three decade relationship with lead sponsor, Canadian telecom giant Bell, was coming to an end in 2023. During the festival, an-

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It’s a fine line between being alone and feeling lonely, and one can become too settled on their own to feel the difference. In Ninna Pálmadóttir’s endearing feature debut, Solitude, she navigates the delicate yet sometimes expansive distance between the two. Gentle and compassionate, the film explores an unlikely connection that’s forged between an uncomplicated man and a young boy that might to be too pure for the modern world.

There’s a saying in Icelandic, “I came completely from the mountains,” that’s handy if you’re ever feeling lost or out of the loop in a conversation. While he’s not quite from the mountains, Gunnar (Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson) can see them in the breathtaking view from

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Kevin Jagernauth

TIFF

HOMECOMING

VERDICT: Homecoming’ is a powerful and poignant look at cultural repatriation.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 13, 2023

In 2017, the National Museum of Finland announced a plan to repatriate over 2000 artifacts to the Indigenous Sámi people. In the lead-up to the first exhibition of these pieces at the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida in 2021, the director-general of the National Museum of Finland, Elina Antilla, declared, “The objects are returning to their original family context. The objects are very useful as prototypes when younger people are learning the traditional techniques.” But that’s merely the beginning. As Suvi West and Anssi Kömi illustrate in their moving, deeply personal documentary Homecoming, the return of the objects will not only launch a re-discovery and deeper understanding of a way of life, but write new chapters in the Sámi people’s past, present, and future.

Finnish Sámi filmmaker Suvi West goes in front of camera — with Anssi Kömi (mostly) behind it — traveling to Helsinki, Germany, and Sweden where she’s granted access to museum archives to personally connect with both the artifacts that are returning to her community, and just as importantly, those that aren’t. Boxed away and stored on shelves, the objects that have been gathered by collectors for over 150 years are often more valued for their worth than their cultural significance. When it’s commented that there’s been “no interest in the stories, only the items” themselves, the point is underscored when West reveals that a hat on display is facing the “wrong way around.

It can be tricky for directors to place themselves at the center of a documentary, but West nimbly utilizes her personal journey

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SPIRIT OF ECSTASY

VERDICT: ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’ is a sensitive look at coming-of-age through the unique lens of the ruthless world of finance.

Kevin Jagernauth, Sept. 12, 2023

Bridges are featured on the back of Euro banknotes, but what were initially designed to represent famous landmarks were rendered into “imaginary monuments” to keep the political peace. It’s a fact Jeanne (Claire Pommet) learns during a job interview with Atlas Bank and a lesson they’ll encounter again in Spirit of Ecstasy (La Vénus d’argent). The latest film from Héléna Klotz is presented in the wrapping of a financial world drama, but hidden inside is a unique and sensitive look at coming-of-age and the fortitude it takes to make dreams come true. The job doesn’t pan out, but Jeanne seizes an opportunity to get noticed at the investment company where they intern on the coffee-fetching rung of the ladder. After pointing out an error in code that could’ve cost

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TIFF

TIFF

NOT A WORD

VERDICT: Nina Palcek follows Lydia Tár in managing Mahler’s 5th with a spiralling personal life in slow-burn thriller ‘Not A Word.’

Kevin Jagernauth, September 12, 2023

Conductor Nina Palcek (Maren Eggert) is deep in rehearsals, fine tuning the orchestra for a monumental concert at the Berlin Philharmonic that’s just ten days away. Parenting offers no such chances to practice and Hanna Slak pulls on that thematic thread for her compelling and efficiently moody thriller Not A Word (Kein Wort). With little time for her son, Lars (Jona Levin Nicolai), who slinks around, sullen and withdrawn, Nina’s emotional absence turns to simmering guilt and paranoia that threatens to incinerate her life when she suspects there might be something more sinister behind his hormonal behavior.

The constant buzzing and ringing of Nina’s phone is the only sound in the otherwise antiseptic apartment she shares with Lars. Confining himself to his room, he might as well be on another planet. But he comes flying back into her orbit when he suffers a concussion following a mysterious accident — or was it? — at school. The incident forces Nina to confront some troubling information she’s been actively ignoring:

WOODLAND

VERDICT: ’Woodland’ is an exploration of generational trauma and healing that feels more like a sketch than a portrait.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 11, 2023

What happens when imagining the future is overwhelming, and looking at the past only brings sorrow? That’s the predicament facing Marian (Brigitte Hobmeir) in Elisabeth Scharang’s Woodland, a drama haunted with regret and guilt, tracing a woman’s journey through trauma across overly familiar terrain.

“You pay for what you get. You keep your word. You don’t let family down. You live the life your mother gave you, as best you can.” Those are the rules laid out by Franz (Johannes Krisch), the former village heartthrob and Marian’s long ago ex-lover, when she mysteriously returns to her rural family farm. It’s her first time back in decades since her parents and grandparents have passed and the old house — with a leaky roof and no electricity — needs a serious airing out. Her arrival immediately raises the hackles of the close-knit community; she might have grown up and moved on but they haven’t. The ill-tempered Gerti (Gerti Drassl), her closest neighbor, and Franz,

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I TOLD YOU SO

Kevin Jagernauth, September 13, 2023

It’s January, mosquitos are out, the mercury is showing over thirty degrees Celsius, and news reports on Rome radio warn that “we’re experiencing temperature backwards.” The smoggy sky suggests an oncoming apocalypse, but the world-ending conditions can’t overcome the personal addictions, vices, and petty grievances of the cast of characters in Ginerva Elkann’s tiring and torpid I Told You So. The film unfolds a handful of stories of sex, religion, drugs, and love in a vision of the Eternal City you won’t see in travel brochures, in which its inhabitants strive to rise above their damned circumstances.

It all starts in the bedroom of Gianna (Valeria Brunie Tedeschi), a God-fearing woman who we find on all fours, praying for forgiveness mid-coitus. Her uneasy relationship to sex is due to her complicated, obsessive relationship with her ex-best friend Pupa (Valeria Golino), who holds a restraining order against her. The former pornstar is fully embracing the attention that has come her way thanks a minor social media resurgence, but it’s all she can do keep her head above troubled financial water. Pupa is practically a saint compared to Bill (Danny Huston), an American ex-pat and priest battling a heroin addiction. He’s trying to keep it together while his sister Fran (Greta Schacchi) is in town to scatter the ashes of their recently deceased mother. Also trying to keep from unraveling is Caterina (Alba Rohrwacher) who is just days into her sobriety, and aiming to reconnect with her young son Max, whose father (Riccardo Scamarcio) has been awarded custody. Lastly, there’s Gianna’s teenage daughter Mila (Sofia Panizzi), who

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VERDICT: Temperatures rise but drama stays stuck in this hellish, apocalyptic vision of Rome.

EFP at Toronto

EFP Cocktail on Sunday 10 September at The Fifth Social Club

Industry Centre at TIFF

WORKING CLASS GOES TO HELL

VERDICT: Mladen Djordjevic’s slow-burn Midnight Madness selection has headier things on its mind than blood and guts.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 15, 2022

The latest from director Mladen Djordjevic has arrived at TIFF with a banger of a title — Working Class Goes To Hell — but it might confuse

audiences who signed up for a wild ride based on its name and Midnight Madness programming slot. There will be no trips to the underworld or blazing infernos in this slow-burn meditation which takes the tools of terror to construct a metaphor for those who continue to be mired in the socio-economic fallout of venal corruption.

Deep in the rural Balkans, the citizens of a small town are fatigued in an ongoing fight over a factory that went up in flames five years earlier, killing several members of the community, and wiping out a host of jobs with it. The stench of arson by the former factory owners hangs over the whole affair, and as construction begins on an industrial sized incinerator to take its place, a court case to get some answers is continually delayed, showing no signs of being resolved soon. Even worse, the town’s mayor and politicians appear to be firmly in the pocket of the developers. This makes it harder for Ceca (Tamara Krcunovic), the local labor leader, to keep her small group of activists motivated. They’ve all seen and felt the effects of the factory’s closing — family and friends dead; job shortages; a rise in prostitution and

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A HAPPY DAY

VERDICT: ‘A Happy Day’ is a stylized asylum seeker story that wraps its message inside a frustrating riddle.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 13, 2023

In Norway, if a young person’s asylum application has been denied, they may receive a permit to stay until they’re 18 at which time they must leave or face deportation back to their home country. For those fleeing persecution or war zones, and seeking a future filled with hope and opportunity, it’s a heartless, bureaucratic outcome. It’s against this backdrop that Hisham Zaman’s ironically titled, deadpan comedy A Happy Day unfolds. The film is a noble attempt to illuminate the humanity behind the headlines, but its heavily mannered stylization often gets in the way of its message resonating.

The action takes place at a youth reception center in Norway that is

so isolated, barren, and cold, the authorities don’t even bother with watchtowers, fences, or barbed wire to keep its residents from fleeing. That doesn’t stop the poetry writing Hamid (Salah Qadi) and his friends Aras (Ravand Ali Taha)

and Ismail (Mohamed Salah) from working on an escape plan. Somehow, they’re going to get to the other side of the mountain before their 18th birthdays when they’ll be unceremoniously shipped away

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SHAME ON DRY LAND

VERDICT: Axel Petersén conjures a surreal, pure vibes, sun-baked noir that’s equal parts David Lynch and Dashiel Hammett.

Kevin Jagernauth, September 13, 2023

“I’m sorry. I need you to forgive me.” Dimman (Joel Spira) will regret his request for absolution as it sends him spiralling into the shady underworld of sunny Malta in Axel Petersén’s pure vibes thriller Shame on Dry Land. This scorched, loose-limbed noir might barely hold together, but its surreal, off kilter mood is almost enough to make up the difference.

After ten years away, Dimman literally washes up on the shores of Malta, and finds his way to Fredrik’s (Christopher Wagelin) luxe home where he’s none too pleased to see him. A decade earlier, Dimman pulled the rug out from Fredrik, leaving the company they founded together in the dust and disappearing in a flagrant act of fraud. Now he’s back, seeking a way to make up for his crimes, but Fredrik wants none of it. Living as part of the small, but significant Swedish ex-pat community, he’s rebuilt his life, preparing to get married to Sara (Julia Sporre), and has buried the past. Sent packing, but

with nowhere else to go, Dimman winds up being tasked by his shady friend Kiki (Jacqueline Ramel) to follow the even shadier Krumm (Michal Axel Piotrowski) from the Economic Crime Authority who has been seen skulking around town, as it might threaten her even more shady business. Of course, it’s not long until all roads wind up leading back to Fredrik.

Imagine the cigarette brick road of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, but less sardonic, and spiked with an enigmatic dream journey of David Lynch and that’s the sensation of tumbling down Shame on Dry Land. Petersén’s script isn’t so much a knot as a number of loops, with Dimman following Krumm only to hit dead ends that turn into trap doors that lead him right back to his man. At first, the instinct will be to pay close attention, to gather clues to unravel the secrets that are waiting to be revealed, until it becomes obvious that Petersén prefers to toy with this audience like a cat with a dead mouse.

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