I have a hideous, disgusting cold at the moment but dammit, we had tickets to two screenings at the Toronto International Film Fest yesterday and it only happens once a year. So I got all drugged up and we went and I promise you all that I washed my hands a lot and didn’t cough on anyone. I was really worried about being Patient Zero (like I was for the Norwalk Virus a few years ago, as Jesk can attest) but when we arrived at the first film and the MC told us that the director was sick with the flu and wouldn’t be attending the screening, I felt relieved. Clearly, I am not the only spreader of this plague. Although “flu"? A likely story. Too much blow and hookers, probably. Artists, man . . .
The two (Canadian!) movies Katr and I took in yesterday were:
Eve & the Fire Horse, written and directed by Julia Kwan and 3 Needles, written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald (of The Hanging Garden fame).
I had initially thought that, in the grand tradition of other film fest bloggers, I would write deep and lengthy reviews of the 8 or so films that I’m seeing this year. After 3 Needles, however, I decided that flip comments and personal reflections were more my style. The epic Montreal/Africa/China HIV trifecta 3 Needles, (see description on the film fest site) was beautifully shot, full of gorgeous vistas and had a couple of great performances. I thought Lucy Liu as a pregnant blood runner in China and Stockard Channing as a slightly grizzled Montreal waitress were particularly good. It was also (and this may shock you) “a bit of a downer". I feel it’s also worth mentioning here that my hopes for a rape-free slate of films at TIFF this year was dashed right out of the starting gate. If I’d read the description more closely, I could probably have figured that out but still . . . damn. Ah, well . . . there’s always next year.
The second film we saw yesterday, Julia Kwan’s Eve & the Fire Horse, was really freakin’ charming. Also, fun. Eve’s imaginative attempts to reconcile her Buddhist beliefs with her sister’s newfound Catholic fervour makes for some funny and touching moments.
I particularly enjoyed Eve & the Fire Horse because it reminded me of how I thought our family was Jewish until I was 10. Our house was close to the Jewish Community Centre, so I had all my swimming lessons and day camp there, singing the national anthem in Hebrew, braiding the challah, referring to dumb boys as “goys". It wasn’t ’til the Gideons showed up in 5th grade music class with their tiny New Testaments and cheap suits that things changed. The true extent of my religious confusion was revealed when I brought the New Testament home to my non-religious parents. They had to explain to me that “Chanukah” was not Hebrew for “Christmas", that our people had probably never been in Egypt, and that Jesus, while Jewish, was not just an important Jew, like I’d thought, but the catalyst for a whole other religion which, technically, I didn’t belong to either, having never been baptized.
Of course, like Karena in the movie, I promptly decided to become a Catholic nun. Although, looking back, that choice was probably less about religion and more about lesbianism.
Anyway - tonight we’re seeing Perpetual Motion, a film by Ning Ying, a female director from China, bout shaking up perceptions of women’s roles in Chinese society. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on the “rape-free” thing - I’ll keep y’all posted.
