TIFF 08: The Wrestler

Just prior to seeing the Sunday night’s North American premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler at the Elgin Visa screening room, I haphazardly ran into Alex from Firstshowing.net and Peter from Slashfilm.com in the downstairs lobby (which would explain how I ended up here). While the electric charge in the theater had nothing to do with Evan Rachel Wood, it was a special night for her all the same as it was her 21st b-day. I think a chorus began out of the Wild Bunch sales people Aronofsky got the whole audience involved.

Early on I could tell that this may be Aronofsky’s comeback, this after wrestling with his own pet project called The Fountain for years — and not getting the results that a lot of people might have been anticipating. Commencing with a collage sequence of title bout flyers and magazine covers, and accompanied by a hard rock ear-popping tune from the 80’s, the first image from The Wrestler shows how far a former star has fallen. Rourke’s The Ram character has his back turned towards us and is trying to get put some air ionto those lungs of his while panting in a corner of a community center that looks like a day care space. Wild Bunch were quick to sell this title – Fox Searchlight just picked it up for a cool 4 million, while 24 to 36 hours before that it claimed the top prize at Venice. I hope to have my review up shortly.