TIFF, haven't we seen this film before?

By Milan Paurich

TORONTO — It was d j vu all over again at the 34th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The same themes kept repeating in movie after movie (dead children, bar mitzvahs and Julianne Moore seemed to be particularly popular motifs this year), too many films played like variations on previous — and in most cases better — films, and some of the titles even had a sing-songy similarity. Was “A Serious Man” the new Coen Brothers flick or Michael Douglas’ indie comeback vehicle? Did Colin Firth win his Best Actor award at the recently concluded Venice Film Festival for “A Single Man” or “Solitary Man”? And that was just in the first weekend. No wonder there were so many confused movie critics walking around in a cinephiliac daze.

Every TIFF is a bit of an endurance test, and this year was no exception. You spend as much time queuing up for films as you do watching them since only “priority press” (the indefatigable Roger Ebert, Variety’s Todd McCarthy, kith and kin of TIFF chieftain Piers Handling, etc.) are guaranteed a seat. Sleep, nutrition and exercise are always the first casualties of the festival experience. And heaven forbid if you actually have to file copy while in town. Trust me, it’s not easy writing punchy, pithy prose on four hours' sleep.

But like all veteran festgoers, and this was my 11th TIFF to date, you learn to persevere in the hope that the movies — the real reason you’re there, after all — will at least be good. Fortunately, this year’s lineup was pretty decent overall with few outright clunkers, unlike 2008’s sorry slate of cinematic underachievers.

The two films that left TIFF with the biggest awards-season bounce were “Up in the Air,” the latest triumph by “Juno” director Jason Reitman starring Man of the Hour George Clooney, and the Oprah-sanctioned “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.”

Reitman proved he’s the real deal with the buoyant and exhilarating “Air.” This decade’s “Jerry Maguire,” it’s a true zeitgeist statement that really speaks to the way we live now, how we got here and where we’re heading. Without sugarcoating or audience pandering, “Up in the Air” also is that increasing cinematic rarity: a Hollywood studio film that’s unapologetically and unmistakably grown-up. A Paramount release, “Air” hits theaters around Thanksgiving time.

Also opening in November is “Precious,” a remarkably accomplished sophomore outing by director Lee Daniels, whose previous movie (“Shadowboxer”) laid a giant egg at TIFF four years ago. The story of a morbidly obese 16-year-old Harlem teenager (knockout screen newcomer Gabourney Sidibe) forced to deal with her second unwanted pregnancy — her first baby was born with Downs Syndrome — and an abusive mother (sitcom diva Mo’Nique in a fearless, take-no-prisoners performance that seems destined to win her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar next March) who’s battling formidable demons of her own, “Precious” is leavened with flights of magic realism as captivating as they are unexpected. Besides demonstrating oodles of visual flair, Daniels also proves to be a first-rate director of actors. He even manages to elicit terrific supporting turns from pop queen Mariah Carey and rocker Lenny Kravitz (both of whom are almost totally unrecognizable here).

For me, the revelation of the festival was fashion icon Tom Ford’s hotly anticipated writing/directing debut, “A Single Man.” Based on a novel by the late Christopher Isherwood, Ford’s masterpiece hearkens back to '90s Queer Cinema classics like Todd Haynes’ “Poison” and Tom Kalin’s “Swoon.” The film describes an impactful day in the life of a gay college professor (Colin Firth) who’s contemplating suicide in the wake of his longtime companion’s death. This 1962-set film’s painstaking period recreation is “Mad Men” perfection, Firth delivers a career performance and Julianne Moore — in one of her three TIFF appearances — hasn’t been this great in years. The Weinstein Company acquired U.S. distribution rights to “Man” in an old-fashioned bidding war the morning after its sold-out North American premiere screening. They plan to open it at year’s end for — what else? — awards consideration.

“Micmacs,” the new movie by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, felt like a retrenchment of sorts — it’s a lot closer to Jeunet’s earlier works like “Delicatessen” and “City of Lost Children” than it is to the hyperbolic romanticism of “Amelie” or “Very Long Engagement.”

That said, “Micmacs” (I have no idea what the title means, either) is perfectly enjoyable, and the notoriously persnickety press/industry audience seemed to love it. Yet I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t miss Jeunet muse Audrey Tautou. Like Michael Moore’s also-in-TIFF “Capitalism: A Love Story” (which fell apart for me in the final act), “Micmacs” will play to Jeunet’s pre-”Amelie” fanbase. But unlike, say, Moore’s “Fahren-heit 9/11” — or Jeunet’s two previous films — I don’t see it winning him any new admirers.

Two remakes, er, reimaginings got a lot of attention at TIFF. German New Wave veteran Werner Herzog’s “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans” has as little to do with Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult classic “Bad Lieutenant” as favorite Toronto son Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe” has to Anne Fontaine’s “Nathalie” (TIFF 2002). Egoyan and Herzog borrow their source materials’ basic premise then pretty much make it up as they go along. Since Herzog is some kind of mad genius, I’ll politely assume that the flat, dingy TV lighting and berserk performances were deliberate (after all, berserk performances are a Herzog specialty). But you know that a movie is seriously bonkers when the dependably strange Brad Dourif comes across as the straightest character in the entire film.

Like “Nathalie,” Egoyan’s “Chloe” has such an irresistible premise — a middle-aged woman hires a beautiful call girl to seduce her husband whom she suspects of infidelity — that I wish he’d left well enough alone. The cast (Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore again and “Mamma Mia!”/”Big Love” ingenue Amanda Seyfried as the young seductress) is certainly up to the challenge, but Egoyan’s perverse decision to turn the climax into “Fatal Attraction Redux” left me shaking my head.

The dead children I referred to earlier figured prominently in at least three TIFF titles. “Creation,” the fusty Charles Darwin biopic that opened the fest, stars real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as “Origin of Species” author Darwin and his wife, Annie, whose marriage is sorely tested after the death of their eldest daughter. The charisma-challenged Bettany and Connelly are both out-acted by an orangutan named Lucy who gives the film’s best performance. Danish enfant terrible Lars von Trier (“Breaking the Waves,” “Dogville”) unveiled his Cannes-premiered cause celebre “Antichrist” which deals with a couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) who express their grief over the accidental death of their only child in extraordinarily, uh, destructive ways. If a movie can be (artistically) sublime and utterly ridiculous (plot-wise) at the same time, von Trier’s latest provocation definitely fits the bill. Most of the audience at my press screening bailed when a talking fox — yes, a talking fox — appears and utters my favorite line of festival dialogue, “Chaos reigns.” Indeed.

The best movie to deal with that discomfiting subject was Don (“The Opposite of Sex,” “Happy Endings”) Roos’ “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.” As a young wife and mother sent reeling by the SIDS-related death of her infant daughter, Nathalie Portman is so good — and so unmistakably womanly — that she may have finally shed her neurasthenic waif/nymphet image for good. Roos’ decision to leave his L.A. homebase for Manhattan proved to be a smart one. Besides being wonderfully warm, witty and beautifully acted (Roos rep player Lisa Kudrow is brilliant as the brittle ex-wife of Portman’s husband), “Impossible Pursuits” is the most handsomely shot New York movie in more than a decade. Shockingly, the film left Toronto sans distribution deal, despite being one of the most universally well-liked movies of the festival. Better luck at Sundance, Don.

Although no children are harmed in “Mother and Child,” Rodrigo Garcia’s superb ensemble piece beautifully captures the ineluctable bond between, well, mothers and their children with compassion, emotional acuity and some of the most heartrending performances of the year. Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Samuel L. Jackson and Kerry Washington headline the film’s incredibly rich cast. Look for it sometime in 2010.

Bar mitzvahs were all the rage, too. Two of my favorite TIFF entries (1960s period piece “A Serious Man” by Joel and Ethan Coen and Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime”) used the Jewish rite-of-passage for entirely different thematic purposes. In “Man,” a middle-aged college professor (New York stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg) is abandoned by his wife on the eve of their son’s bar mitzvah. A 13-year-old-boy being mitzvahed in “Wartime” is just one of the many characters in indie stalwart Solondz’s unofficial sequel to his 1998 masterwork, “Happiness.” The fact that all of the original roles have been recast with different actors — including Allison Janney, Charlotte Rampling, Ally Sheedy and Ciaran Hinds — doesn’t make a lick of difference. Like the Coens, Solondoz (“Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Palindromes”) is such a distinctive and bracingly original talent that you can I.D. his signature within the film’s opening frames.

Among the “haven’t-I-seen-you-somewhere-before?” class of TIFF also-rans, Michael Caine played a vigilante pensioner in the well-made, if highly implausible “Dirty Harry” manqu “Harry Brown;” Michael Douglas earned acting kudos for his solid work in the otherwise unremarkable “Solitary Man;” Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek get folksy in the mildly twee Southern Gothic fable “Get Low”; Kristin Scott Thomas failed to repeat her French-language success from last year’s acclaimed “I’ve Loved You So Long” with “Leaving,” a curiously dispassionate account of an adulterous affair that left most critics frigid; and the great Chinese director Tian Zhuang seemed like an odd fit for genre fare on the basis of his narcoleptic battle epic/love story “The Warrior and the Wolf.” Anyone searching for the next “Hero” or “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is advised to look elsewhere.

Two about-to-open studio films (Drew Barrymore’s zippy directorial debut “Whip It” starring “Juno” breakout star Ellen Page as a wallflower who blossoms as a roller derby skater and Ricky Gervais’ drolly surreal “The Invention of Lying”) were generally well-received and got a nice pre-release bump. Whether they’ll be able to translate their fest buzz into box-office success remains to be seen. Everyone knows that the real world is a much harsher environment than TIFF’s hermetically sealed “reel world.”