TIFF 2007 Day 2: Enemy, 4 months, Persepolis & Juno

Today’s slate of four films included a pair that will be (mark my words) in the year-end contention for the Academy Award’s Best foreign picture category – and while they will both likely attract the same audiences they couldn’t be more different in terms of how viewers will come away from the separate film experiences. Tomorrow, I’ll be missing in action with 5 films on the slate.   

I had a Nazi war criminal documentary film from Kevin MacDonald for breakfast. My Enemy's Enemy is a mind boggling doc that looks at how a person (famously nicked named the Butcher Of Lyons) who tortured hundreds (if not thousands) of people and was somehow portected by the U.S for several decades. Though it doesn’t have the emotional or cinematic value as Touching the Void, but it follows in the list of madmen projects that commenced with The Last King of Scotland.
 

The first of two extremely popular Cannes titles that I missed out on and would have wanted to see and finally did see was a gem called Persepolis. The version I saw was the Cannes version (with a mix of French and English languages and voiced by French actors) and not the redubbed one by American actors like Sean Penn. I haven’t been touched by animation like this since The Triplettes of Belleville, and to intertwine the coming-of-age and immigrant experience with female empowerment means that there is a large dose of themes working in tandem.

4 months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was a top 5 must see pick for me and I wasn’t disappointed. Part of what some are dubbing to be the Romanian New Wave (I just call it a government adding more funding to projects) this is one of those long take, euro-style numbers that effectively criticizes the past. It will hit some people like a ton of bricks. I'll be interviewing filmmaker Cristian Mungiu this coming weekend.

Capping off a fairly late evening is Juno (the sophomore feature from the hip director of Thank You for Smoking) and the dialogue is absolutely delicious, diminutive actress Ellen Page is splendid – it’s a smart and savvy comedy and has Diablo Cody written all over it. This comes out in mid December can’t hardly wait to see it again.