I can be very critical of my adopted city but there are also some things about it that I love, and one of them happened last month: TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival.
King Street, heart of the festival |
It happens every September and we always go. Even our very first September, a month after arriving in Canada. Even in the lockdown years, when we attended the festival virtually. It has become close to my heart. Wall-to-wall movies for two weeks. I'm not a massive film buff in ordinary times, but TIFF is not ordinary times.
That first September in Toronto (good grief, 14 years ago...) I went all by myself in the middle of a weekday to see Submarine, whose director of photography, Erik Wilson, was (is) a close friend from when we lived in Brighton. I loved the movie, a sort of coming-of-age story about a young boy in Swansea, Wales, but got a bit tearful from homesickness, seeing both the UK and Erik's name onscreen. I enjoyed the Q&A afterward with the witty director, Richard Ayoade, who had little patience for inane questions. "Why did you decide to film it in Wales?" asked someone who clearly couldn't think of any other way to get his voice heard. "Well," said Mr. Ayoade, "It was a lot easier to make it look Welsh that way." General laughter. That poor film student cringing in the dark.
TIFF feels like a holiday at home. Nothing is quite the usual. Going to a movie at one o'clock on a Monday afternoon? Of course. Midnight on Tuesday? Yes! Setting out beach chairs on Bloor Street to queue for rush tickets? Sure! Subjugating my irritation at cars blocking bike lanes? Even that, if it's a limo delivering Antonio Banderas and Pedro Almodovar to a premiere, as happened some years back. I avoided running into them and bit back my remonstrance to their driver. Color me starstruck. It's TIFF!
The toughest part of TIFF is navigating the website to get tickets. This year Simon and I had a TIFF angel (thank you, Yujia!) who did the job for us and even found us tickets to premiere showings. My favourite: Meet the Barbarians, directed by and starring Julie Delpy, about the people of a small Breton village who decide to host a refugee family. They are promised Ukrainians but at the last minute get Syrians. Predictable outcome but in a good way, and funny, with well-rounded characters. (I'm trying not to say 'heartwarming' but unfortunately failing. It is very heartwarming.) Oddly free of religion. In an interview afterward with TIFF director Cameron Bailey, Julie Delpy revealed that the village in the film was one where she visited extended family as a child.
Snap back: Julie Delpy photographs fans photographing her. Cameron Bailey, TIFF director, on the right |
Those interviews afterward, 'talkbacks' and 'Q & A's, the appearance of actors corralled on the red carpet or free-range on the sidewalk, are part of what makes TIFF so special. Perhaps it's the same for all film festivals, but TIFF is the only one I know. Why would I go to any other? This one has everything (other than the Rocky Mountains and the Côte d'Azur, but let's not quibble). This year, thanks to Yujia-- our TIFF sorcerer-- we spent a lot of time on King Street, the heart of the festival and site of most of the 'red carpet' events. Normally a busy downtown thoroughfare, a stretch of the road is blocked off from traffic for four days to accommodate milling fans and roaming stars. At one point we found our progress halted while Spiderman and his entourage ambled past, and another day we got caught up in a mass of snapping cellphones trying to capture Selena Gomez talking about her new film, Emilia Pérez. My friend Lynda and I tried to squeeze past another crowd madly taking photos. "Who is it?" we asked first one person, then another. Shrugs all around. No one knew; they just stretched arms up and captured what images they could. (Later we found out it was Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry coming out of the premiere for his new movie The Cut.)
Is anybody out there? (Yes--Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry) |
Selena Gomez speaks |
We saw other movies, too: Hard Truths (well-titled; it is grim) and afterward we heard from its director Mike Leigh and some of the cast members. Mike Leigh is a proper curmudgeon, it turns out, not the gently wise guru I imagined him to be.
Mike Leigh, curmudgeon |
Mike Leigh and cast of Hard Truths |
At the opposite end of the filmic spectrum we watched Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a debut feature by Laura Piani. It's adorable and partly set and filmed at Paris's Shakespeare & Company bookstore-- worth seeing for that alone. (In the Q & A Piani said that in order to use the shop they had to do all their filming at night.) Afterward Simon and I hung out in front of the cinema chatting with friends we'd bumped into, and Laura Piani came wandering past. I told her how much we had enjoyed her film and she thanked us and asked our names and where we were from and posed for a selfie with me. Not far behind her came one of the actresses in the film, Elizabeth Crowther, a Londoner, who stood and chatted with us for quite a while, eventually asking about the best route to walk to her hotel. Luckily our friend Anne had a spare map which Liz (as she introduced herself) accepted.
Laura Piani, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life |
Laura and me :) |
Liz Crowther, actor in Jane Austen (and a Londoner) plus our friends Anne and Will |
There is something a bit ironic about my growing up in LA yet being thrilled to cavort with film folks here in far-off Toronto. In LA I don't care; Hollywood is an industry and some people work in it and everyone has a story about being an extra or sitting next to a movie star in a restaurant. Maybe because with TIFF, the time span is compressed: just two weeks out of the year. Or maybe it is because the red carpet that Toronto extends seems somehow to embrace the fans as well as the stars and the joy of it takes over the whole city. King Street, the heart of the festival, glitters and shines especially brightly--food trucks and outdoor seating and free jellybeans-- but the glow extends far beyond. Anyway who can resist free jellybeans? Maybe LA should give it a try.
Cast of Millers in Marriage, after seeing the completed film for the first time |