TORONTO — Writer-director David Koepp unfurls his long legs and stretches them across a second chair in a suite at the Four Seasons hotel.
He chats about the previous night’s Toronto International Film Festival world premiere of his winning comedy, “Ghost Town,” and celebrates laughter’s special feel when enhanced by a grand old theater like Toronto’s Elgin.
“For a comedy, it’s great,” says Koepp, who often collaborates with Steven Spielberg (“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” “War of the Worlds.”)
“The newer theaters’ walls all absorb sound. But that theater, with 1,800 people, the laughter’s bouncing all around.”
With its existential lessons slowly learned by its characters — Ricky Gervais’ misanthropic dentist and Greg Kinnear’s philanderer-turned restless-ghost — “Ghost Town” resembles the contemporary classic “Groundhog Day.”
Like a number of the movies getting the red-carpet treatment during the opening weekend at the Toronto Film Festival, “Ghost Town” opens theatrically quite soon — next Friday, to be exact.
Joel and Ethan Coens’ dark lark of a comedy “Burn After Reading” opens today. Spike Lee’s lush WWII saga, “Miracle at St. Anna,” arrives in theaters Sept. 26. The list of coming- soons goes on and includes “The Duchess,” “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” actor-director Ed Harris’ satisfying Western “Appaloosa” and Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married,” starring Anne Hathaway in a revealing and raw turn.
Toronto has often proved a sturdy springboard for a plunge into a fall movie season that doesn’t rely on teasing, if misleading, trailers or clever synopses.
There’s a reason the studios jet actors and filmmakers into town. They, too, know it’s a way to make a splash not merely with press but with a camera-wielding public.
The former make the rounds to suites at three of Toronto’s upscale hotels for round tables and interview, while trying to jimmy some screenings into the mix.
The latter stand outside velvet ropes or police barricades awaiting a glimpse of, well, it was often Brad Pitt (“Burn After Reading”) they were most hoping for.
Though, outside the Elgin last Saturday night, Gael Garcia Bernal, one of the stars of Fernando Meirelles’ “Blindness,” was treated to a roar. And if you’ve never been caught accidentally in the blinding strobe of the red-carpet, it’s enough to stop a deer in the roadway.
And the world premiere of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Secret Life of Bees,” starring Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo, was also preceded by shrieks that had one ticketholder asking another in the crush headed into the sleek Roy Thompson Hall if he’d ever been moved to shout for anyone quite like that.
“Never,” he said with a confounded smile. Later, as the cast walked off the stage and the lights dimmed, a guy hollered “The Queen Is in the House,” to laughs and applause.
10 days, 312 films
Toronto’s film fest stats speak to the impossibility of grabbing the enormous tiger by the tail. This year the 10-day festival had 312 films, and 249 were features.
In the spirit of animal similes, Toronto is more like that elephant the blind men are asked to describe to each other. The only difference is that instead of the sightless, seers are asked to weigh in on the shape and identity of the beast. And still they can’t agree.
Depending on your mandate, TIFF can be a celeb-spotting extravaganza, a fall primer or an opportunity to discover fresh world cinema and American indie fare.
For instance, as of Saturday night, Colorado Public Radio film critic and Starz FilmCenter educational director Howie Movshovitz was especially keen on the world premiere of Korean-American filmmaker So Yong Kim’s sophomore feature. “Treeless Mountain” tells the story of Jin and Bin, two young girls abandoned by their mother and left in the care of an alcoholic aunt.
And Starz Denver Film Festival director Britta Erickson encouraged me to see Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.” The latest from the director of “Requiem for a Dream” and “The Fountain” stars Mickey Rourke in a tour de force turn as a professional wrestler who should have retired long ago.
On her semi-annual trip to Toronto, Swarthmore College film professor Patricia White praised the modest films of female directors such as Claire Denis’ “35 Rhums,” “Treeless Mountain” and Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy.”
“It’s the ‘Stella Dallas’ of dog movies,” White says. The title refers to the protagonist and her dog. “Though given the emotional register of the film, calling it that isn’t quite right. But it’s as devastating as any one of those maternal melodramas.”
During her conversation with Reich- ardt about making movies the right size and true, the director of last year’s equally quiet “Old Joy” related to White that several interviewers had used their brief time with her to talk “about their dogs dying.” That says something about people and their hounds, of course, but also about what sort of reactions the realist work of a modest, generous filmmaker invites.
Dog tale resonates
“I see a dog appear in a dystopian work, and it makes me miss my own.” That was the last meandering note I scribbled during the final movie I saw on an unexpectedly truncated Toronto Film Festival sojourn.
“Blindness,” starring Julianne Moore, Garcia Bernal and Mark Ruffalo, among others, is based on Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago’s novel about a pandemic that renders people sightless. It’s directed with powerful visual grace by Meirelles (“City of God” and “The Constant Gardener”).
It is an emotionally challenging work, which may be why the surprising sight of a chipper Airedale licking Moore’s character resonated so.
Back out in the night air, I did the ritual turning on of the cell to find a message from my mate. Our dog had taken ill suddenly, and it turned out lethal.
Ah, if only I could bend Reichardt’s ear.
