THE FIREFLIES ARE GONE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Sébastien Pilote Scores Again

The Fireflies are Gone (2018)
Dir. Sébastien Pilote
Starring: Kapelle Tremblay, Pierre-Luc Brillant

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who is Sébastien Pilote? Seriously, who in the hell is this guy, anyway? These were the questions I asked myself upon seeing Quebec-based Canadian filmmaker Sébastien Pilote's extraordinary first feature film Le Vendeur. This stunning Québec-made kitchen-sink drama was so raw, real and infused with a seldom-paralleled acute pain that the film's quiet power betrayed its creator's cinematic genius immediately.
 
Starring the magnificent Gilberte Sicotte as an ace car salesman in a small factory town in Québec on the brink of total financial collapse, this staggeringly powerful, exquisitely-acted and beautifully written motion picture was, for me, the first genuine Québec heir apparent to the beautiful-yet-not-so-beautiful-loser genre of English-Canadian cinema of the 60s and 70s (best exemplified by films like Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road, Peter Pearson's Paperback Hero and Zale Dalen's Skip Tracer).
 
As if making a modern masterpiece of Québec cinema as a first feature wasn't enough, he’d knocked one out of the park before that with his early short film DUST BOWL HA! HA!  It featured Andre Bouchard as a hard-working family man in small-town Québec who stoically maintains his dignity in a world where nothing and nobody escapes the crushing weight of the financial crisis. This turned out to be one of the best short films I had ever seen – period – a phenomenal drama, so graceful and so simple, that upon seeing it I felt about as winded as I did after I first saw Le Vendeur.
 
With his second feature Le démantèlement, I had MORE reason to ask, just who in the hell is this guy anyway?
 
Starring the legendary Gabriel Arcand as a Québec sheep farmer forced into selling off his beloved home and livelihood to help his daughter was a movie that extraordinarily blended a neo-realist sensibility in a great, thought-provoking drama that was visually astonishing – gorgeously captured by cinematographer Michel La Veaux in a classical tradition not unlike that of the late Haskell Wexler's heartbreakingly beautiful work in Bound For Glory.
 
And then, his third feature film, The Fireflies Are Gone came along. Wow! He’s the real thing! No doubt about it.
 
Amusingly, when Mr. Pilote invited me to the Canadian premiere of his film, he expressed considerable trepidation. He was worried I wouldn’t like his third feature because it was such a departure from his previous work. His concerns were unfounded. I loved it so much that I saw it twice at TIFF.
 
I urge everyone to see it.
 
First of all, it bears many hallmarks of what makes Pilote’s films special: it’s set in small town Québec, it blends neo-realist qualities with classical filmmaking and is finally infused with moments of humanity that are so indelible that it leaves one deeply moved. Where it departs is that the central character is female and that the movie displays considerable charm and humour.
 
The characters in Pilote’s previous features were nearing the end of their “productive” lives, but not so here. Léonie (Karelle Tremblay) can hardly wait for high school to end and actually begin her life as an adult. Existence in this small Saguenay town is stifling, but she finds solace in her friendship with the much older Steve (Pierre Luc-Brilliant), a guitar teacher who lives in a suburban basement with his mother.
 
The two of them while away their time playing music together, wandering the empty streets and hanging out eating poutine in a local greasy spoon, but alas, Léonie is restless. She’s also not getting along with her Mom (and Mom’s new-ish husband) and though she enjoys visiting with her estranged Dad, he too does little to fill the void in her life.
 
Much is made of how the fireflies in the town have disappeared due to the factories belching out pollution, but it’s not just industrialization that has decimated this once beautiful rural paradise, but small mindedness. Léonie, like those fireflies might have to leave, but if she does, will her light ever be replaced?
 
It’s an eternal question and one that Pilote posits brilliantly in his gorgeous, magical movie. 

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

The Fireflies are Gone is a Contemporary World Cinema presentation at TIFF 2018.

BEN IS BACK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Addiction Drama With Thriller Elements

Ben is Back (2018)
Dir. Peter Hedges
Starring: Julia Roberts, Lucas Hedges

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's interesting that there are two major American films this year (in addition to a number of foreign language entries) playing at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that deal with the subject of drug addiction amongst adolescents. Clearly this is an epidemic world wide and obsessing our filmmakers. Given the power of cinema and its unyielding nature as an art form, this is a year that historically we will look back upon, not just from a standpoint of film history, but history period.

Ben is Back is an original screenplay by director (Dan in Real Life, The Odd Life of Timothy Green) and novelist (What's Eating Gilbert Grape) Peter Hedges. The film it most resembles is Felix Van Groeningen's Beautiful Boy (also at TIFF 2018). That film involves a father and son struggling through the child's drug addiction. Here, the film focuses upon a mother and her son struggling through the child's drug addiction. That both are major and relatively mainstream American films both at TIFF 2018 is not without interest. One is, however, clearly superior to the other. It's not Ben is Back.

It should be said, though, that Hedges' film is not without considerable merit. That it lacks the pedigree of Van Groeningen's film being based upon not one, but two, true-life memoirs is not its central flaw. The writing Hedges crafts is often complex and intelligent and is indeed flavoured with touches that seem "real". Not surprisingly, it has "novelistic" properties in terms of its structure and I admired that it tries things we don't often see in most contemporary films. However, some of what it "tries" is not always successful.

Ben is Back unfurls a narrative set within a 24-hour period (I loved this macrocosmic aspect of the storytelling) in which a teenage drug addict (opioids), played by Hedges' real-life son, actor Lucas Hedges, returns home from rehab for a one-day holiday reprieve with his family. His mother (quite dazzlingly portrayed by Julia Roberts) is thrilled to see him, in spite of the pain he's caused to both himself and the family. He presents the picture of a young man well on his way to recovery. Doubts however remain and continue to creep into the proceedings. When a break-in occurs in the family home while they're all attending a Christmas concert, this results in the disappearance/pet-napping of the family's dog. Ben is convinced the dog has been snatched by one of several scuzzball drug dealers from his past. He and his Mother, together and separately, begin a suspenseful odyssey into the underbelly of the illicit drug world.

An easy, somewhat flippant, but not altogether inaccurate description of Ben is Back might be: "Beautiful Boy with thriller elements". These thriller elements are handled with plenty of directorial prowess and though the journey that mother and son take together is not without interest or merit, we are, during the second half of the film, occasionally taken out of the "addiction" story and faced with the realization that we're watching a movie about people trying to find their stolen dog. I do not wish to criticize this story element - it's bold, brash and original. Alas, it occasionally FEELS like an obvious conceit and as such, we become too aware of the "mechanics" of the film. This does indeed take us out of the narrative thrust.

Happily, the performances in the movie are first rate and in spite of the weird flaw in structure/delivery, the movie is so much more original and compelling than most contemporary American films. Perhaps I doth protest too much, but in comparison to Van Groeningen's film, or, for that matter Baldvin Z's utterly astounding Let Me Fall, it pales slightly in comparison.

It's wonderful seeing Julia Roberts work her magic in this film. She really is a great actress. One chillingly happy moment has her trashing a scumbag doctor who got her son hooked on pain medication. Her victory is petty, but damn, it's still satisfying.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-one-half Stars

Ben is Back is a TIFF 2018 Special Presentation.

BLIND SPOT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Real Time Devastation from Norway

A parent's worst nightmare comes to life in real time.

Blind Spot (2018)
Dir. Tuva Novotny
Starring: Pia Tjelta, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Nora Mathea Øien

Review By Greg Klymkiw
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One trick pony movies, those pictures built upon a "gimmick" of execution (Christopher "One Idea" Nolan's 2000 neo-noir Memento, with its lugubrious, humourless "let's tell the story backwards" approach being the most egregious example for me) are seldom works that can live beyond their silly little stunts. Alexander Sokurov's impressive one-take 2002 feature Russian Ark, however, lives well beyond its clever conceit and yields considerable richness on repeated viewings (unlike the aforementioned Memento which gets more infuriating with subsequent helpings).

Actress Tuva Novotny's debut feature Blind Spot is certainly a dazzling feat of technical wizardry, but its emotional core is so solid that the real time with which the story unfolds never feels like a masturbatory imposture, but a valid dramatic approach to a narrative that is, to use a perfectly apt cliché, every parent's worst nightmare. The film wends its way through events in the life of a Norwegian family in a 102-minute running time that takes us, second by second on a journey that is always harrowing.

The story begins with a fixed camera upon a high school gym class and we watch as a group of young women go through their rigorous activities. Soon enough we settle on Tea (Nora Mathea Øien) as she and a friend make their way into the change room, go about the business of towelling-off, showering, changing etc. and eventually walk out together into the hallways of the school. The friends walk home, casually and naturally talking about the day's events, homework and focusing primarily on an upcoming mathematics assignment. They eventually part and it's here where I realized that there has yet to be a single cut.

The long take continues. We follow Tea as she walks up several flights of stairs to her family's flat. Once inside, we observe her mother Maria (Pia Tjelta in an intense, bravura performance) rushing about with Tea's little brother. The teenager leaves a friendly voicemail for her father Anders (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), jots an entry in her journal and eventually, leaves the frame.

And then, off-camera, IT happens.

Novotny's mise-en-scene creates a sense of portent throughout. We know something is going to happen and we sense it's not going to be good. Yet, when it does happen, we are as much in the dark as Maria until she discovers the unthinkable. From this point we experience the mother's desperation, the long wait for an ambulance, the trip to a nearby hospital (though it never feels "nearby" enough). The long take never lets up, but it is to the film's credit that we're ultimately more focused on the drama rather than the conceit.

Once in the hospital we follow the events as they would naturally unfold, the POV focusing on characters such as a compassionate nurse, the emergency room team leader and the family. Novotny's deft screenplay parcels out information which naturally provides context for the tragic events, but most astoundingly, creates a realistic dramatic arc for the 102 minutes that doesn't in any way, shape or form give us false closure nor, like life, does it provide any easy, pat answers.

Life is drama and Blind Spot brilliantly proves this.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Blind Spot has its International Premiere in the Discovery Series at TIFF 2018.

BEAUTIFUL BOY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Devastating Addiction Drama

Beautiful Boy (2018)
Dir. Felix Van Groeningen
Starring: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There is a long history of films dealing with the illness of drug addiction. The best work tends to avoid earnestness and some of my favourites either capture the hallucinogenic properties of the disease itself (Terry Gilliam's adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas might be the ultimate in this respect) or dramatically (or even melodramatically) chart the sufferings of those afflicted in a realistic (or Neo-realistic) fashion (Jerry Schatzberg's The Panic in Needle Park, Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy and Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm all chart "realism" most effectively, and affectingly). A bonus is when the films can do both as in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For a Dream and Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy.

A great new film manages to do both, but not in ways one might expect. With the almost unbearably harrowing Beautiful Boy, Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown) makes his English language debut with this film adaptation of two published non-fiction accounts of addiction that each provide perspectives from the "outsider" looking in and the "insider" looking out. Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff and Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff have been expertly adapted into a screenplay written by Luke Davies and Van Groeningen.

Telling the story of New York Times journalist David Sheff (Steve Carell) and his relationship with teenage son Nicholas (Timothée Chalamet), Beautiful Boy charts the journey of both men through a grim and gripping rollercoaster ride through crystal meth addiction (in addition to copious ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana use). We begin with the boy's disappearance and his eventual return into his Dad's home, clearly under the influence of drug use. Nicholas agrees to a stay in a rehab clinic, but once he is released to a halfway house, the young boy's abuse of drugs increases exponentially. We proceed through a harrowing, almost cat-and-mouse game of parental care, the child's acquiescence and continual downfall. Eventually, tough-love must come into play.

Anyone who has experienced and/or witnessed the addiction of someone close will relate to this film, however, the picture's ultimate power is that it moves well beyond simple recognition and is ultimately a story of father-son love. Carrell and Chalamet deliver alternately grim and sensitive performances. Chalamet in particular captures the jittery telltale signs of meth addiction and the script beautifully charts the behaviour and mindset of addiction as it continually takes grip upon the boy's psyche.

Beautiful Boy never offers pat answers or explanations. That might be its ultimate power. It also is set with the world of a fairly affluent family unit. Some might find this a tad disingenuous, but frankly, addiction goes so far beyond class lines. It can happen to anyone, anytime and that the story is told against a bourgeois backdrop hammers home just how horrible a disease addiction is. In fact, one wonders, both during and after, about its effects upon all those afflicted with it no matter what their class or station.

And of course, it's impossible to ignore the fact that the film's title is derived from the song "Beautiful Boy", John Lennon's soulful, loving, and within the context of this film (and an element of the story itself), absolutely heartbreaking melody and lyrics.

Among the evocative lyrics in the song, one resonates both during and long after the film is over: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Oh indeed. Life happens and sometimes the best laid plans either get in the way or are unattainable. Love, understanding and perseverance go a long way, but with the disease of addiction, there are never, ever any guarantees.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** 5-Stars

Beautiful Boy is a TIFF 2018 Gala Presentation.

LET ME FALL (Lof mer ad falla) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Great new Baldvin Z @ TIFF 2018

The love, pain and confusion of teen years lasts a lifetime.

Let Me Fall - Lof mer ad falla (2018)
Dir. Baldvin Z (Zophoníasson)
Scr. Birgir Örn Steinarsson, Baldvin Z
Starring: Elín Sif Halldórsdóttir, Eyrún Björk Jakobsdóttir, Kristín þóra Haraldsdóttir, Lára Jóhanna Jónsdóttir, Þorsteinn Bachmann

Review By Greg Klymkiw

And it ain’t gonna rain anymore
Now my baby’s gone
And it ain’t gonna rain anymore
Now my baby’s gone

Now the storm has passed over me
I’m left to drift on a dead calm sea
And watch her forever through the cracks in the beams
Nailed across the doorways of the bedrooms of my dreams

- Nick Cave "Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore" (covered in the film by Zoe-Ruth Erwin)

High school student Magnea (Elín Sif Halldórsdóttir) is armed with a wad of cash she's secured up-front from a burly, bearded miscreant looking for jailbait sex in his suburban Reykjavik home (adorned, no less, with photos of his wife and kids). She has no intention of delivering the foul goods he's after. She produces a blood-filled hypodermic needle and threatens to stick the sweaty corpulent pig if he doesn't let her leave untouched.

After beating a hasty retreat with her collaborators-in-duping-pathetic-slobs, Magnea sits in the back seat with her best friend Stella (Eyrún Björk Jakobsdóttir) and their pimp-like beau in front. As the opening credits for Let Me Fall unspool, the camera holds close on Magnea's face as she stares out the window of the fast-moving car. To the casual observer, her face might seem blank, but as the lens remains fixed upon her visage, it's a picture that tells a story of deep pain, pain that's going to become more acute as the next 136-minutes of the new film by the gifted director Baldvin Z unfolds.

Based on interviews with the families of drug-addicted teens, the screenplay by Birgir Örn Steinarsson and Baldvin Z, yields one of the most shocking, compelling and profoundly moving films ever made about addiction. It's a story that spans from late childhood to young adulthood (the older Magnea and Stella are respectively played by Kristín þóra Haraldsdóttir and Lára Jóhanna Jónsdóttir), charting a friendship rooted in love, co-dependency and finally, the sort of betrayal that enslavement to the needle can lead to, a betrayal that changes the lives of both women forever - horrifyingly and sadly irrevocable.

The four actresses playing these two women over several decades provide work that is nothing less than stellar. Running the gamut of emotions and actions, this is extraordinary work. As presented in the film, the friendship between Magnea and Stella is so rich and complex. Though Magnea feels like a "follower" to the "tutelage" of Stella, one eventually gets a sense that Magnea is, indeed the stronger force and as such, this is what leaves her open and vulnerable to both Stella's base needs to fulfil her own addiction and, in a sense, her desire to have an upper hand. This all said, love and friendships are never simple and the power dynamic between the two women is handled so deftly and intelligently - like all great drama, we are constantly surprised by the roads the characters travel - together and individually.

And yes, though the film focuses primarily on these two young women, it also touches upon the struggles endured by Magnea's parents and in particular her loving father (Þorsteinn Bachmann). At first shocked that his academically gifted daughter succumbs to behaviour that hardly seems commensurate with her huge potential, he attempts to provide as much love and support as he can. Addiction, however, proves to be a greater lure than parental love. Some of the most wrenching, heartbreaking scenes in the film come from Bachmann's performance, the quiet sadness on his face, the desperation in his eyes and eventually, the explosive anger he emits when confronting a man who has sexually enslaved his daughter. At one one in the film, when the Father comes to the realization that there is nothing more he can do, it's impossible not to be moved to tears by Bachmann's performance.

Then again, it's impossible not to be moved to tears throughout the entire film. From the opening shots of Magnea's youthful face, so full of portent, to the final images of her older, drug-ravaged face as we hear Zoe-Ruth Erwin's evocative cover of Nick Cave's "Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore", this is a film that never flinches, never hides from the veracity of life. Let Me Fall is a rollercoaster ride of despair, desperation and deceit. It's about avoiding hard truth and then, once facing the truth, not even knowing what it is anymore.

This is a great movie! Baldwin Z's direction is masterful and uncompromising. As a sidenote, I watched the movie with my 17-year-old daughter. She was utterly transfixed and when it was over, she declared: "Dad, I've never seen a movie about kids like this in my whole life that was so true." For me, I can think of no higher praise.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Let Me Fall (Lof mer ad falla) has its World Premiere at TIFF 2018

EUTHANIZER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Creepy, chilly existential male angst @ TIFF 2017

Euthanasia: a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Euthanizer (2017)
Dir. Teemu Nikki
Starring: Matti Onnismaa, Hannamaija Nikander, Jari Virman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

So, when I first decided to see this movie, I did some simple math. I didn't read any press releases, reviews or the blurb in the TIFF 2017 programme guide. All I knew is that it was from Finland and that it was called Euthanizer. I suspected, based on these addends, that the sum might well yield a product worth seeing, but little did I realize it would bestow a picture that, by its end-title credits would have me soaring, steeped in the joy I so seldom experience these days - the sheer, buoyant jubilance that I have indeed just witnessed the very thing that made me first love movies, more than anything, in the first place.

Though Euthanizer is not a period piece, its aesthetic feels gloriously in line with the existential angst (primarily of the male persuasion) that so defined the cinema of the 70s - notably the work of Karel Reizs (The Gambler), James Toback (Fingers), Peter Yates (The Friends of Eddie Coyle), Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter) and pretty much anything by Werner Herzog from this nasty, tough-minded decade of cinematic perfection.

Veijo (Matti Onnismaa) is a self-employed mechanic who moonlights as a more cost-effective alternative for those needing to euthanize their pets. If the animals are small, he's rigged his car for carbon monoxide poisoning, and for larger beasts, he takes them out into the woods and shoots them in the head. When people bring him their pets, he looks deep into the eyes of the animals - it's as if he can see into their souls, hear their thoughts and feel their pain. He then admonishes the owners. He knows that they are the cause of their animals' suffering and he uncannily assesses their failings as human beings. Even those who purport to not hear Veijo know deep-down that he speaks the truth.

His own father lies paralyzed in a palliative ward, taken care of by a compassionate nurse (Hannamaija Nikander) who slowly comes to admire and even fall in love with the distant Veijo. This is a couple inextricably linked by their proximity to suffering, dying and death. They're made for each other.

One day, Veijo is visited by a loathsome racist proletarian who belongs to a right-wing, White Supremacist group called "The Sons of Finland". The racist wants Veijo to put his dog down. Veijo agrees, takes the scumbag's money, but then chooses to keep the dog alive. There is no reason to kill this dog. It's vibrant, alert and deserves to live. Veijo and the dog become as inseparable as he and the nurse are.

Alas, this is Finland. There can be no happy endings here. An act of violence shatters Veijo's life and he has only one choice. Humanity, and Veijo is nothing if not humane, is something with two extremes twixt the shades of grey.

Vengeance must be exacted, but a price will be paid.

Euthanizer is, to be sure, a film of grace. It is also deeply shocking, insanely romantic, sickeningly horrifying, bleakly/blackly funny and a work of complex layers. It provides no easy answers, no pat resolutions, but when you attempt to catch your breath upon its knockout ending, you know - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that you've seen a motion picture that's seared itself upon your soul and it's never, ever going to leave you. It'll be there forever and it's not going away - at least not until you're six feet under.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Euthanizer plays at TIFF 2017

WE FORGOT TO BREAK UP - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A song will be sung @TIFF2017

Surprise backstage visit yields bigger surprise.

We Forgot To Break Up (2017)
Dir. Chandler Levack
Scr. Steven McCarthy & Levack
Nvl. Kayt Burgess
Starring: Sofia Banzhaf, Cara Gee, Grace Glowicki, Steven McCarthy, Mark Rendall, Dov Tiefenbach, Jesse Todd

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Backstage within a concert venue, a young man hurriedly attempts to pen a note amidst all the accoutrements which suggest that at any point, a soon-to-be-prepping-to-perform band will be filing in. Sure enough, one by one, they do.

Each time, with each musician, the same thing happens.

At first, the young man is not recognized. Then, he is.

You see, he was, many, many years ago, familiar to all of them - more than familiar, actually, but very, very close. To one of them, he was more intimate than all the rest.

There will be a confrontation. Perhaps even a reckoning.

And there will be a song.

We Forgot To Break Up is a clever, compulsive slice of dramatic life. It builds to a third act that could have, in less skilled creative hands, seemed little more than a glorified music video with an extended preamble. As David Lynch recently proved, week after week in Season 3 of Twin Peaks, there are some final acts that ring-out musically with dramatic/thematic resonance, and do so in ways we seldom see in the movies anymore.

We Forgot To Break Up succeeds in an identical fashion.

It’s a short dramatic film adapted from a novel. Obviously this means that it’s a slice from a much larger work, but happily, the movie feels like a piece unto itself and is bereft of that whiff inherent in short calling-card-styled films meant to announce an eventual feature is round the corner. Though this might indeed be the case here (a short that could become a feature), it's not something that nags at us as the picture unspools. This, is good. So's the film.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

We Forgot To Break Up plays at TIFF 2017

WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2017: Shame Yields Kidnapping

A father and daughter on the precipice.

What Will People Say (2017)
Dir. Iram Haq
Starring: Maria Mozhdah, Adil Hussain, Rohit Saraf, Ekavali Khanna

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The number of times I heard my parents utter the words: "What will people say?" is incalculable. I can't remember a time in my life when it wasn't on their lips and it was usually in reference to some real or perceived offence I committed quite naturally by my very existence and who I naturally was/am as a human being. From early childhood on, I was the living, breathing, walking, talking fuel for this question. It's even a question I heard uttered within the context of pretty much anything that occurred within their sphere of existence in which "what people would say" loomed large.

As a child and adult, it was not only a hurtful question, but even, I daresay, a stupid question. My earliest memories of not giving a shit about what people would say about anything I did or said are as acute now as they were then. I really didn't and don't give a shit what people would/will say. Not so with my parents or frankly anyone who believed that the status quo meant anything at all.

I was not, nor will I ever be a sheep led to slaughter. As such, what people will say is just so much nonsense.

I suspect it's a generational thing, but no matter how many times I heard the question, usually the result of something "shameful" I did or said, I would never have imagined being kidnapped and forced to submit to indoctrination into old world values.

This is precisely what happens to Nisha (Maria Mozhdah), the teenage daughter of hard-working immigrant Pakistanis living in Oslo, Norway. Like any modern kid in the modern world, she goes to school, hangs with friends and hits the nightclubs. Alas, the "normal" life in the western world is completely at odds with her fundamentalist family and when she innocently finds herself in a position where she egregiously flouts their values, she is kidnapped and shipped to Pakistan with an aunt and uncle charged with training her in the ways of being a dutiful daughter (and eventual wife in an arranged marriage).

At first Nisha's life in the "old world" is fraught with subjugation and drudgery, but she slowly begins to connect with her heritage. Sadly, she finds herself in a horrific situation that is not in any way, shape or form her fault, but again she finds herself in a position where she brings "shame" to her family.

And in some cultures, it is perfectly acceptable to kill a child that brings you shame.

What Will People Say proves to be an extremely promising debut feature for Oslo-born actress/art director Iram Haq. Replete with glorious cultural details and stirring family drama, Haq layers her film with a myriad of complexities beneath a solidly simple coat hanger. It is a movie as filled with joy, love and sheer humanity as it is with chilling, suspenseful tension.

At several points, the anxiety displayed is so taut that her direction is worthy of Hitchcock himself. I found myself on the edge of my seat, almost begging and pleading with the character of Nisha to open her eyes to everything that I could see happening, but of course, a great director knows that there's nothing more thrilling than when a central character knows nothing and goes with a flow that we the audience recognize as the wrong direction to take.

There are set pieces which are masterfully directed: scenes and images and the feelings they engendered, that are with me still - mysterious night rides, shocking moments of abandonment, thrilling attempts at escape, a darkness-enshrouded encounter with sexually predatory cops and in one lollapalooza of a father-daughter confrontation, a walk into the wilderness that leads to the edge of a cliff that plummets into the maw of a deadly chasm.

Yes, the Master of Suspense would approve. So do I.

And yes, we must all acknowledge that an "old world" will persist in our lives. What's so sophisticated and mature about Haq's exploration of this is that she provides a balance to the venerable qualities of tradition so that the ebbs and flows, the peaks and valleys of the dramatic action are compulsively driven by that which is clearly both right and wrong about one's heritage.

What people will say ultimately means very little compared to how one conducts oneself based upon values that are discovered and learned by always keeping one's eyes wide open, but where tradition rules the roost, sometimes we all need to prop up our eyelids with toothpicks.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

What Will People Say screens at TIFF 2017

DISAPPEARANCE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2017: Sex, Death & Ice-Fishing in Norway

Disappearing in Norway.

Disappearance (2017)
Dir. Boudewijn Koole
Scr. Jolein Laarman
Starring: Rifka Lodeizen, Elsie de Brauw, Marcus Hanssen, Jakob Oftebro

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I do so enjoy entering a frigid cinematic icebox to revel in the spectacle of a parent and adult child acrimoniously slashing away at each other.

Boudewijn Koole's extraordinary film Disappearance is a magnificent new entry into this time-honoured/tested/proven tradition exemplified most notably by the chilly heartbreak of Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece of mother-daughter sniping, Autumn Sonata. Though Koole's film eschews the glorious histrionics of so many films in this genre - think Piper Laurie chastising Sissy Spacek for revealing her "dirty pillows" in Brian DePalma's Carrie or the horrid Gladys Cooper browbeating Bette Davis into a nervous breakdown in Irving Rapper's Now Voyager - Koole and screenwriter Jolein Laarman serve up plenty of roiling bitterness.

We enter the world of this film via the blazing austerity of a cool white light upon a young woman, a child it seems, as she places her diminutive, but nimble fingers upon the ivory keys of a grand piano. She launches into a soulful virtuoso performance upon the massive stage of a concert hall. Soon after, we move from the proscenium vista to the external panoramic landscape of the snow-covered plains, lakes and hills of Norway. Roos (Rifka Lodeizen) is coming home after a year of traversing the globe as a photojournalist to visit her Mother Louise (Elsie de Brauw) and younger half-brother Bengt (Marcus Hanssen).

This is a family of artists. Roos has the "eye", her middle-aged Mom (the pianist we were first introduced to in the film's opening minutes) clearly has an "ear" (though now she channels her art into teaching music) and young Bengt might have the grandest vision of this trio - he utilizes the natural sounds of water, ice, nature, heartbeats and breath to create electronic musical compositions that soar with soulful invention.

Sister and Brother have a special bond, but Mother and Daughter's relationship is stretched far too tautly - at any moment, we sense that the rubber band that is their familial conjunction will snap upon their respective grips, effecting a pain that smarts, but lasts well beyond the initial paroxysm it causes. That's probably because aching convulsions twixt Mother and Daughter have seemingly existed from that point when Roos first agitated about in the natal gelatin of Louise's womb.

At one point, Roos charges that Mom never sang lullabies to her. Louise pooh-poohs this assertion, but when her now-adult child asks her to sing for her, middle-aged Momma can't think of a single tune. During this wrenching moment, a smile crept upon my face imagining Louise launching into a rendering of one of Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. I was not afforded the literal rendering of this perverse fantasia dancing across my cerebellum, but the notion that she might have belted out one of those rousing "Songs on the Death of Children" seems (seemed) perfectly appropriate.

In so many, many ways, Koole and Laarman's astonishing film might well be a cinematic equivalent to Mahler's immortal song cycle. Death looms large in this Norwegian winter wonderland. When a stag connects with a moving vehicle and staggers off into the woods, we follow a group of locals (including a keen, rifle-toting Louise) as they hunt down the mighty beast to put it out of its misery. Later on, in post-coital bliss (in the back of a van parked against a snowy vista on a frozen lake in which they've been ice fishing - what Canadian doesn't know this activity/setting all too well?), Roos admits to her old friend and lover Johnny (Jakob Oftebro) that she is dying. Nothing beats a good round of sexual gymnastics than an après orgasm cigarette and an admission of critical illness. (Jesus, I love European cinema!)

Healing and redemption are round the corner, but they prove to be fleeting. The film makes us (and its characters) work for it. Nothing in life comes easy. So too should it be in cinema. This is a film that teases and tortures the raw nerve endings of the human condition and it constantly finds ways to take our collective breath away when we least expect it. The final third of the film had me shuddering, long, long after its final end title credit. It's with me still and makes me thankful for the life I have had and the loves I have experienced (and continue to be touched by).

Though Disappearance draws considerable parallels to Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sontata, I cannot help but think of the words spoken by dying Agnes in the Swedish Master's Cries and Whispers:

"Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few minutes, I can experience perfection and I feel profoundly grateful to my life, which gives me so much."

No arguments from this fella'.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Disappearance is screening at TIFF 2017

SID AND NANCY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Classic Punk Biopic on Criterion Collection

Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as punk lovers
Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in Cox classic.

Sid and Nancy (1986)
Dir. Alex Cox
Scr. Cox and Abbe Wool
Starring: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Drew Schofield, David Hayman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It seems inevitable that the wildly, strangely romantic tragic biopic Sid and Nancy would be Alex Cox's sophomore feature after his astonishing 1984 debut with the punk masterpiece Repo Man. Veering from an almost neo-realist 70s-style nihilism to a whacked-out druggie comedy to a borderline surreal presentation of a world gone completely nuts, Repo Man now feels like the ultimate 80s American film. Cox's picture, with its aimless punk played by Emilio Estevez finding his niche as a repo man with the sage Harry Dean Stanton, virtually spat in the face of the feel-goody-two-shoes of the execrable John Hughes teen dramedies and the sprawling, noisy, state-of-the-art macho action and adventure films that populated that often-wretched decade of cinema.

The hallucinogenic properties Cox brought to bear upon his first feature continued unabated with this grim, grimy love story twixt the legendary Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman), bassist of The Sex Pistols and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). Though the screenplay by Cox and co-writer Abbe Wool hits many tried and true biopic beats, the film ultimately excels during its many flights of fancy and the clearly oddball properties of a loving, domestic partnership against the backdrop of addiction, substance abuse and the sheer anarchy of the late 70s period of punk rock.

The film begins with the early rise to success of the band managed by Malcolm McLaren (David Hayman) and doesn't waste time getting Sid together with Nancy. They're young, they're in love and they're hooked on heroin. They're also inseparable - so much so that their couple-status begins to upset the applecart of the band. Once The Sex Pistols are on tour in America, things go from bad to worse. The group breaks up. Sid and Nancy continue as a couple whilst Sid attempts to launch a solo career.

And then, tragedy strikes in the squalidly legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Love hurts and it most definitely doesn't last forever and death - violent death at that, has a bad habit of ending the joy and most of all, the pain.

As with Repo Man, Cox has a definitely unique eye on America and in Sid and Nancy, he delivers a skewed world through the eyes of these loving drug addicts (thanks to the astonishing work of cinematographer Roger Deakins and especially, Gary Oldman's star-making performance).

One of the most poignantly addled moments in the film comes when Nancy declares: "I hate my fuckin' life." Loving Sid responds: "This is just a rough patch. Things'll be much better when we get to America, I promise." Nancy looks blankly at him and matter-of-factly responds: "We're in America. We've been here a week."

Oh yeah.

Love hurts, alright. Especially when you don't know where you are. Or who you are.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Sid and Nancy is available as DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION on the Criterion Collection in a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray, an alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray, Two audio commentaries: one from 1994 featuring cowriter Abbe Wool, actors Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, cultural historian Greil Marcus, filmmakers Julien Temple and Lech Kowalski, and musician Eliot Kidd; the other from 2001 featuring cowriter-director Alex Cox and actor Andrew Schofield England’s Glory, a 1987 documentary on the making of Sid & Nancy, Infamous 1976 Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols on British television, Rare telephone interview from 1978 with Sid Vicious, Interviews with Vicious and Nancy Spungen from the 1980 documentary D.O.A.: A Right of Passage, Archival interviews and footage, plus an essay by author Jon Savage and a 1986 piece compiled by Cox about Vicious, Spungen, and the making of the film.

Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Haunting portrait of French Resistance during wartime at TIFF Bell Lightbox Summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and available on the Criterion Collection.

A Nazi soliloquizes to silent listeners in Melville's debut.

Le Silence de la mer - The Silence of the Sea (1949)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Nvl. Vercors (Jean Bruder)
Starring: Howard Vernon, Nicole Stéphane, Jean-Marie Robain

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are many forms of resistance during an occupation. As Jean-Pierre Melville's debut feature film proves, the most powerful of all is silence. When an old man (Jean-Marie Robain) and his niece (Nicole Stéphane) are forced to billet Nazi officer Werner von Ebrennac (Howard Vernon) in their own home, they choose to contribute to the French resistance of German occupation by going about their lives as if their unwelcome guest doesn't exist.

Silence proves to be a formidable weapon. Le Silence de la mer is based on the secretly published novel by Jean Bruder under the nom-de-plume "Vercors", published and circulated in France during the Occupation. So horrific is the power of Melville's adaptation that the film succeeds as one of the most chilling anti-war films ever made and this from a picture that seldom leaves the confines of a cozy, bourgeois country living-room. What a gloriously mad first feature film, but one that radiates the sheer abundant cinematic glory that is Jean-Pierre Melville.

The first two-thirds of the movie involves the old man and his niece sitting quietly - the old man reading and/or smoking his pipe whilst his niece intensely embroiders. The Nazi officer pays them nightly visits. He acknowledges and respects their resistance, their cold, borderline cruel silence.

Still, this does not deter him from trying to establish a human connection. He wanders about the living-room, speaking in soliloquy. His words are always gentle, mannered and cultured. It doesn't take long to figure out he isn't the usual garden variety Nazi Officer. It seems that Werner von Ebrennac has the soul of an artist and he holds a deep love and admiration for French culture.

Many of his monologues are heart-achingly beautiful observations on art, language, music and literature. He even reveals tidbits about his life in Germany, some very personal. When he tells the story about his one great love and how he was eventually driven from her when she displayed a deep-seeded cruelty he could have never before imagined, we are allowed to see the pain and disappointment in his eyes. We are allowed to feel for him as a human being. His hosts, however, remain unmoved - at least on the surface. No matter what he says, the old man and his niece remain impassive - and, silent.

Their silence does indeed border on cruelty, though our Nazi doesn't see it that way. He acknowledges their right to silence. Astonishingly he seems to welcome it as the right of any countryman to resist their occupation at the hands of an enemy.

He occasionally veers into political territory - dangerous territory indeed since he betrays considerable naiveté and in so doing he attempts to provide a perverse justification for Germany's occupation of France. This eventually proves to be his biggest mistake because eventually he comes face-to-face with the true reality of his country's motives, their final solution.

Eventually a word will indeed be spoken from the "resistance". When it comes, it's excruciatingly painful. I personally find myself gasping and on the verge of weeping every time I experience this moment.

There's something so perfect, so indelible about this motion picture. Melville, a French Jew who was a resistance fighter during WWII, made this film not long after the war. Given the horror, danger and cruelty he experienced, one might have expected a very different film on his feature debut, but no, he is, after all Jean-Pierre Melville. Le Silence de la mer seems to set the stage perfectly for the compassion and humanity he displayed throughout his career.

He's achieved the impossible. He allows us to see cruelty in resistance and humanity in a Nazi. Just thinking about this makes me want to weep with joy.

And sadness.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea) plays at at the TIFF Bell Lightbox Summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville". It is also available on a gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray and DVD that comes complete with a new high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, Melville's first film, the short 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), a new interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, Code Name Melville (2008), a seventy-six-minute documentary on Melville’s time in the French Resistance and his films about it, Melville Steps Out of the Shadows (2010), a forty-two-minute documentary about Le silence de la mer, an interview with Melville from 1959, a new English subtitle translation, plus a booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and a selection from Rui Nogueira’s 1971 book "Melville on Melville".

L'ARGENT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Bresson's final film gets the Criterion treatment.

Robert Bresson's last film might be his greatest...
and the Dude made one great picture after another.

L'Argent (1983)
dir. Robert Bresson
Starring: Christian Patey, Caroline Lang, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Vincent Risterucci

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Robert Bresson died in 1999. During his forty years as a director, he made only 15 feature films. He was uncompromising.

On one hand, it seems disgraceful it was so difficult for him to secure financing. On the other, when one looks at filmmakers of equal genius (albeit very different filmmakers), the ease with which they were able to grind out film after film left quite a few stinkers in their canons and as their careers progressed into their august years, the work itself adhered strictly to the law of diminishing returns. For me, Ford and Capra (who, in fairness often took gun-for-hire gigs with studios) are those who fall into this category. There were exceptions to the rule like John Huston, who made his fair share of stinkers, but in his last years generated several terrific pictures and in the case of The Dead, his last film, a bonafide masterpiece.

L'Argent was Bresson's last film and made 15 years before his death. I hate to imagine what those final 15 years were like NOT making a film, but one hopes he took some solace in the fact that this was exactly the sort of final work that every artist dreams of leaving behind.

Not only is this picture the ultimate Bresson film - a culmination of his deeply original approach to cinematic storytelling - but is, in fact, a deeply important film; artistically and morally. This is a film that, on its surface seems utterly stripped of redemption for its lead character, for the world and finally, for humanity. This, I believe, IS purely surface. L'Argent may well be one of the great humanist works of the 20th century - up there with the greatest films of Jean Renoir, if not in a stratosphere far above.

While Bresson's work was always secular in its humanism, there was also an adherence to faith - lapsed or otherwise and importantly, never in the sense of religious humanism. L'Argent presents a world where any sense of faith is betrayed and/or quashed and yet, in spite of this (and in spite of the almost cold, calculatingly precise manner in which the tale is rendered), this might well be Bresson's most emotional and affecting film - his most profoundly moving work.

It should probably come as no surprise that L'Argent is based on a literary work by Leo Tolstoy - a writer who practically defined the modern art of narrative (as I'd argue Bresson did with cinema), a great thinker/philosopher (again, not unlike Bresson) and a believer in both faith and a higher power, but ultimately eschewing the corruption and hypocrisy of organized religion (and again, Bresson being cinema's Tolstoy in this regard). Where Bresson and Tolstoy appear to part, at least literally, is that Bresson chose to base his film upon only Part I of Tolstoy's novella "The Forged Coupon" and not touch Part II of the work - the part wherein redemption was sought and found.

For Bresson's great film, this was a brave, brilliant and strangely apt choice.

There is, finally, something mysteriously affecting in Bresson's almost under-a-microscope study of how one immoral action sets off a chain of events, domino-like, of one unethical act after the other until we are faced with the ultimate evil, actions of the most viciously immoral kind - conducted with no remorse, no feeling (not even hate, it seems) and certainly - no redemption.

The tale Bresson spins is relatively faithful to Tolstoy's (though updated to contemporary France). A forged bill is passed on to a hapless soul who is powerless to fight the punishment he receives after unwittingly passing on the fake money. Losing his job and any reasonable prospect of employment to support his wife and child, he takes on the job of a getaway driver during a heist. He is caught, sentenced to prison and loses his child to a fatal illness and his wife who decides to move on and begin a new life. Upon his eventual release from prison, he has nothing. His soul seems drained and his actions become increasingly violent.

Upon committing an utterly heinous and unpardonable sin/crime, he calmly turns himself in - not out of redemption or guilt or compassion, but to further an opportunity to be incarcerated with the person who passed him the bill in the first place - to exact cold, calculated revenge (and by this point, without even the extreme emotion of hatred - revenge becomes almost a base need).

It is here where Bresson offers one of the most astonishing final images and cleaves it off literally with a picture cut to black that is so exquisite, so precise, so emotionally and viscerally powerful, that experiencing it invokes a physical response that is literally breathtaking.

Tolstoy offered us redemption. Bresson denies it to us. Two different approaches to the same material, however, yield similar results. We so desperately cling to the hope that redemption will come to Bresson's central character, that it's our hope, that is, finally, the redemption. Bresson allows us to seek humanity in ourselves through the inhuman actions of another.

This is a masterpiece.

To not see it, to not acknowledge this, to not revisit this great work again and again and again is to deny cinema and the power of cinema - one that even Tolstoy himself in his final years lamented not having an opportunity to tackle.

Cinema is a great gift.

Bresson, however, was the greatest gift to cinema and L'Argent is his greatest film.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

L'Argent is now available via the Criterion Collection with a new restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, the press conference from the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, a new video essay by film scholar James Quandt, the trailer, a new English subtitle translation, an essay by critic Adrian Martin and a newly expanded 1983 interview with director Robert Bresson.

OUTRAGE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ida Lupino's Groundbreaking 1950 Film About Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath on 35mm at TIFF Bell Lightbox

If you're rich, you can attend a special "Patrons Circle Silver + Event" at TIFF Bell Lightbox (July 10) of Ida Lupino's Outrage, the groundbreaking 1950 film about a woman's sexual assault and its aftermath. According to the TIFF bumph:

"In our continuing mission to transform the way people see the world through film, we are pleased to invite Patron Circle Members at the Silver Level and above to attend Outrage..."

Lovely!

So, what this means is that you can come to this special event IF you are a Silver+ patron of TIFF. So pull out your cheque book and feel free to shell out: $4000 for a Silver Membership or $6000 for a Gold Membership or $8000 for a Platinum Membership or, if you're especially well-heeled, please cough up $12000 for a Leadership Membership.

Here's what you'll get:

"The evening begins with a cocktail reception on the stunning TIFF Bell Lightbox rooftop terrace overlooking Toronto's skyline. Continuing in-cinema, the courageous activist, author, and educator Jane Doe will join us to delve into the film's subject matter through the lens of her expertise on sexual violence and its systemic connections. Be a part of the change you want to see in the world, and join us for what is sure to be an engaging, informative, and inspiring event."

Lovely!

If you can cough up $4K to $12K, you'll have the opportunity - just BEFORE a movie about RAPE - to slosh back cocktails whilst gazing upon TIFF's "stunning" view of the Toronto Skyline. If you can cough up $4K to $12K, you'll have the opportunity to join "the courageous activist, author, and educator Jane Doe" as she delves into film... "through the lens of her expertise on sexual violence and its systemic connections." If you can pull $4K to $12K out of your keister, you can "Be a part of the change you want to see in the world." (If you can manage to dredge up $2K for a Bronze Membership, you are welcome to attend, but alas, you will NOT be allowed to slosh back cocktails whilst gazing upon TIFF's "stunning" view of the Toronto Skyline just BEFORE a movie about RAPE.)

If you CAN'T cough up $4K to $12K to attend the July 10 event, you can STILL see Outrage on Thursday, August 24 during the TIFF Cinematheque retrospective "Ida Lupino: Independent Woman". There will be no cocktail party and, thus far, no word on a special presentation from Jane Doe. You will, however, eventually get to see this important film on 35mm, even IF you aren't loaded.

Lovely! The film, as always, should be the thing.

In 1950 Ida Lupino directed this important film
about sexual assault and its aftermath.

Outrage (1950)
Dir. Ida Lupino
Scr. Lupino, Malvin Wald, Collier Young
Starring: Mala Powers, Tod Andrews, Robert Clarke

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The grim stocky lunch counter clerk has had a long hard day serving up joe and burgers to a steady stream of warehouse district workers. Night is falling and though he tries to wipe the dank sweat from his pudgy face and hideously scarred neck, the stink of standing for hours on end has, no doubt, permeated into his grubby clothes and sticks to him like flies to shit.

Yeah, he's dirty, but not just in body. He's foul to the depths of his soul. And he needs to blow off some steam. He deserves it. He's a man, after all. But he is a man alone and has little more amidst the ennui of post-War America than to slink home to whatever squalid digs await him.

But hark! Opportunity comes sidling round the corner.

Whistling happily, striding along the empty alleyways after staying late at work, is pretty, young bookkeeper Ann Walton (Mala Powers). She's happy and confident. Why wouldn't she be? She's a strong, independent woman, heading home and infused with happiness that she's soon to be married to Jim Owens (Robert Clarke), a sweet young man who has just got a raise. Both of them are looking forward to an upwardly mobile life, eventually creating hearth, home and family - together.

Ah, if only life was so easy. Ann is about to be raped and everything she holds sacred is about to come crashing down upon her.

Welcome to the stunning, groundbreaking portrait of sexual assault and its aftermath from director Ida Lupino. Outrage was released in 1950 by RKO. It was only the second film ever made in Hollywood (the first was 1948's Johnny Belinda) to deal with this subject matter and though the themes and content would be enough to solidify its historical significance, it's an astonishing achievement of film art.

Lupino was a great director. She made six films (including Outrage, The Hitch-Hiker and The Bigamist) through the independent company she founded with her then-husband Collier Young and they stand as a testament to her commitment to presenting films about social issues - often about women and from a decidedly female standpoint. Here she brings all her vision to bear. It's a truly dazzling picture.

Lupino's eye is impeccable. Though this is clearly a product of its time (the word "rape", nor the phrase "sexual assault" are ever used), the universal properties of the film's perspective are, sadly and powerfully, as relevant today as they were in 1950.

When we first see the rapist and his initial encounter with Ann, his macho swagger is unmistakeable. There's a strange "innocence" to his flirting, at least initially. After all, she's a pretty lady patronizing his lunch counter and he notes that she's purchasing two takeout containers of cake to bring as a lunchtime treat for her "boyfriend".

He seems friendly at first, a bit of good-natured joshing about her dumping the dude and dating him instead. But ultimately, it's not good-natured at all. He's a fucking creep. He even begins to brag about his manly prowess. Brilliantly, Lupino allows the scene to play almost matter-of-factly, at least from Ann's perspective. She politely ignores his entreaties. She's a woman, after all, and must surely be hit on by most guys with a dick twixt their legs. Her response seems innocently a matter of course. What's not right is the way the clerk stares at her. She's a sex object - pure and simple.

During a seemingly sweet moment when she sits on a crowded park bench with Jim as he proposes marriage to her, Lupino focuses upon prying eyes. This time, it's not a guy who looks disapprovingly about the couple's open expression of love, but a woman. Society's disapproval is everywhere. Even after Ann is raped, disapproval comes under the guise of caring.

The rape scene, as directed by Lupino, still packs a punch - maybe even more now than it did in 1950. Conjuring every available filmmaking tool, she creates a visual and aural assault upon us as Ann is stalked through the labyrinthine warehouse district - canted angles, expressionistic shadows, eerily unsettling God-shots and the sounds of clicking heels on the pavement, leering wolf-whistles, the clatter of a tin can smashing on the pavement and a faulty blaring truck horn to drown out the sounds of her whimpering as the hulking mass of male dominance looms above her - to take from her what he wants.

Much later on in the film, after Ann's been assaulted and left town, there's a sequence almost more powerful than the harrowing rape scene Lupino previously depicts. Here Ann has tried to escape the "shame" and whispers her assault has engendered. She lives peacefully in a rural California enclave, surrounded by good, decent people, including Rev. Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews), a veteran haunted by the horrors of war who seeks his own escape by offering compassion, solace and ministry to those in need.

Under sunny skies, an outdoor harvest dance ensues. Ann is among friends and for the first time in a long time, she has some peace, some much-needed solace and company. What she doesn't need is a handsome predator, demanding a dance, insisting upon her attention. Yes, this man's pursuit is "innocent", but Lupino infuses his desires with a creepy, almost matter-of-fact predatory tone.

He wants what he wants.

He thinks he can take it.

And he doesn't understand the meaning of the word "No."

Outrage doesn't let up. Nor, it seems, do predators.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Outrage plays in 35mm in the TIFF Bell Lightbox series "Ida Lupino: Independent Woman".

BEFORE ANYTHING YOU SAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Searing Domestic Two-Hander Soars

Kristen Harris and Darcy Fehr: Verbal Domestic Slug-Fest

Before Anything You Say (2016)
Dir. Shelagh Carter
Scr. Deborah Schnitzer
Starring: Kristen Harris, Darcy Fehr, John Bluethner, Toni Reimer, Graham Ashmore

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's much to be said for the dazzling cinematic potential of watching two great actors verbally slugging it out against the backdrop of claustrophobic domestic strife and Shelagh Carter's Before Anything You Say does not disappoint in the long-honoured snipe-fest sweepstakes. Carter's previous outing Passionflower, a harrowing portrait of mental illness, solidified her position as one of Canada's leading practitioners of searingly glorious psychological melodrama and this new film manages to up the ante by delving into territory that blends the delectable properties of 70s "menopause movies" (typified by the likes of Gilbert Cates's Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams) and the sorrow-laden relationship gymnastics of Alain Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amour).

Isobel (Kristen Harris) and Jack (Darcy Fehr) find themselves at loggerheads during a vacation in Paris. Jack has an opportunity to move to Bangkok and take a job that will see him working towards fighting against human trafficking. This means that Isobel must either drop her own career and join him or stay behind in their glorious house in their beloved winter city. Add to this mix of emotions is his adult son's disappearance.

Deborah Schnitzer's fine screenplay is well served by Carter's rich mise-en-scene which is supported by the sumptuous cinematography of veteran cameraman Ousama Rawi ("The Tudors", "Borgia" and such classic 70s films as Don Siegel's The Black Windmill and Edward Dmytryk's The Human Factor) and Taavo (The Hanging Garden) Soodor's impeccable production design.

One of the more perverse aspects of the picture is that so much of the film, set in Paris, is relegated to the scintillating verbal jousting between the couple in the cold atmosphere of an upscale hotel room and a touristy cocktail lounge. Here we are in a city of lights and romance, yet the film focuses its lens upon the claustrophic sniping of two people who are on the verge of a total breakdown.

Keri Latimer's haunting score and editor Chad Tremblay's hypnotic cutting both contribute immeasurably to Carter's pain-infused drama. Though this one-hour drama is lean and mean, one feels like it could well have sustained itself for even longer. This is one picture that would have benefitted greatly from overstaying its welcome.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Before Anything You Say premieres in competition at the 2017 Madrid International Film Festival

LOSING GROUND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Milestone Cinematheque Release of the work of Kathleen Collins is one of the most important contributions to the history of African-American Cinema and films by women. This is work to be lauded, appreciated and cherished.

Valuable addition to the history of African-American Cinema

Losing Ground (1982)
Dir. Kathleen Collins
Starring: Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones,
Maritza Rivera, Billie Allen, Gary Bolling, Noberto Kerner

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The first image in the astonishing 1982 drama Losing Ground by Kathleen Collins is that of Sara Rogers (Seret Scott), an African-American university philosophy professor, standing behind a lectern in front of a blackboard with, to the left of her, the words "existential thought" and to the right, the names of "Sartre" and "Camus". Correct me if I'm wrong, but other than the groundbreaking work of Charles (Killer of Sheep) Burnett, one can't think of too many (if any) films about the contemporary urban African-American experience during the late 70s/early 80s (and even beyond) in which we are not assailed by images of gangland violence and the sounds of gunfire.

Sarah's first words in the film are mid-lecture:

"...but in Sartre The question of absurdity has clear historical antecedents. For one, a violent need to explain war. Camus, Sartre, the whole existential movement is a consequence, or perhaps, a better way to put it, is a reaction to the consequences of war."

Gee whiz! We have a movie that opens without a side-burned soul brother barking out, "Take this, Honky Pig!" and blasting several rounds of buckshot out of a humungous automatic firearm.

I mean, really. What world are we in here?

The film then cuts to a close up of an engaged African American male student as Sarah's lecture continues off-camera:

"The natural order," she declares. "The natural order, if there is such a thing, has been violated." And then, as her lecture on existentialism continues, the camera slowly pulls back to reveal a whole classroom comprised of young African-American, Asian, Hispanic and yes, even lily-white students. Many of them are clearly engaged in the lecture, but Collins wisely includes a young man more interested in grooving to some sounds on his Sony Walkman. It's little touches like this that are amongst a myriad of exquisite moments of sheer filmmaking pleasure we derive from this film that give us considerable cause to grieve that her work is so little known and that she was tragically taken from this Earth by cancer at the age of 48.

As both a screenwriter and director, it's obvious that Collins was the real thing. The story she chooses to tell here is a simple one, but always compelling and always surprising. Her central character is indeed a beloved professor and she is committed to her students as she is to researching and writing scholarly works. She lives, in apparent bliss, with artist Victor (Bill Gunn of Ganja and Hess fame), her handsome, virile husband who has recently moved from abstract expressionism to realism and convinces her to rent a house in the country for the summer vacation. Something is nagging at Sara, though. A paper she's writing sparks a need to explore, but unlike Victor, whose surface dalliances are with art (though eventually with a beautiful Puerto Rican model), she's looking deep inside.

What she finds is as heartbreaking as it is liberating.

Yes, a movie actually exists in which we see that
African-Americans can live in comfort and go to libraries.

Goddamn, this is a great picture! It's so wonderful to be plunged into the world of intelligent and artistic intellectuals - people who care deeply about both learning and expression.

For example, one of Sara's students is studying film. At one point she is genuinely pleased, yet perplexed as to why he's so interested in taking philosophy courses. George (Gary Bolling), an eager young African-American cineaste clearly wishes to broaden his intellectual horizons, but he is equally obsessed with casting her in his senior film school project.

Looking at her through a lens eyepiece, he says: "You look just like Pearl McCormack in The Scar of Shame, Philadelphia Coloured Players, 1927." That we have a character citing a very cool movie from the silent era with an all-black cast (and one of the few films of that time, or any time, to deal with contemporary African-Americans) is a really great touch. That the character tries to tempt Sara further by equating her with Dorothy Dandridge as a black teacher in Gerald Mayer's 1953 MGM "social-issue" picture Bright Road (which also starred Harry Belafonte as a school principal) is the cherry on the chocolate sundae that is Collins's screenplay.

Not only do we get some fascinating character subtext, but some delectable movie-geek trivia (for those of us so inclined).

And yes, Sara eventually agrees to act in George's student film. It is, you see, an arty cinematic treatise on the "Frankie and Johnnie" story (you know the one, the woman who finds out that her man is untrue and shoots him dead). It's her work in the film that opens Sara's eyes to some hard truths about her life.

Of course, there does need to be an actor to play the cheatin' Johnny and he reveals himself as George's Uncle Duke (Duane Jones, the African-American hero of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead), a dashing out-of-work actor who once studied to be a minister and is well versed in both performing and the words of the Lord. This tall, handsome figure is stylishly adorned in a fancy fedora and cape and he first meets Sara, not on the movie set, but in the university library. He approaches and asks why she's reading with such intense concentration. She replies she's doing research for a paper on ecstatic experience.

He says: "From a theological perspective, no doubt?"

"No, she responds. "I am, however, using religious ecstasy as a point of departure."

He quips, ever-so-charmingly and brilliantly: "Whose? Saint Thomas Aquinas and his rational repression of the experience? Or Saint Theresa, who was a truly remarkable woman? Or we can go back a little further to the deviant Gnostics, who were really pre-Christian in their thinking."

Yeah! This is my idea of romance! Bring it on!

He asks Sara what the thesis of her paper is.

"That the religious boundaries around ecstasy are too narrow."

He nods. "Christianity has had a devastating effect upon man as an intuitive creature," the charming Uncle Duke concludes.

Yes, the movie is replete with strange academic quipping. It's like a Howard Hawks comedy set against the backdrops of intellectuals and artists.

I'm down with that.

Not only is Collins's screenplay full of intelligent writing that delivers a marvellous sense of place and time, but as a director, her mise-en-scène is rife with a natural cinematic "vocabulary". It's never showy, but effectively subtle. When Collins presents Sara at points when the character is in a totally take-charge sphere, the frame always places Sara front, centre and almost bigger than life. When Sara is "subjugated", either by her husband or societal mores, she appears dwarfed by all around her.

Losing Ground is a great film. Yes, its meagre budget occasional betrays a few glitches, but for the most part the film is beautifully shot and infused with natural performances. It's as much a film of its time as it is also prescient and ultimately, well ahead of its time.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Losing Ground is a two-disc Blu-Ray and DVD release via Milestone Film and Video's "The Milestone Cinematheque" label and includes a commentary track by Professors LaMonda Horton-Stallings and Terri Francis, a 2015 Theatrical Trailer, Video Interviews with cinematographer Ronald K. Gray (46:30), leading lady Seret Scott (40:17) and daughter Nina Lorez Collins (26:24), an Interview with Kathleen Collins by Phyllis R. Klotman (1982, Color, 22 mins, Courtesy of Indiana University Black Film Archive), Transmagnifican Dambamuality (1976, 7 mins, B&W) Gray's celebrated lost student film.