MEET THE BARBARIANS (Les Barbares)(France 2024) ****
Directed by Julie Delpy

 

Actress Julie Delpy (star of films by Godard, Kieslowski and Linklater) directs her own film proving herself totally apt and a force to be reckoned with.  She centres her sights on comedy with a message with a film that matters that she delivers in style with lots of hilarity, drama and a bit of satire.  The story is set in Paimpont, a small town in France preparing to welcome a Ukrainian refugee family and is surprised when a Syrian family shows up instead.  Every town has its patriots, loyalists and racists all of whom show their influence on the Syrian family, but that is not perfect as well.  Delpy shows the good and bad of both sides with a touching romance between the young Syrian teen in the family and a local French boy to bridge the gap of racism.  It might be too obvious but the ploy works.  And the town actually exists.  Paimpont sits nestled in Brittany, content with its centuries-old heritage, its crêpes (the Brittany people cook everything with lots of butter, which is also disincorporated in the script), and its flattering self-image. A marvellous surprise from Delpy.

 

LES COURAGEUX (The Courageous)(Switzerland 2024) ***

Directed by Jasmin Gordon

 

Shot in French and set in the idyllic town in the stunning Valais region of Switzerland — known for its proximity to the Matterhorn, Alpine resorts, and upper Rhône river valley vineyards — 40-year-old Jule (Ophélia Kolb) is a single mother dreaming of a stable existence for her young family. Her children — 10-year-old Claire, eight-year-old Loïc, and six-year-old Sami — have learned to take care of one another, and, while the whereabouts of their gregarious mother are sometimes a mystery, the siblings know that she always returns to their home with a smile and a fantastic explanation.  Director Gordon’s feature is impressive, though not without faults.  At its best, Gordon is able to grab and maintain her audience’s attention to worry and care about what happens to the family - more of the children than of the mother.  Her film omits Juke’s past likelier arrest and details of the children’s father, who one assumes could be of more than one, from the looks of the children.  Jule does what she wants, breaking all the rules and expecting society to look after her.  Society does not work that way and it is hard to feel sympathetic for her.  But the sympathy is all for the children who are at a loss in terms of respect and doing the right things.

ELSE (France/Belgium 2024) *
Directed by Thibault Emin

 

Playing like an experimental rather than horror film,, but with impressive special horror effects, this time in the form of melting humans into a molten mess, ELSE is, unfortunately, lacking a solid story base makes the entire exercise seem long and ineffective.  Introverted and uncomfortable in his own skin, Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) does not consider himself an obvious partner for Cass (Édith Proust), the feisty whirlwind of confidence he finds himself waking up alongside after a presumed one-night stand. And yet a romance begins to bloom.  However, the nascent relationship is threatened when a strange disease spreads throughout the world, gradually causing the infected to merge with whatever they touch. Finding themselves quarantined to Anx’s claustrophobic apartment, the couple is soon besieged by their very surroundings, which have begun coalescing with their neighbours into a spongy new life form that seeks to add the lovers to its mass.  At best, the film captures the Pandemic atmosphere of dread and the worst is that nothing happens after.

EMILIA PERES (France 2024) ***** Top 10

Directed by Jacques Audiard

 

There are many reasons to make EMILA PEREZ compulsive viewing.  For the younger audience, Selena Gomez has a solid supporting role, while Zoe Saldana delivers also a riveting performance.  But mostly, it is another film from French auteur Jacques Audiard (UN PROPHET, RUST AND BONE) and this is arguably the best trans movie there is currently out there or has been out there prior.  Though essentially a French film, the film is shot in Spanish and set in Mexico City where drug kingpins rule.   The film is about one successful, in fact very successful one, who trans and repents his ways.  Rita Moro Castro (Zoe Saldaña) is a Mexico City defense attorney whose brilliant strategies have kept many murderous but wildly affluent clients out of jail. Her reputation draws the attention of Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascón), a notorious kingpin, who is secretly transitioning. He hires Rita to arrange an itinerary of under-the-table procedures with the world’s best surgeons, while making a plan for the wife (Selena Gomez) and kids he is leaving behind. The process is a success, Manitas’ murder is staged, and Emilia Pérez is born. This new identity affords Emilia the ability to create a whole new life for herself, but the past begins to creep back, threatening to undo everything she and Rita have worked so hard to achieve.  It is a brave and progressive film with the script co-written by Audiard covering key issues like retribution, LGBT+ issues and the drug cartel problem in Mexico.  The film bears several parallels with Audiard’s best film UN PROPHET.  There are the main characters leading a new and better life. prison scenes and innocence lost.  The story contains twists that arrive every 30 minutes or so, unexpected to any audience.  Yet, the film feels believable.  There is suspense, melodrama, and thrills with a bit of violence that was also present in UN PROPHET.  Though the ending can hardly be called a happy one, it is a satisfactory, credible and effective one.  The film is one of the best at TIFF 2024, which also premiered at Cannes this year.

ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND (France 2024) ****
Directed by Raoul Peck

Director Raoul Peck’s (I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO) latest doc is a mind-blowing one that won the Best Doc Prize at Cannes this year.  As the title implies, the doc would not have been made if not for the revelation in 2017, when 60,000 unknown negatives of Ernest Cole’s work were discovered in a Swedish bank vault.  Through all his adversity, Cole never lost his power to take stunning pictures, trying to see those who spend their lives going unseen. “It’s a matter of survival,” he wrote, “to steal every moment.”  Director Peck tells Cole’s story, like a biopic mainly through voiceover using mostly the photographs he took in South Africa and the United States.  the plight of the black men and all the adversity is vividly portrayed and deeply and emotionally put across to audiences in what might be deemed a must-see well-crafted documentary.

 

JANE AUSTEN A GACHE MA VIE (Jane Austen Wrecked my Life) (France 2024) **
Directed by Laura Piani

 

As in Jane Austen novels, this is a romantic comedy from the female's point of view with a setting of the present trying to recall the past.  It is only slightly funny, a film more for the female that celebrates female independence where men post a secondary role.  As a clerk in the legendary British bookshop in Paris, Shakespeare & Co, Agathe (Camille Rutherford, OK, TIFF ʼ23) loves her job. But there are faint stirrings of discontentment when she realizes how long she has been surrounded by stories of others’ desires and adventures instead of chasing her own.  The romance is forced and it does not take a genius to see who the heroine will end up with.

MISERICORDE (France 2024) ****
Directed by Alain Giuraudie

 

MISERICORDE has the feel of a Claude Chabrol murder film in which the cat-and-mouse tale is mainly the mouse outwitting the cat with the aid of his cohorts.  The film is a prized twisted macabre tale with bouts of unexpected humour from the director of the 2014 gay hit L’CONNU DU LAC (Stranger by the Lake), this one with the fabulous Catherine Frot as a widow. who takes in Jérémie as a lodger whose sensual presence is immediately and progressively destabilizing to all around him.  Martine (Catherine Frot) happens to be the mother of his childhood friend, the brutish Vincent (fJean-Baptiste Durand). The duo’s interactions are terse and laden with resentment, but clearly erotically charged.  When a fight goes awry, Misericordia swerves into noir territory with absurdist undertones, and an ensuing investigation spirals around a loner neighbour, ineffectual gendarmes, and a nosy country priest — seemingly the only inhabitants in this dewy, mountainous village perpetually bathed in twilight.  No sex scenes but there are two with full penises on display, that are both erotic and hilarious.  MISEROCORDE, extremely well plotted and executed is a total wicked delight!

 

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Iran/France/Germany 2024) ***½

Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof

 

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG is yet another film about women’s rights in Iran, a country that still forces women to wear face coverings.  A very strict husband and father, Iman (Misagh Zare) is an ambitious middle-class lawyer working for the Iranian government.  He has just been promoted to state investigator — the stepping stone to becoming a revolutionary court judge — and, alongside an increase in income and social cachet, his family has received clear instructions on what is required of them as Iman’s star rises in the eyes of the state.  His wife (Soheila Golestani) and adolescent daughters (the scene-stealing Setareh Maleki and Mahsa Rostami) must fall in line and never let anyone know of the father’s work lest the family get persecuted by activists.  When the father finds his gun missing, all hell breaks loose in the family tearing it apart.  The stakes get higher when social media learns of the father’s work and there is a post on the internet causing the family to leave the city.  The social and family drama works well in a gripping dramatic account but when it turns to a cat-and-mouse thriller at the end, the transition does not really work.  Still - the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

A SISTERS’ TALE (Iran/Switzerland/France 2024) **

Directed by Leila Amini

There are many restrictions for women in Iran.  It is up to the pioneers to break them.

These are the words spoken by Nareen at one point in the doc.  Director Leila Amini creates a stunning portrait of her sister Nasreen in her new doc A SISTERS’ TALE.  (the plural is used because the tale is told by two sisters and the singular article is used as it is one story.  Nasreen pursues her difficult dream of becoming a singer in Iran, a country where women are banned from performing in public. Nasreen has starlike charisma and gives Leila access to all her highs and lows. She is always striving to fulfill her artistic ambitions while navigating the needs of her two children, her marital tensions, and patriarchal pushback at every turn. Nasreen frequently clashes with her husband over her music and his nighttime absences.  A simple-looking doc that took 7 years in the making that shows the resilience of the human spirit amidst gender prejudice.  Personally, I do not find the songs that spectacular but rather the courage and determination of the singer that shines.

SHEPHERDS (BERGERS)(France/Canada 2024) ****

Directed by Sophie Deraspe

 

 

Following a medical wake-up call, Montréal copywriter Mathyas Lefebure (Félix-Antoine Duval) abandons his life in Canada to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps. After a rough start, he’s joined by Élise (Solène Rigot), a civil servant tempted by his stories of pastoral life, and together they commit to a summer on the mountainside. Just the two of them. And one border collie. And 800 sheep.  Though what might sound like a boring premise for a movie, SHEPHERDS is arguably the most charming and beautiful while at times harsh and gripping, film to be seen at TIFF this year.  Mathyas learns the harshness of a shepherd’s life, especially working for free for a very violent and angry boss, who would use his truck to run over the sheep that would not mount the ewes.  After quitting in disgust, Mathyas finally uses his learned skills to tend sheep in the mountain for a much more kindly couple.  The most moving scene involves Mathyas throwing a stone at Hola, the border collie for wanting to follow him to leave the farm. With a female director, the film also has a strong and positive female slant.

 

 

 

 

 

THE SUBSTANCE (USA/UK/France 2024) ****
Directed by Coralie Fargeat

 

French director Coralie Fargeat wowed TIFF’s Midnight Madness crowd in 2017 with her breakthrough slasher revenge movie REVENGE, a movie that many will remember for her extremes in violence, blood and gore.  She returns with much more of the same violence, blood and gore in higher-budget horror satire with stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid adding to the mayhem.  Desperate to stay pretty as a fitness celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) purchases a black market substance that turns her into a younger and prettier double, calling herself Sue (portrayed by Qualley).  They are one body but have to switch every 7 days, old to new and back - NO EXCEPTIONS.  However, the younger Sue extends her 7 days with disastrous results that climax into a complete blood fest on New Year’s Eve.  The wild build-up to the climatic NYE show is excellently paced in this stylish fable of the strife for eternal beauty.  Super gory makeup and special effects have to be mentioned as well.