Eric Lavallée

Multidisciplinarian Xu Haofeng is not only a newbie filmmaker but happens to be a novelist, Taoist scholar, martial-arts connoisseur and co-writer for Wong Kar-wai’s The Grand Master. The word on this Venice Film Festival invited title is that it takes the genre into a completely different realm - we Haofeng calling this “inner martial arts“ presented visually and aurally. Count me in!

Can't say I consider myself a fan of Lou Ye's body of work, so when word first surfaced that A Prophet's Tahar Rahim was joining the banned Chinese filmmaker for a Last Tango-like drama that was sexually and violently fierce, my thoughts were indeed I'm back in the Ye camp. I'd normally be tempted to make a last minute switcheroo as the reactions from Venice have been mostly negative --- but the performances appear to be the film's consolation prize.

Perhaps this year's contempo version of Meek's Cutoff because of the navigation of male-female rapport in the tricky surroundings of the vast wilderness, if it weren't for Gael García Bernal signing up for the lead, perhaps Julia Loktev would still be trying to finance the film --- this says a lot about the quality of the project and perhaps the observational approach to the film with much of the minimalism we found in her debut effort - Day Night Day Night. Recently premiered in Locarno with a glowing review from both Variety and IndieWIRE, I'm decidedly hopeful about the prospects.

Can't say that I'm an unconditional fan of this cult Japanese filmmaker, but if I had to choose a side-dish of mayhem during the fest I'd go with this number which just like the Testuo film before it, is also en route to Venice. A mentor to several filmmakers, in a way this mimics that of Aronofsky's Black Swan - female protag is powerless unless performing. Shinya Tsukamoto employees Cocco - a non-actress professional singer for the gig. Should be a bloodcurling highlight outside of the Midnight Madness section.

I've been keeping tabs on Ratanaruang oeuvre since 99's 6ixtynin9 and while his most recent work (2007's Ploy and 2009's Nymph) only wetted my appetite, I've got a feeling that Toronto programmers will serve a full plate with this number shot from the perspective of the film's lead. With dp Chankit Chamnivikaipong once again onboard, we can at least expect this to visually deliver.