By: Henry J. Fromage –
TIFF wraps up, for me at least, with a couple more films in the morning before a mad dash to the airport. What a festival!
524. Working Class Goes to Hell
This was the only Midnight Madness film I could either get a ticket for (so popular this year in comparison to last) or could stay up for (it helped it was my last night- as the Koreans say, fighting!). Anyway, this Serbian film is set in a small town where a factory fire that killed 9 of their loved ones and shut down the only real employer in town still haunts them. As you may guess from the program it’s a part of, what at first plays like a comedic fly on the wall film that plays on its setting turns into something else entirely when a Satanist charlatan rolls into town and proves surprisingly effective in getting them to go full on cult. Funny throughout, and shot through with Communist cynicism and sarcasm, it definitely its own voice. Three Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for every occult ritual or practice
Take a Drink: whenever the factory fire is referred to
Take a Drink: whenever the new factory is lauded
Do a Shot: for (literal) dicks
Do a Shot: for (figurative) dicks getting what’s coming to them
525. Memory
Mexican enfant terrible Michel Franco returns with this story of a woman haunted by an abusive past (Jessica Chastain) and the man (Peter Sarsgaard) she meets at a high school reunion who she believes may have been one of her assaulters many years before, who is suffering from dementia. Being Franco, you’d rightfully expect something scathing and even a bit heartless, but to everyone’s surprise it’s far from it. There’s pain here, certainly, but also a tentatively developing love (turns out he was not one of the assaulters). Lots of Awards Season whispers around this one. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever Chastain declines a beer
Take a Drink: whenever Sarsgaard forgets something
Do a Shot: every time Sarsgaard is naked
526. The Green Border
Polish director Agnieszka Holland won a prize at Venice for this urgent story of a flashpoint of migrant crisis that has been affecting Europe and the millions of desperate people trying to reach it since 2015. We follow a Syrian family on a comfortable plane ride to Belarus, which quickly turns into something far more dangerous as they realize they’d been brought there to antagonize Poland and the EU in general when they’re quickly shoved under a barbed wire fence and told to run. The Poles are often even crueler, as this family and others are caught and pushed back and forth across that same border with increasing violence. There are those who would help, too, so this isn’t an entirely hopeless film, but it’s a stark and in your face one, closing on an ironic note of Ukrainian refugees being accepted with open arms. Required viewing. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever a border is crossed (or re-crossed)
Take a Drink: whenever somebody offers a helping hand
Do a Shot: whenever that help has limits
