Paolo here. Day 6 of TIFF brings movies about love and passion crossing borders and oceans or trying to, despite the difficulties. Ladies and gentlemen, bring your handkerchiefs or roll your cynical eyes.
THE LADY (Luc Besson)
Most of you must already know about detained Burmese President-elect Aung San Suu Kyi (Michelle Yeoh), but her unlikely entry into political life happened so long ago that we, especially the younger generations, forget a few facts. First, that she lived in Oxford and bore two boys for her husband Michael Aris (David Thewlis), a professor of Southeast Asian studies and that the reason for her untouchable status in a military dictatorship is her ties to England. Second, that the reason the university intellectuals have chosen her as the figurehead of the Burmese democracy movement is because her father, a general, fought for the same goals after World War II.
The story of her adult life is now adapted to the screen as The Lady directed by Luc Besson. This movie allows Besson to diversify his CV but I personally couldn't avoid looking for his trademarks. Suu is Besson's female heroine, Michael his the Tati-esque old man, and a superstitious general is the campy, quirky villain. Besson keeps the violence to a reverent level this time, even if Suu's father becomes a martyr in the film's first scene. The Lady also has a few montages which chronicle the news of Suu's planned rallies spreading throughout the streets of Rangoon. They went on a bit longer than necessary.
As biopics go, The Lady has a surprsing lack of naturalism. Take this paraphrasal of one of Suu and David's conversations:
'The world reveres you as someone with no negative qualities.'
'I will list my negative qualities right now.'
'Your negative qualities made me fall in love with you.'
But because I like this, I'll call it 'classic English dialogue', pulled off well by Thewliss and especially Yeoh who has perfected a politician-style elegance; in a festival full of misanthropy, characters who are 'too nice' are a welcome change.
W.E. (Madonna)
The title of Madonna's much-discussed new film, is an acronym for the most gossiped marriage in the past century between Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy). The couple belong to a story within the story, which is an obsession for fairytale-stricken Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), who comes close to the couple's property six decades after their exile. Wally is bored of her neglectful husband while befriending a foreign Sotheby's security guard (Oscar Isaac). I'll assume that Madonna took on this story in engender her own so-called feminist perspective, and she brings a sympathetic and sometimes humorous light to the maligned woman. I would have preferred to see a movie based on "Famous Last Words," Timothy Findley's novel about Wallis.
More on what I liked about W.E. and disliked about Like Crazy after the jump.
I talked to a critic friend before the movie who told me about the anachronistic costumes in Wally's modern story line. Yes, a dress she wears to her husband's party looked more 2005 than 1999. I have hazy memories of 1999 (post-Clueless minimalism? cargo pants?) but the dresses look like something that say, Prada would design. But Wally's absolutely dour black and white dominated wardrobe is a visual short-cut to differentiate the two timeframes, with Wallis' wearing her share of long yellow and blue Schiaparelli gowns.
Misleading film description of the day... "W.E. is JFK but a perfume ad, or a Tom Ford movie with attention deficit disorder."
Madonna opts for many close-ups, really short takes, low angle shots and alternates between clear and grainy resolution in milliseconds. It becomes frustrating at a point. I'd assume that most audiences would prefer looking at a face for fifteen straight seconds than to look at a teacup for one. But through these shots we feel the objects and the spaces around the characters, which does make the film admirably sensory.
LIKE CRAZY (Drake Doremus)
Lastly there's Like Crazy, which starts with a young British woman named Anna (Felicity Jones) on an awkward first date with a local Angeleno named Jacob (Anton Yelchin). They grow to have feelings for each other, finding things in common and both needing a light adventure in their lives. This is the start of a really strong relationship, so much that they pull the 'young people are stupid' card as Anna stays in America longer than her visa allows her. She goes to Britain for a wedding, comes back, gets detained and sent back to Britain. While their volatile relationship gets broken off and rekindled over the course of a few years, they meet other lovers in between, Jacob with Samantha (Jennifer Lawrence) and Anna with Simon (Charlie Bewley).
Jones and Yelchin's chemistry is very strong and Like Crazy has an interesting acting dynamic. It's like the director told them to mind the fourth wall as they have their cuddly yet increasingly hostile conversations. Jones is especially good able to detail slightly hurt, offended or compromised moments. They're also convincingly physically comfortable with each other even within a puppy love, PG 13 film.
However strong the actors are they can't compensate for the screenplay's mistakes, like their biggest argument happening at the kitchen sink. We've seen much stronger couples arguments in recent movies that are better at wringing our tears. When we watch Anna and Jacob accuse each other of adultery or lying, we instead feel a sadistic fascination, eliciting nervous laughter when they say something exceptionally hurtful. There are also scenes ripped from a college thesis film, with its borderline cutesy 'sixty different hugs in sixty seconds' sequence or the choice of multiple fade outs during the same scene. And this movie apparently lives in an ungodly alternate universe where a young man would dump Jennifer Lawrence for someone else.