TIFF ’23: What To See at This Year’s Fest, Sept. 10

By Jim Slotek, Liz Braun, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Chris Knight, Liam Lacey, and Bonnie Laufer

We’re not quite in the weeds, but by day four of the Toronto International Film Festival, we have some definite opinions, and not just on the films we’re watching. Be sure to read our festival post-mortem after things wrap September 17. Meantime, we soldier forth with recommendations of what to see and skip among the hundreds of international and domestic features, shorts, and documentaries on offer.

Chuck Chuck Baby

Chuck Chuck Baby (Centrepiece)

Sun, Sept. 10, 6:45 pm, Scotiabank 14.

Director Janis Pugh’s gentle dramedy about two women, former classmates, who fall in love and find their true selves is charming, uplifting, and enormously buoyed by unexpected musical set-pieces that might have been lifted from Off-Broadway and are saturated in bursts of colour. Helen (Louise Brealey) is living her worst life caring for her dying ex-mother-in-law under the same roof as her ex-husband, his icky new girlfriend, and their baby. The sole bright spots are music, which Helen loves, and the camaraderie of Helen’s delightful coworkers at the local poultry plant. When Joanne (Annabel Scholey) returns to their sleepy Welsh hometown to take care of her late father’s estate, the women rediscover each other. The affair is not without its complications, of course, but the film’s enormous heart is evident in the friendships Pugh explores and exalts. An absolute gem. KH

Dumb Money (Gala Presentations)

Sun, Sept. 10, 10:30 am Roy Thomson Hall; Fri, Sept. 15, 9:15 am Scotiabank 13.

Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) takes another leap into you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up territory with his take on the gamers who, in 2020, literally gamed the stock market by virally inflating the moribund GameStop retail chain, bankrupting actual billionaires in the process. Very reminiscent of The Big Short in its for-dummies explanation of arcane financial antics. But its strength is its old-school little-guys (stoners, nurses, baristas)-versus-The-Man mood, with Paul Dano at the quixotic centre, turning the world upside down from his cluttered home office using Reddit and a stock app. It’s a fast-moving audience pleaser, with characters to like — and hate. JS

Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe (TIFF Docs)

Sun, Sept 10, 8:45 pm, Scotiabank 3; Fri, Sept. 15, 11:40 am, Scotiabank 14.

Robert McCallum’s documentary is a delight, peppered with interviews from the adult children of Mr. Dressup — a.k.a. American-born entertainer Ernie Coombs, one of the CBC’s most beloved children's personalities for decades — as well as some famous Canadians (Eric McCormack, Barenaked Ladies, Graham Greene) who recall the influence Mr. Dressup had on their lives. We also hear from original puppeteer Judith Lawrence who played the beloved Casey and Finnegan, someone Coomb had the utmost respect for. Looking back at the familiar sets, watching archival footage, and hearing story after story of Coombs’ kindness and love for children is like sitting in front of a fireplace. Not to be missed by anyone who welcomed the beloved Mr. Dressup into their homes. BL

Stamped from the Beginning (TIFF Docs)

Sun, Sept. 10, 5:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 3.

A polemic as much as a documentary, which it arguably must be to rise above racist noise, this persuasive adaptation of historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book of the same name traces the origins of slavery and how both Europe and America’s violent use of stolen people, especially women, created the template for our troubled contemporary racial divides. Interestingly, director Roger Ross Williams’ film speaks to only one man — author Kendi — using female academics, authors, and historians to tell the story of how Black became Black, how whiteness became a blunt instrument, and how persistent myths about Black violence and hypersexuality were perpetuated by those with power to maintain the status quo. Some definite heroes emerge from the struggle. KH

The Boy and the Heron (Gala Presentations)

Sun, Sept. 10, 12:05 pm, Scotiabank 12; Fri, Sept. 15, 8:55 am, Scotiabank 12; Sat. Sept. 16, 5:50 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2.

The first film in a decade from Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron lives up to the creator’s storied legacy. Told through the eyes of 11-year-old Mahito, the film begins with the terrifying images of the 1945 fire-bombing of Tokyo, which kills the boy’s mother. Shortly after, Mahito’s father moves to the countryside, and marries Natsuko, his late wife’s younger sister. It’s a mysterious home, peopled by seven small old ladies and, in the lake outside, a peculiar blue-grey heron that seems peculiarly focused on Mahito. At school, Mahito is bullied up by his new school mates and makes the situation look worse by striking his head with a rock to avoid going to class. While recovering, he has visions of his late mother behind a wall of fire begging him to save her.

Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories or C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, Miyazaki takes us deeper into a world that is both fantastical, humorous, and philosophically rich. Though too complex to easily summarize, it’s the story of the grieving boy’s journey through a series of layered realms. The heron, which speaks in a human voice, leads him to a tower built by his great-great uncle, a man “who read too many books and lost his mind.” When Mahito enters the tower in pursuit of his mother and younger sister who has also gone missing, he first enters a kind of cathedral, and a portico to a series of ever stranger realms: ravenous pelicans, marshmallow-like creatures that ascend into starry constellations, giant man-eating parakeets that march like fascist soldiers, and the old man who is the wizard behind it all. While the spectacular visuals will require repeat viewings to absorb, there’s an underlying existentialist theme here. The Japanese title comes from a 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino — titled How Do You Live? — that figures in the plot. LL

The Dead Don’t Hurt (Special Presentations)

Sun, Sept. 10, 9 pm, Scotiabank 1; Thurs, Sept. 14, 1 pm, Scotiabank 1.

Viggo Mortensen wrote, directed, and co-stars in this Western tragedy set in 1800s California, where a Danish immigrant named Holger (Mortensen) and his French love interest Vivienne (Vicky Krieps) homestead in the middle of a desert near a nowhere town run by corrupt locals. Wearing all those hats didn’t give him a big head, however. This is Vivienne’s movie (it’s been dubbed a “feminist Western”), a Jeanne d’Arc-loving warrior at heart. Through most of an entire act, Olsen is not even there, having joined the U.S. army, leaving Krieps’ Vivienne to carve a sometimes brutal life on her own. Mortensen’s script begins at the end, and bounces back to the past and the recent past, an approach that grows on you. Danny Huston, Garret Dillahunt, and Solly McLeod give good “evil,” and the scenery is practically a character of its own. JS

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Centrepiece)

Sun, Sept. 10, 9:45 pm, Scotiabank 9.

Quadruple threat writer-director-editor-star Joanna Arnow’s feature debut succeeds in storyboarding acute ennui and millennial angst and earned acclaim at Cannes. But how much realism can an audience endure? We observe as Arnow’s low-boil character Ann endures a crappy and often humiliating corporate job served with a side of crappy and often humiliating sexual encounters, most of the master-servant variety. Not even Arnow’s full-frontal nudity through much of the film can distract from the navel-gazing propelling the narrative. Plus, it feels weirdly gratuitous. Brave maybe, but still gratuitous. KH