The following assessments of films screening today at the Toronto International Film Festival, rated on a system of 0 to 4 stars, are by Liam Lacey, Rick Groen, Brad Wheeler, James Adams, Jennie Punter and Mark Peranson.
Caché (Hidden) ***
Michael Haneke (Austria)
One of Michael Haneke's favourite themes is the hidden violence of middle-class life, and this subtly provocative film, which took the Grand Prize at Cannes, is one of his most best. A TV host (Daniel Auteuil) receives a series of tapes that show he is being monitored by someone with a camera. The tapes begin to threaten his comfortable life with his wife (Juliette Binoche) and son, and he believes it is linked to an Algerian refugee child whom he knew in childhood. L.L. (6:45 p.m., Paramount 4)
Fateless ***
Lajos Koltai (Hungary, Germany, U.K.)
Precisely adapted by Imre Kertesz from his autobiographical novel, Fateless initially comes across as the kind of film made to win awards, but it dares to aestheticize the concentration-camp experience in a more provocative, and successful, manner than Schindler's List. Cinematographer Lajos Koltai's directorial debut follows 14-year-old Gyorgy's descent from relative affluence to Auschwitz and Buchenwald, filmed as a poetic accumulation of seemingly random events of torture and kindness alike. Four years in the making, Fateless is a daringly crafted, deeply affecting work of art that unblinkingly confronts the psychological and physical issues of survival. M.P. (6 p.m., Ryerson)
Manderlay ***
Lars von Trier (Denmark)
Love or hate him, or both at once, von Trier has a gift for hitting Americans' dilemmas in disturbing new ways.
In this sequel to Dogville, he uses the same theatrical devices and the same characters, with Bryce Dallas Howard reprising Nicole Kidman's role as Grace, the gangster's daughter. This time, she ends up on the plantation of Manderlay, where she uses her father's gangsters for help reform the black workers (including Danny Glover), who still believe they are slaves. Ugly as it often is, the film's shock tactics make the insistent point that the United States is a culture of two distinct castes, based on skin colour. But as the American critics keep pointing out, what does he know? He's never even visited there. L.L. (2 p.m., Elgin)
The Notorious Bettie Page ***
Mary Harron (USA)
The revelation here is Gretchen Mol's astonishing turn as Bettie Page (aka the Queen of Curves), the pinup star who titillated the American male libido for much of the fifties, then retired at the height of her fame to a life of seclusion and Bible study in California. Mol has spent most of the last seven years trying to live up to the hype that attended her famous appearance as a Vanity Fair cover girl early (too early) in her career. If enough people see this film, directed by Canadian-born Mary Harron ( I Shot An dy Warhol, American Psycho), that faux pas should get well and truly buried: Mol pushes way past impersonation to triumphantly incarnate Page's unique amalgam of sauciness and innocence, stoicism and poignance, fun and pain. In its refusal to serve up easy, flashback-driven explanations or cheap psychologizing, Harron's movie could almost be called an anti-biopic biopic. J.A. (9 p.m., Ryerson Theatre)
The Proposition ***
John Hillcoat (Australia/U.K.)
From screenwriter-rocker Nick Cave and director John Hillcoat comes an Australian western so brutish as to make HBO's Deadwood look like Disneyland. A strong ensemble cast is led by Guy Pearce, an Eastwoodian marauder faced with a dire moral dilemma: whether to kill his psychotic older brother in order to save the life of his half-witted younger one. The severe deal is offered by a local law enforcer (Ray Winstone) brought from England to establish some semblance of order to the dusty, fly-ridden Outback of the 1880s. Not for the squeamish. B.W. (10:30 a.m., Paramount 4)
Festival **½
Annie Griffin (U.K.)
Bedroom shenanigans, petty back-stabbing and the earnest quest for truth in theatre are backstage stories told in this fast-paced, hilariously brutal yet often touching ensemble film set during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A condescending, egomaniacal British TV comedy star and his overworked manager, a sexy scheming comedienne and an alcoholic Irish standup comic, a Canadian experimental theatre troupe and a lonely upper-class housewife, a small-town girl with a one-woman show about Dorothy Wordsworth and a priest who "confesses" onstage, are a few of the memorable players. J.P. (3:15 p.m., Paramount 1)
Free Zone **½
Amos Gitai (Israel, France, Spain, Belgium)
Gitai, a veteran chronicler of Israel's contradictions, created this story of a young American woman (Natalie Portman) who, after a traumatic breakup with her soldier boyfriend, agrees to accompany her bumptious Israeli driver (Hana Laslo, who won the Cannes best-actress prize) to the Free Zone, a tax-free area bordered by Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Jordan. The trip brings three women -- the American, the Israeli and a Palestinian -- together in a battle of negotiations with metaphoric implications. L.L. (8:45 p.m., Paramount 1)
In Her Shoes **½
Curtis Hanson (USA)
Hanson, veteran director of such boy films as L. A. Confidential and 8 Mile, tries his hand at the traditional chick flick with uneven results in this tale of two squabbling sisters, a homely lawyer (Toni Collette) and her sexy, barely literate party-girl sister (Cameron Diaz) who find unity through an estranged grandmother (Shirley MacLaine). Sprawling and choppy, the movie has a sitcom-like sentimentality, tours of Diaz's body, and stock stereotypes. All of this is barely held together by Collette's heartfelt performance, an unexpectedly restrained turn from MacLaine and the odd good one-liner. L.L. (6:30 p.m., Roy Thomson Hall)
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey **½
Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, Jessica Joy Wise (Canada)
Co-director and narrator Dunn, a Canadian metal-head-turned-anthropologist, interviews musicians from Geddy Lee and Alice Cooper to creepy Norwegian "black metal" players. Along with providing a survey of metal styles, the film addresses gender, class and religion, though not race. It also insists on being too puritanical on the music's merit. L.L. (11:59 p.m., Ryerson)
Walk the Line **½
James Mangold (USA)
"Abraham Lincoln with a wild side," is how Kris Kristofferson described the grave, dangerous appeal of the late Johnny Cash, the subject of this terribly average biopic. Though Joaquin Phoenix may be one of the few young actors able to capture some of Cash's dark presence, he's saddled with a disjointed, simplistic script. Many of Cash's musical accomplishments are ignored in favour of tattle about adultery and addiction, with too many scenes of Cash making declarations of love to an annoyed but feisty June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). This is an object lesson in making genius mundane. L.L. (9:45 a.m., Ryerson)
Where the Truth Lies **½
Atom Egoyan (Canada, U.K.)
Blessed -- or is it cursed? -- with the biggest budget of his career, Egoyan is working within a very conventional genre here, a backstage whodunit about a once-celebrated comedy team (Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon) dogged by their suspicious connection to a murder most foul. Always skilled, Egoyan nicely fragments the narrative and stutters the time frame, but he never claims the genre for his own, never digs beneath its surface to explore deeper themes. What's worse, the picture suffers from a major casting liability: No one's idea of an investigative journalist, the wooden Alison Lohman comes off as just another stiff. R.G. (12:45 p.m., Ryerson)
Liam Lacey
Brad Wheeler