Chloe
Thursday, September 24, 7pm at the Oxford, $15
A remake of a 2003 French film Nathalie… that starred Fanny
Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart and Gérard Depardieu. Atom
Egoyan transposes the French tale of marital infidelity to
high-falutin’ locales in downtown Toronto (the AGO, the ROM, Little
Italy and Yorkville all feature prominently), where gynecologist
Catherine (Julianne Moore) suspects her professorial husband David
(Liam Neeson) is unfaithful, so she hires a beautiful young escort
Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to try and seduce him. At this point in his
career, Egoyan can do the complex depths of trauma and sexuality
blindfolded, so a stylish, adult story of lust and trust is the least
to expect, delivered with a cast at the tops of their respective games.
I was sold, right until the final few scenes, when the less-convincing
thriller elements overcame the drama.
Antichrist
Friday, September 25, 9:30pm at the Oxford, $15
So, I’ve seen the most controversial movie of the year. TIFF bigwig
Cameron Bailey said the Danish director of Antichrist “isn’t
trying to shock or offend,” with his “very personal film,” but I’d
dispute that. Lars von Trier is a shit-disturber. He helped found the
Dogma cinematic movement, both a rigorous aesthetic and a genius way to
draw international attention to very low-budget filmmaking from a
country which at that point was not well-known for its film industry.
Every one of von Trier’s films, going back to Breaking the
Waves, is calculated to evoke strong emotions in its audience.
Antichrist provoked a few in me, but primary throughout was a
growing sense of disquiet. It’s a horror film, a gradual, creepy one
that only occasionally goes for explicit and visceral shock value. But
for one particularly unpleasant scene of self-mutilation, I didn’t feel
I needed to scrub my eyeballs with bleach the way I did after, say,
David Cronenberg’s Crash, Gaspar Noë’s Irreversible,
Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream or much of Todd Solondz’s
work. I was much more upset after von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark than I was here.
But the visuals have stayed with me. It’s a difficult film, one that
deserves many of the descriptive adjectives—both the positive and
negative—it’s earned since it screened at Cannes. But is it worth
seeing at least once? Sure. Make up your own mind whether this
poisonous return to the Garden of Eden is something that moves you,
then come have a chat with me afterward.
An Education
Friday, September 25, 7pm at Park Lane 8, $10
Jenny (Carey Mulligan, a delight) is a 16-year-old in pre-Beatles
suburban London, the cleverest one in her class and a good grade in
Latin away from going to Oxford for university. She meets older man
David (Peter Sarsgaard, more charm than smarm) who sweeps her off her
feet, offering nights out, glamorous events, dinners and trips to
Paris. David even succeeds in impressing Jenny’s parents (Alfred
Molina, in permanent bluster mode, and Cara Seymour), but dowdy English
teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams, whose bad specs are a sad effort
to hide her looks) doesn’t want Jenny to give up her dreams of proper
school for an ill-advised dalliance. Thematically it’s nothing new, but
a real verve in Lone Scherfig’s direction and Nick Hornby’s script,
adapting a memoir by Lynn Barber, makes for a classy and crowd-pleasing
film. It brings London in the ’60s to life, just as it begins to
swing.
Suck
Friday, September 24, 7pm at the Oxford, $15
Suck, by Rob Stefaniuk, is a Canadian rock ‘n’
roll-vampire-road-movie-musical. Yes, it’s all of those things. It
features Stefaniuk as a guy trying to keep his band together while it
faces the public’s wild disaffection, but sees its fortunes change when
bass player Jennifer (Jessica Paré) becomes a vampire.
Writer-director-actor-composer Stefaniuk has collected a roster of rock
gods for supporting roles, including Henry Rollins, Alice Cooper, Iggy
Pop and Alex Lifeson (who has a great cheesy moustache and a scene with
Malcolm McDowell, who plays vampire hunter Eddie Van Helsing… get
it?!). The picture is rife with fun-to-spot rock ‘n’ roll references,
including moments liberally inspired by Hard Core Logo, the
greatest of all Canadian rock road movies.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.