TIFF Digest: Part 3
The Salt Path
Based on the memoir about a couple who lose their home and days later discover the husband has been diagnosed with a terminal illness as they embark on a year long coastal trek. In official circles, the Salt Path is known as the South West Coast Path — England’s longest footpath. Way back in the day it was the trail favoured by the coast guard watching out for smugglers using the coves and estuaries to stash their goods.
Having not read Raynor Winn’s memoir of the same name, I went into my screening of The Salt Path without any baggage, insights, or expectations. Maybe I wasn’t pleasantly surprised by anything, but I'm not surprised that I found it pleasant. Marianne Elliott’s film may not be remembered for its directorial precision or seamless pacing, but it’s worth seeking out for its captivating performances and heartwarming themes. This is an actor’s movie through and through. Together Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs have genuine chemistry; they are two complementary halves of the same whole, and they work hard from start to finish pushing one another to explore new intimacies and vulnerabilities. Some other elements of the filmmaking and screenwriting proved to be a bit more distracting than beneficial. The film relies on nearly as many sweeping wide shots as Ben Affleck stuffed into The Town. Though I can’t deny the visual beauty of the landscape, so many of the shots feel shoehorned in and unnecessary, like they were scripted from a pre-arranged shot list thus making them impossible to leave on the cutting room floor. The narrative time-jumping also felt a bit clunky at times, a choice that may be more effective for book readers than it ultimately is for someone new to the story. Elsewhere, the syrupy saccharine score is one of the film’s true misses – it feels almost lazy to douse the audience with this much artificial emotional sauce (kind of like adding liquid smoke to some barbecue while it’s already sitting on the grill). Despite some of the technical unevenness, I thought the film’s quieter moments managed to drum up some real feels. The cliffside exchange about the lightly salted blackberries (which is lifted directly from the book) hits the emotional nail on the head. Sure, it’s a little heavy-handed, but it’s a tidy way of getting your point across, and luckily, the power of its lead performances keeps this moment glued to the earth. Your mileage may vary for whether The Salt Path offers answers to any of the questions it poses, but I thought the film valiantly plants the seeds for what may be food for your thoughts.
Cloud
Ryosuke Yoshii is an ordinary person, who supports himself by reselling things on the internet. He carelessly earns grudges by people around him and, in the end, he is dragged into a desperate struggle that risks his life.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film is a suspenseful thriller, a modern film for modern times with a modern commentary about how modern solutions to modern problems perhaps aren’t all that modern. I’m seriously running the risk of semantic satiation here… Yoshii (Masaki Suda) works a totally normal but incredibly boring 9-5 job (don't we all?) that he isn’t remotely interested in. He spends most of his time working as an online reseller churning fraudulent sales while hiding behind an increasingly less than anonymous online seller profile. He’s marking his product up and raking in a huge profit while taking advantage of both the buyers and sellers he’s working with. Yoshii’s capitalistic intentions are callously for-profit, and he clearly enjoys the sport of his hustling, perhaps even more so than the financial gains to be had. Of course, his extracurricular activity gradually becomes his curricular activity (it’s weird to spell that out, I'm not sure I've ever actually written out the word curricular). Yoshii’s relationships, personally, professionally, and romantically, all become messier with and intermixed with his nefarious behavior. Kurosawa creates a palpable uneasiness throughout that taps into the anxieties of feeling known online, or in this case, overexposed. Taking advantage of people and exploiting them by way of online anonymity has a cost that slowly catches up with you. This is a revenge movie, one where you’re mixed about rooting for the person whom others are seeking their due process. In Cloud, the fallout is inevitable if still a bit abrupt… and violent. I will say that my interest in the material gradually dipped in the film’s back half, but maybe that’s because the film’s first half is so immersive in setting the stage for the downfall ahead. Even still, I would absolutely recommend seeking this one out, especially if you're into revenge thrillers with a vibrant social commentary. Like all of Kurosawa’s films, the screenwriting is crisp, there’s a meticulousness and style to the filmmaking, and the themes are pointedly resonant. Did I mention that it feels modern?
The Substance
A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.
This was my first time at the Toronto International Film Festival, and The Substance was the first film screening for Midnight Madness on the first night of the festival. For that alone, my likeness for this film is going to be inflated. That said, body horror isn’t necessarily a subgenre I ride or die for, maybe in part because I feel the results are often mediocre and over-reliant on cheap thrills. Safe to say that The Substance, the new film by writer-director Coralie Fargeat, is far from mediocre, often brilliant, and the sort of wildly unhinged but still grossly entertaining film that will divide its audience by challenging the normies and rewarding the sickos. In this ‘careful what you wish for’ decree on society’s relentless and destructive pressure to stay young and beautiful, “aging” movie star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is being coldly pushed out of the Hollywood spotlight by the utterly revolting TV executive (Dennis Quaid). Amidst her personal and professional turmoil, Elisabeth is presented with a suspiciously mysterious but potentially life-altering opportunity (literally), an experimental injection labeled “The Substance.” This serum, which I can guarantee you is not FDA-approved, creates the perfect younger and beautiful version of its user. Elisabeth quickly orders and consumes "The Substance" and soon "births" (if you want to call it that) a younger and more beautiful version of herself, this film’s Frankenstein’s monster, Sue (Margaret Qualley). "The Substance" is a transformative MacGuffin à la A Different Man, another film with some overlap in this thematic sphere. So, what’s the catch? Users of this mystery drug must follow two specific rules, namely that The Substance can only be used once and that the two must switch bodies every seven days without exception (the other is merely a body recovering and preparing for the next round of trauma that comes from this constant body-swapping). As you might imagine, things go well until they go horribly. On the off chance I revisit this one again soon, I’ll save the details for another day. I might knock the film a few points for losing track of its style vs. substance (pardon my deliberate pun) equilibrium at times, even though I am often a proponent of the notion that you can never go "too far." In the film's back off, there's a little bit of narrative wobbliness, which I can ultimately forgive when the pursuit is this bold. With The Substance, Fargeat channels and challenges the men of cinema’s past, both interrogating and celebrating the likes of Cronenberg, De Palma, and Kubrick. She’s made a movie about the girls for the boys, an aggressive, unapologetic piece of filmmaking that is full of blood and guts, jet-black satire, and stunningly fearless and meta performances. Brace yourself.
