Sexy celluloid
Filmmakers explored underage sexual exploration (Todd Solondz's Palindromes); pedophilia (multiple films, but most notably in Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin); and explicit sex intercut with scenes of live rock performances (Michael Winterbottom's Nine Songs).
But Lilya 4-Ever director Lukas Moodysson, who couples the dirty deed with food, violence, vomit and toy soldiers in A Hole in My Heart, took the prize for most transgression with his exploration of a society in decay.
The film follows the exploits of three amateur pornographers who hole-up in an apartment for a weekend of kinky sex and odd behavior. Suspicions grow among the porno director's son -- and the audience -- that the trio is about to make a snuff film, which compelled some viewers to walk out before the film's end. But it was picked up for distribution, coincidentally, by the same company that distributed The Passion of the Christ, in an apparent second attempt to gross-out audiences with gratuitous scenes.
The best film of the festival, and the most masterful exploration of sexuality, was directed by Pedro Almodòvar. The timely Bad Education stars Gael García Bernal (of Y Tu Mamá Tambien fame) dressed in drag, an effect that brings Julia Roberts to mind. Bernal shows up in a director's office, says he's a long-lost friend and wants to star in his own screenplay about a drag queen seeking revenge on the priest who molested him as a child. He claims the story is loosely based on himself and the director's childhood. Things become even more complicated as the director reads the script and explores his past.
Almodòvar packs the film with references to religion, sexuality, cinema history and song. He's such a master that his opening credits alone were better than most of the other films in the festival.
Sexual frustration and the pursuit of prenuptial sex are the themes of Alexander Payne's Sideways. Paul Giamatti (American Splendor) plays Miles, a middle-school teacher and aspiring novelist, who takes his best buddy, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), on a bachelor party trip to Napa Valley. Miles is intent on showing Jack a good time filled with wine, fine cuisine and golf. Jack, on the other hand, just wants to have sex before his wedding, and if possible, get Miles laid as well. The film steers clear of the buddy-film formula by exploring the nuances of its characters, warts and all, leaving the viewer with a sense of hope and providing festival-goers with a fitting antidote to the dystopian A Hole in My Heart.
Perhaps the most inventive film of the festival had no sex at all, but it did deal with coming of age in a manner that made some viewers uncomfortable. Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Innocence is a fantasy film about an alternate world where young girls live in a boarding school where they can't leave, can't see boys or their families and are waited upon by old women -- former students who were caught trying to escape and sentenced to care for the school's students. The eldest girls disappear each night to a place they aren't allowed to speak about until just before they are released from the school at the onset of puberty.
In their idyllic setting, the girls are often half-naked, which raised concerns about voyeurism among some audience members. The filmmaker, however, is playing with these very notions in the film, making the audience's unease a central part of the experience of watching the film -- we are intruding on the girls' story as much as watching it. Hadzihalilovic is a partner of Gaspar Noe (Irreversible), and she uses many tech-niques from that film in this unusual tale that had audiences buzzing about its form as much as its content.
Danny Boyle also impressed audiences with his masterful form in his new film, Millions, another of his "sack of cash" movies about two young brothers in England who find a bag filled with nearly a million pounds just before the Euro goes into effect. Naturally, the pair bicker over how it should be spent. One wants to buy a bunch of cool stuff; the other, convinced the money is a gift from God, starts having visions of saints and wants to give it all away to the poor.
Boyle has a knack for language and has crafted a hilarious script that is one curse word and a joint away from being a family film. Discerning audiences will be just as impressed with his innovative use of form. Boyle proves a film can attract large audiences with a family-friendly story and still add something to the art of the cinema, a rare accomplishment. What's more, he accomplishes it with just a smidgen of sexual innuendo, proving some of the best films at the Toronto Film Festival can survive without focusing on sex.
