The title of the film is taken from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called “Spring and Fall,” wherein the poem’s narrator addresses a young girl named Margaret. The narrator instructs the young woman, “Ah as the heart grows older/It will come to sights much colder….It is the blight man was born for,/It is Margaret you mourn for.” And so it is Lisa who begins to learn that she’s not grieving for the dead woman or even fighting for justice. Instead, she’s mourning for her own loss of ideals, her own dissipation of youth and ignorance. A complicated, thoroughly impressive film with some excellent dialogue, it’s also a nostalgic time capsule of both New York and its actors from a few years ago, filmed in 2005. Since then, all our hearts have grown older.
Breaking out around the time where NYFF is on its last legs, Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma (October 12 to 23) kicks in with about four times the size in volume, and obviously more of an eclectic range. This year is the festival's big 40 - and for the occasion they've commissioned some of the names who've been a part of the festival to each contribute a short film in the context of what is being called the "Cartes Blanches" series. Denis Côté, Deco Dawson, Sophie Deraspe, Rodrigue Jean, Zacharias Kunuk, Marie Losier, Catherine Martin, Bruce McDonald, Théodore Ushev and Denis Villeneuve will each submit a four minute short.
The New York Film Festival revealed today that its Closing Night Gala film will be Alexander Payne’s ‘The Descendants,’ which reviewers have described as an adroit dramedy starring George Clooney about a man who takes his daughters on a road trip to find his wife’s lover.