Toronto – Let’s just say it’s a good thing not to be flying for another week. Not that the Air Canada plane that brought me to Toronto looked anything like the Aalto jet in “Flightplan,” but just the thought of boarding an airplane after watching it makes me queasy.
The thriller, made better by Jodie Foster’s return, is one of a number of studio pictures with press junkets taking place early in the Toronto International Film Festival. A crowded affair, TIFF opened Sept. 1, and when all is seen and done Saturday, 335 films, features and shorts, will have screened.
In “Flightplan” Foster plays Kyle Pratt, a desperate mom in search of her daughter lost – or abducted – on a behemoth cattle car known as the E-474. Wait, maybe daughter Julia was never onboard. Kyle is recently widowed and transporting her husband’s casket from Berlin to New York. An engineer for the manufacturer of the plane’s engine, Kyle knows the 747 like the back of her jet propulsion textbook. This skill set is either a good thing for her daughter or a very dangerous thing for the people on the flight.
Is her parental panic at 37,000 feet legit or fueled by grief?
“Hmmm,” Ray Porter might say, to Kyle’s troubles. “Hmmm,” again. Porter is Steve Martin’s character in the melancholy romantic comedy “Shopgirl.” He literally is Martin’s character. The comedian adapted his novella for the screen.
Porter’s own troubles are hardly as grueling as Kyle Pratt’s, though they concern a woman young enough to be his daughter. A wealthy guy, he takes a shine to Claire Danes’ Mirabelle. She sells elegant evening-wear gloves at the Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles. Martin and Jason Schwartzman play her suitors. Neither is entirely suitable.
“Shopgirl” and “Flightplan” are but two Hollywood releases using Toronto as a launchpad. Over the past few years, the opening weekend of the festival has begun to feel a bit top-billing heavy.
Critics gripe that the celebrity parade is as distracting as someone yakking on a cellphone in a theater, and that the movies get lost.
But one suspects that a number of citizens of this cosmopolitan city on Lake Ontario are amused, even a bit excited, by the fact that suites in their lux hotels are filled with entertainment journalists interviewing the likes of Martin, Danes, Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Fanning, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Val Kilmer, Pierce Brosnan and Cameron Diaz, to name but a few.
TIFF may not be as glam – or hierarchy-obsessed – as Cannes, but its red carpet is trodden by as many stars.
A sign of the ongoing tension between great intentions and grander ambitions seems to be that on opening night, American reporters were more likely to be attending an out-of-the-way screening of a studio flick as prep for a weekend of interviews as they were the opening gala.
Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s “Water” officially began the festival. Third in a trilogy that started with “Fire” and “Earth,” Mehta tells the story of a Hindu girl suddenly widowed in the time of Gandhi’s revolution. At least this is what the festival’s inch-thick catalog promises. I was one of those writers screening for interviews.
Still, for years this festival has introduced eclectic, risky work. It still does.
A late-night shot of comedy – in the form of comic Sarah Silverman – served as a reminder of TIFF’s verve. You may recall that Silverman’s hilariously harrowing contribution to “The Aristocrats” was one of the high points about a low joke.
Shown as part of the festival’s Midnight Madness series, “Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic” played to a crowded house at the Ryerson Theatre.
Moviegoers, who had been waiting in a queue beyond the 11:59 start time, laughed uproariously at all the willfully politically incorrect observations Silverman made.
“The best time to have a baby,” starts Silverman, “is when you’re a black teenager.” Race, her own (Jewish) and others, is never spared. Sex runs a close second as ripe, even rank, material.
When the film (directed by Liam Lynch) ended Silverman in flared blue jeans took to the stage.
“I wonder how fat people got off so easily,” asked a woman in the audience.
“Because they’re so sensitive,” replied the wit.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
