Festival Coverage from Andrew Swafford, and Grace Winburne, and Zach Dennis
Cinematary had another great year at TIFF in 2024! Below you’ll find long-form reviews of eleven narrative features from seven different countries, (almost!) all of which we heartily recommend. Four of these films — Anora, Bird, Rumours, and The Substance — have already premiered in the US to great acclaim, with most of the rest coming in early 2025. Hopefully this coverage puts a few films on your radar! If you’d like to hear us take a more conversational approach to analyzing these movies, you can hear our dispatch from this year’s TIFF on Episode 483 of the Cinematary podcast.
CLICK TO READ INDIVIDUAL REVIEWS…
Anora
Bird
The Brutalist
Cloud
The Last Showgirl
Presence
The Return
Rumours
The Shrouds
The Substance
Wishing on a Star
…OR SCROLL TO READ THEM ALL!
ANORA
SEAN BAKER, USA
Reviews by Grace Winburne and Zach Dennis
Grace’s Take:
Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Ani who worked in a club. Every night she hustled hard, dancing with every man who came to see her. Seemingly content in her life, everything changes the night she meets Vanya. This New York Ani is plucked out of her hard-knock life and dropped into the lap of luxury. Here she enjoys all the excess that money can buy: alcohol, parties, and trips to Las Vegas culminating in a romantic elopement. After all, Ani and Vanya are just two crazy kids in love. Ani settles in for a life of comfort and ease as Mrs. Vanya, but Prince Charming’s parents have other ideas. What happens when the party's over, the alcohol wears off, and we see the consequences of our actions in the harsh light of day? What do we do when we learn that what happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas.
Every character in this movie is an object, a body for use, abuse, and for hire, serving those who can afford them. Consistently ignored, and the object of sexual desire, Anora, or Ani, is an accessory in her own life. Obviously, as a dancer she is the most commodifiable object. She is anyone or anything a person needs. For Vanya, she is a toy, a plaything he uses to act out against his wealthy parents. Their marriage was out of spite, essentially a green card marriage so he could stay in the States, and not work at his father’s tech firm. So his parents send along the fixers, to get Vanya out of trouble. Again, bodies for hire, who carry out the work of those who can afford them. But every character proves to be so much more than their stereotypical roles of head crusher, comedic relief, and damsel in distress. These characters support this familiar fairy tale with their idiosyncrasies, making this more of a character story with a powerhouse ensemble. When this film takes a sharp turn from fairy tale to farce, every character is on full display as a complicated and relatable human being. It is at this point that Ani becomes the center of her own life’s story. I was very impressed by Mikey Madison’s brashness and physicality and moved by her moments of silent hurt. The camera lingers on her in her most private and vulnerable moments, and we see her for who she is, a young girl with hopes and dreams.
Leaving the theatre for Anora, I overheard part of a conversation, someone said “He [Sean Baker] is a deeply humanist director,”. I wish I could have joined that conversation, and I am grateful to that mind that articulated that point so well. I agree with you, whoever you are, wherever you are. While this is my first Sean Baker, I can guarantee this won’t be my last.
Zach’s Take:
Already with hardware in its cabinet, the most recent Palme d’or winner at the Cannes Film Festival will probably finish near the top of my list for the year as well.
Directed by Sean Baker, known for Tangerine and The Florida Project, and starring Mikey Madison, Anora follows a sex worker in New York City (Madison) who connects in her club with the son of a Russian oligarch named Vanya (Mark Eidelshtein). What begins as a series of transactions between two consenting adults blossoms into a romance that ends with them tying the knot on an impromptu trip to Las Vegas.
Naturally, Vanya’s family learns about the marriage and rushes to New York in an effort to annul it. What follows next feels like a mix between Baker’s work with Tangerine and some of the more recent offerings by the Safdie Brothers such as Good Time or Uncut Gems as Vanya runs off with Anora, along with three Russian henchmen for the family, scouring New York City trying to find him.
Anora is just a commodity for everyone in the situation.
To Vanya, her body makes him feel good and she gives him the attention he seeks in rebellion of his parents. For the henchmen, she is a pawn in trying to lure Vanya back and only worth the money she will be paid to annul what they see as a green card marriage. And in the club, she is just another item to be ogled by the men that frequent the establishment.
Anora has to break the cycle as much as get out of the situation she has found herself in, and Baker is as adept as any contemporary filmmaker to exude the humanism from these characters. Everyone is just a pawn for the rich and you have to find agency to escape.
Bird
Andrea Arnold, England
Review by Andrew Swafford
As in many of her previous films (Fish Tank, American Honey), the handheld camera of Andrea Arnold’s Bird is often shaky and chaotic, matching the pace of someone in a dead sprint or otherwise tumbling through life. But when we first meet Bailey (Nykiya Adams), we’re looking through her iPhone camera: she takes any chance she can to film the calmer world around her, be it of butterflies crawling on her finger or birds soaring overhead. Her life does not usually feel like this. And it never does for long, as we learn when her father (a man named “Bug” covered head-to-toe in bug tattoos and played with reckless abandon by Barry Keoghan) careens into her solitude on his motorized scooter. Practically scooping his daughter onto the machine as he passes, he blasts punk music and shouts along to the lyrics as he returns Bailey to their housing project where he explains his plan to make millions by selling acid that secretes from the skin of a psychedelically gifted Colorado toad. (Though he will only later realize that the toad supposedly only slimes to “sincere music” like Coldplay’s “Yellow.”) As cute as the toad thing can be, Bug is a wildly irresponsible father, and Bailey’s life is as much thrown into chaos by him as it has been by the institutional forces that keep poor people poor everywhere.
Bird is a loud film, as Bailey often finds herself being shouted at by her father and other men who similarly demand unearned respect. The film’s soundscape buzzes with restless energy, filled as it is with lots of cross-talk and lots of music. Andrea Arnold habitually makes great use of music in her films, often letting songs play out in full and as they would sound in a particular space as her characters authentically engage with music in real time, often communally. Bird’s soundtrack is a broad patchwork of different genres, from the aforementioned punk to hip-hop to what Bailey calls “dad music” to whatever “Cotton Eye Joe” is. And the whole jagged soundscape is tied together beautifully by none other than Burial, the elusive and enigmatic UK electronic musician who is currently taking his first steps into soundtrack work with this film as well as Harmony Korine’s Baby Invasion. As a longtime admirer of Burial’s work, I love how this movie takes full advantage of the sheer breadth of his sound, which ranges from noisy club bangers to microscopic-sounding ambient textures. His beautiful OST even sees him playing with some sounds he’s never used before, like trap hi-hats in a frantic chase scene and wind-chimes / church bells for the more contemplative and reflective moments.
Although it’s a hard-edged narrative about impoverished characters living unstable lives, the heart of the film rests with Bailey and her desire to experience peace. She’s never happier than she is floating in the ocean, as she’s seen in many of the film’s marketing materials. And alone in her bedroom, paper-thin walls away from her dad’s nonsense, she plugs her phone into a mini-projector and watches her own nature videos on loop. Her camera doesn’t just serve an escapist purpose, either, but also a liberating one: when she is confronted by men she feels threatened by, she instinctively starts recording them, and at one point circulates a key video among her brother’s vigilante friends to resolve an abusive domestic situation. In this way, Bird seems profoundly concerned with filmmaking and music as not simply frivolous luxuries but as tools with practical uses, whether to bring people together or make people feel safe.
The brutalist
brady corbet, usa
Review by Zach Dennis
When Lazlo (Adrien Brody) arrives in America, he’s greeted by the Statue of Liberty veering over him. She blocks the sun as if shielding him from everything before – nothing can hurt you and the worst of it is over. Composer Daniel Blumberg’s score is introduced like pistons in motion, clanging against the steel of progress; as if you are punching a clock. In The Brutalist, this is not salvation or an ordinary 9-to-5, this is a job. You are no longer a human but a commodity or tool for America – the same as a hammer. And once you use yourself up, or a better (or more cheaper) tool presents itself, you’re discarded.
Laszlo has reason to rejoice. It is 1947 – the war is over – and he is set for new pastures. A Holocaust survivor, he starts by living in Philadelphia with his brother in law Atilla (Alessandro Nivola) and his wife Audrey (Emma Laird). Attila has made a life for himself here – the real American dream.
A furniture salesman, he puts Laszlo, a former architect, to work when he receives a hefty commission from Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), a son of a wealthy businessman who wants to surprise his father with a new study. Unbeknownst to him, Laszlo is a word-class architect, only losing his position when his work in Hungary was not deemed Germanic enough by the Third Reich. He is also Jewish. A minimalist, modern marvel is designed but quickly discarded when the elder Van Buren, Harrison Lee (Guy Pearce), returns home early and has an outburst. The family won’t pay them and Laszlo is kicked to the street by his family. He only resurfaces when Van Buren finds him working in coal and construction and proposes a job: an institute for the community to honor his late mother — with the design entirely in Laszlo’s vision.
In his life, Laszlo has seen how dispensable humans can view other humans. While neer seen, his time in the concentration camp made that clear. “This is like him redoing a kitchen,” his wife Elizabet (Felicity Jones) reminds him as the architect sinks into despair at the state of his project in the second half of the film. He didn’t listen at first when Harry Lee said to him that “we tolerate you, Laszlo.” For Laszlo, the building is an expression – one of the power, the matter, and might around him, but also a monument to his skill and ability. To Van Buren, he connects it to Laszlo’s idealism of leaving behind a part of himself that will endure. Van Buren is about legacy and the power he can wield over others. It’s neither of their visions that will endure, but the might of money. Laszlo gets too comfortable in his sojourn at their estate and is incensed when he is dropped from the project after a tragedy befalls the build. He sees himself in the building, but in America, it is no longer a work of art but a work of commodity.
Director Brady Corbet instills that into you. The film works like an engine propelling forward – no time for reflection, not time to revel in it… the task must be completed. At four hours long, it would seem that economy isn’t at the forefront but decades of time have to pass as the building grinds to completion.
As the build goes along, they rip apart the beautiful countryside in Pennsylvania where the ziggurat will stand. Progress means the hollowing out of the natural to make room for the modern. In order for Laszlo to complete his vision, he has to hollow out himself and lose himself in the process. By that point, he’s become an American. He is entertainment to the families – a foreigner who they can keep around to get drunk and order around. What else is he going to do? He needs the money.
The Brutalist finds an ending but never feels complete. We feel the motion of this journey, but not the destruction. In the epilogue, the grown version of Laszlo’s niece Zsofia (Ariane Labed) says that life is about the destination. I’m not sure we ever find one – we’re still living it.
cloud
kiyoshi kurosawa, japan
Andrew’s Take:
Kiyoshi Kurosawa can evoke horror like no one else. Perhaps my favorite example of the specific way he scares his audience comes from 2001’s Pulse, an absolute omen of a film about the internet causing mass-scale depression and suicidality. At one point in the film, a character is visited by a ghost, but we don’t see the ghost itself — instead Kurosawa’s camera holds close on the horrified character’s face as the soft hum of room noise completely drops out of the sound mix and we hear only the ghost calmly repeating “Help me. Help me. Help me.”
Cloud is not exactly a horror film, but it horrifies in similarly minimalistic ways. One of the most thrilling moments of the entire film involves the protagonist sitting on a bus and suddenly panicking about who might be standing behind him. This moment too evokes a shudder precisely from what we’re not seeing and hearing: all we see is a blurred silhouette just beyond the protagonist’s shoulder and we hear nothing at all, the entire sound mix dropping into startling silence for just long enough to make you feel as though something is wrong.
This is a paranoia-inducing crime thriller like I’ve never quite seen before: one that doesn’t announce itself as such. The ostensible narrative in the film’s first half is almost mundane: a guy goes back and forth between work and home, spending all of his free time on his side hustle purchasing random items in bulk to resell on the secondhand market, desperately trying to make a little more money this week than he did the week before. When he’s not working, he spends time with his girlfriend, though they don’t seem to have much to talk about other than the things they are buying and wish they could buy. The movie is so low-stakes that it feels…quaint? But gradually and imperceptibly, this shit turns into Macbeth — if the characters of Macbeth were fighting over a high-value waifu figurine rather than the Scottish crown, that is.
The film sneaks up on you, shapeshifting so gradually that there’s no clearly defined moment when the protagonist’s business deals start feeling more like crimes. Kurosawa’s characters, driven solely by profit and personal gain, are one-dimensional to the point of feeling inhuman. It is as though the film is a coldly calculated thought exercise meant to demonstrate how the logic of capitalism can lead to nothing but cruelty — and once cruelty’s true face is exposed, Kurosawa’s trademark silence is exchanged for the deafening volume of gunshots.
Zach’s Take:
It’s easy to do evil on the internet. You don’t have to look your victims in the face.
But evil still catches up to Yoshii (Masaki Suda) in the latest thriller from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Yoshii works as a reseller — grabbing items in demand and reselling them at a marked-up price.
His friend calls it easy money and Yoshii loves money. So does his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) who talks to him about all of the things she would love to buy with lots of money. He also works at a factory as a connection to reality, but quits as soon as his boss tries to give him a promotion. Too many responsibilities.
In the background, Yoshii infuriates a good number of people by the way he makes his money online.
He never sees them, but he runs into a dead rat on his doorstep and wire blocking his scooter path that gives him pause that he might be being monitored. Once he hits it big on an item, he moves to the country with Akiko with the idea of fully focusing on his reseller business.
Kurosawa starts the movie by weaving a procedural: Yoshii identifies an item to sell, marks it up and then waits for the profits to roll in — the audience a voyeur to him waiting for the sales screen to light up with “sold.” But it bends genres by the third act, turning into much more of a thriller as those he has wronged begin to catch up with him more tangibly.
It’s punchy, gripping and a perfect edge-of-your-seat movie to offset some of the awards fare this fall.
the last showgirl
gia coppola, USA
Review by Grace Winburne
The Last Showgirl is a tender, sentimental, and meandering journey through the ancient ruins of the Las Vegas of yesteryear, with its empty malls, and weathered iconography, it is an ode to a fallen empire. We are reminded that nothing stays the same forever, no matter how tightly we cling to our past. This film is a swan song, the final curtain call for the Las Vegas of old, but it serves as the beginning of a long overdue Pamela Anderson Renaissance, and I, for one, couldn’t be more excited. I was most excited to see The Last Showgirl at TIFF this year. I read Pamela Anderson’s book in anticipation, wanting to get to know her as I was genuinely interested in learning about her in her own words. Pamela Anderson is the last of her kind, a showgirl in her own right, a set dressing in movies, or a beautiful clothing rack for high fashion couture. But Anderson has always considered herself an artist, and she has always believed in herself. Her performance is somewhat semi-autobiographical; as she’s poured so much of her life and experience into her character, Shelly, supercharging the film with an overwhelming earnestness, in a rallying cry of “I’m still here!”
When the legendary floor show, the Razzle Dazzle, announces its final performances, seasoned showgirl, Shelly, scrambles to find new work, get her life back on track, and reconnect with her estranged daughter. With only a few weeks to prepare for an uncertain future, and already struggling to make ends meet, as the life of a dancer in the noble pursuit of her art doesn’t exactly pay well, who can Shelly turn to? Shelly relies on a community of friends, two young girls from her show, Marianne and Jodie played by Brenda Song, and Kiernan Shipka, and her friend, cocktail waitress/gambling addict, Annette, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Jodie and Marianne treat Shelly like their mother and do their best to help Shelly prepare for auditions for the newer, sexier shows. But can Shelly handle this new world of floor shows? She’s practically a relic of a bygone era. Annette’s gambling addiction and Shelly’s unwavering dedication to the Razzle Dazzle make them two delusional peas in a pod. Two women, growing older, bet on themselves and risk it all, knowing that no matter what, this dysfunctional community of women only has each other.
This was oddly an interesting double feature with The Substance. Two women, legends in their respective careers, are given the boot once they reach a certain age and are unable to continue in the entertainment industry. They no longer excite audiences. These women are used up and discarded, completely expendable in a world where allegiance to youth and beauty is fleeting. While The Substance is a bloody middle finger raised in righteous fury, The Last Showgirl is a poised, final bow to thunderous applause from an empty audience. My heart broke watching Shelly, such a bubbly woman, the last vanguard of a forgotten art, stand firmly in her dance shoes and rail against the end of her world as she knew it. It took a bravery I didn’t know existed. To watch her say goodbye to her life with all the glamour she could muster really moved me. She sacrificed her relationships, marriage, motherhood, everything for her art. At times she could be a petulant young girl who never grew up, who perhaps never had to grow up, making mistake after mistake as she tries to get her life on track. Nevertheless, her total belief in herself as an artist is so admirable; believe in yourself and your art and you’ll always be fulfilled, even if it is a solitary existence.
Presence
steven soderbergh, USA
Review by Zach Dennis
There’s a ghost in the house. The family can feel it, a high-pitched noise reverberates against the mirror, and objects fall from the shelves. They can’t see it because it’s us.
In Presence, the latest from Steven Soderbergh, the audience takes the position of the ghost. Gliding around the room, Soderbergh’s camera works as the haunt – less as an evil entity, more like an essence of grief.
Chloe (Callina Liang) and her family have moved to a new home. She is suffering from depression after the death of a friend and her parents think this could be the change she needs. From the start, we can tell that Chloe can feel the spirit over the others. We, as the spirit, peer into their lives; generally in close proximity.
Soderbergh takes us into these intimate moments: Mom (Lucy Liu) seems impatient over Chloe’s demeanor and embroiled in legal troubles at work, Dad (Chris Sullivan) is concerned for his daughter and increasingly frustrated with his wife and son’s indifference, and Tyler (Eddie Maday) is locked into school and swimming – aggressively hoping for Chloe to just stop. They continue their lives, unaware of the watching eyes around them.
The easiest comparison to be made is The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise. Both films aren’t interested in jump scares, but in a growth of horror from the uncertainty. Where Presence takes it up a level is in absorbing the other and as moments pass with some continuity, the scene plays out in one-take fragments – not always full.
The close up to intimate moments is terrifying in our invasion of privacy. Another movie this conjures up is A Ghost Story, directed by David Lowery. There, the tragedy followed by the passage of time, is beautiful and haunting. It isn’t just that his partner must move on without him after his death, but the prison of inhabiting the space for eternity.
We can get further away from tragedy, but it can sometimes linger longer, glomming onto the infrastructure around us; absorbing energy from us. I don’t think Presence ever gets there or at least not as much as I had hoped, but it scratches that itch of unsettling and not frightening that both do.
The return
uberto pasolini, italy
Review by Andrew Swafford
What if you took the magic out of The Odyssey? That’s what Umberto Pasolini seems to be doing in The Return, and it’s blandly synonymous title should be evidence enough that the answer is: boring.
While the incredible Ralph Fiennes makes for a decent jacked-old-man Odysseus, this story gives him almost nothing to do. The Return starts the end of the usual Odyssey story, with Odysseus setting foot on his homeland for the first time in decades. But the phantasmagorical island hopping sequences leading up to that are what makes The Odyssey a story worth adapting for the screen in the first place. Gone is the Cyclops’s fiery cave, the sinister siren’s song, and and the mystical palace of Calypso — the world of The Return is the beige of flat Athenian stone.
I teach The Odyssey (in graphic novel form) to high school freshmen fairly often, and they always have a lot of fun with it. Aside from the book’s amazing catalogue of cool mythological gods and monsters, students always enjoy debating the supposed heroism of Odysseus: is he a war hero and great tactician who protects his men and defends his wife, or is he an adulterer and a hypocrite who is often needlessly violent? Unfortunately, The Return doesn’t seem all that interested in asking this question, presenting Odysseus as a more-or-less straightforwardly heroic figure rather than a specter of a heroic ideal renowned in a bygone era.
With no monsters and no moral ambiguity, The Return saps The Odyssey of its most fascinating elements and somehow stretches a small portion of the text into a solid two hours. I didn’t think it was possible to make an Odyssey adaptation this boring, but The Return found a way.
rumours
guy maddin, evan johnson, and galen johnson, canada
Review by Andrew Swafford
Don’t you think it’s a little terrifying that our world’s leaders are just continuing to do nothing about so many ongoing global crises? The most inexcusable might be climate change, an actual apocalyptic force that we see more and more evidence of every day — like the destructive hurricanes that hit Cinematary’s neck of the woods just this year. Guy Maddin and the Brothers Johnson seem to think it’s horrifying to the point of getting absurd.
Prior to Rumours, the team was known primarily for making capital-A capital-G Avant-Garde cinema (The Forbidden Room), stupefying found documents (Careful), and virtuosic film projects (The Green Fog). Their new film, however, initially seems downright normal. It’s a political farce! Seven fantastic actors play seven world leaders meeting at the G7 summit — most notably Cate Blanchett as Germany, Denis Ménochet as France, and fucking Charles Dance as America (actually named Edison), never hiding his Britishness nor his Doddering Old Manness in his lampooning of not-quite-Biden, but moreso some idea of America as an obviously failing state.
The film’s first act is a dark comedy of manners, in which these leaders meet to “draft an outline of a provisional statement” about a “crisis” which none of them have the courage to name. This is a bureaucratic inconvenience for them, an annual meeting where they’re asked to rewrite the mission statement for the office. They’d rather get sloppy drunk and make out in the woods before try to actually solve a global crisis. Meanwhile — there’s a crisis or two going on, soon encroaching upon the G7 leaders themselves in the form of a Bog Bodies zombie apocalypse. At one point, Canada offers an acknowledgement and an apology to the resurrected corpses of Indigenous people before chucking a shovel into their skulls. Much of the film is hilarious, like if Luis Buñuel made Night of the Living Dead or something, and features so many absurd musical stingers that gives the movie a great sense of fun as we watch these monsters get what’s coming to them.
Unfortunately, the film does get a bit lost in the woods as its characters eventually do. Without much sense of direction, the second act wanders and its own characters seem of tire of bouncing off each other after a while. Fortunately, the movie does take a left-turn in the final stretch, revealing itself to as a cosmic horror story about the advent of AI. Perhaps symbolized by the giant brain the G7 leaders eventually stumble upon in the woods, Artificial Intelligence has suddenly descended upon us like an alien life-form (“The Night Queen”) in the midst of so many already spiraling crises. The world seems to be changing hands – in the words of cosmic horror grandaddy H.P. Lovecraft: “the world and perhaps the universe [passing] from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.” As a high-school English teacher who has seen the front lines of the AI wars, I really appreciated Rumors for its willingness to see something horrifying in the idea that these world leaders might resort to writing their provisional statement with ChatGPT.
the shrouds
david cronenberg, Canada
Andrew’s Take:
One of the most thrilling aspects of film-festival-going is seeing new work from old masters. Last year’s TIFF offered the rare treat of seeing the long-retired Hayao Miyazaki’s latest creation — and seeing the latest from David Cronenberg is a similar thrill. One of the few horror writers who can be said to have invented a subgenre all their own, seeing a new David Cronenberg movie is less about big scares and more about big ideas. Always rich in speculative worldbuilding and grotesque images, Cronenberg’s cinema is cerebral as much as it is embodied — and he seems endlessly fascinated by the thick entanglement that exists between the two. Few movies of recent years have felt like a visionary peek into the future as his aptly titled Crimes of the Future, with its bleak optimism about how humans will surely adapt to increasingly apocalyptic versions of supposedly “late” capitalism. As things have only grown more, well, Cronenbergian in the real world since that film’s release, what could a new Cronernberg film have to say?
The Shrouds feels like it started as a deeply personal and therapeutic writing project. Cronenberg lost his wife of 38 years in 2017, and this film centers on a conspicuously Cronenberg-looking Vincent Cassell mourning a similar loss. He’s a successful inventor, most recently made famous for his latest technology: shrouds that live-stream loved ones' corpses decomposing to the headstone standing above. When Cassell speaks of his late wife (who he’s still having vivid dreams about) it is with an unmistakably sexual tone, a morbid emphasis placed on the words her body in reference to a corpse. Diane Kruger plays both his late wife and his late wife’s near-identical sister, which of course carries heavy sexual tension all its own. Cronenberg has devoted much of his filmography to exploring the way that sexuality seeps into every crevice of the human experience, and here he does the same to grief. An oft-overlooked part of grieving, Cronenberg seems to suggest, is the grieving of bodily intimacy — missing the touch of your lover’s body against yours, whether in the heat of sexual passion or simply laying together. To me (admittedly a recently divorced person who felt this aspect of the loss pretty acutely), The Shrouds is easily Cronenberg’s saddest film, and it’s a type of sadness that only a body horror filmmaker could evoke.
Of course, Cronenberg can’t help but also get caught up in the Big Tech anxiety of it all, with the 24/7 surveillance of people’s bodies by way of these sleek and expensive looking body-bags. Much of the plot of this movie, which unfolds almost like an espionage thriller, involves the impossibility of truly private communication in the year of our lord 2024. Cronenberg also missed no beat in making a movie about the advent of AI-assistants, which many people will probably adopt without a thought for the fact that they work best when they’re listening to you all the time. In this way, The Shrouds is a kindred spirit with his son Brandon Cronenberg’s excellent Possessor, a film that downright terrifies in its all-too-real look at the way tech companies desire to peer into our most private moments in the hopes of better manipulating our actions. Where The Shrouds’s political imagination loses me a bit is with all the vague conspiracies about China and Russia looming overhead throughout. They’re perhaps reflecting something about the death of truth in our current geopolitical landscape — but I’ll admit, I got a bit lost in that Thomas Pynchon-ass plotline, which only grows more prominent as the film crawls closer to its head-scratching conclusion.
Grace’s Take:
I began my TIFF tenure with the new David Cronenburg film, The Shrouds. I tried very hard to prepare myself for what was sure to be a deeply upsetting meditation on grief and loss, and as I left the theatre I realized I could have never fully prepared for what I had just seen. Two films come to mind while reflecting on this newest piece, this slow burn on life, death, and consumerism: The Fly, and The Brood. The Fly, Cronenburg’s film about deteriorating and debilitating illnesses that take our loved ones from us piece by piece, and how we begin to mourn them in the same increments. The Brood, a very angry piece on the divorce and separation from his first wife, runs parallel to this film coping with the difficult earthly separation from his second wife. These three semi-autobiographical films allow Cronenburg to express these messy, life-altering realities within a comfortable and familiar medium. These losses can become anything and can mean anything to anyone. With all of this in mind, I began the Sisypheian task of composing this “review”.
The Shrouds, is a noir, a tech-noir, with death as a tangled web of clues and conspiracy. How can we let go? How can we grieve? For Karsh, a billionaire tech executive and widow, who still grieves the loss of his wife many years later, there is no right or wrong way to mourn. There is only his way. Karsh invents a new kind of technology, a stunning and invasive advancement in the funerary arts. The shroud, a burial cloth that wraps around the body, is functionally a camera, allowing people to see inside their loved one’s coffin, to watch as the body decomposes, providing comfort to those mourning loss, or perhaps prolonging their grief even further. They can see their loved one literally resting in peace inside Karsh’s new high tech, state of the art cemetery, and check on their loved one via an app on their phone. Finally, someone has innovated death. Following the violent defacement of the Grave Tech cemetery, Karsh tries to solve the mystery, calling on help from his brother-in-law Maury, only to learn that the conspiracy is much more tangled than he thought.
Karsh is a hard-boiled. He’s a man with a past, still hurt by it, with proximity to death as a career, always finding his way into mysteries one way or another. Except his mysteries look like troubleshooting data difficulties and technical malfunctions, he is a digital hard-boiled. The primary mystery is how this breach in data happened, then the a secondary mystery as to who destroyed and desecrated the dead. Add to that the mystifying events surrounding his wife’s passing as her illness systematically destroys her body and takes her away from him piece by piece. I also think that Karsh is covering up his involvement in the mystery. Tying up loose ends that could reveal his orchestration. Doing what he can to absolve himself of a guilty conscience, clean up any trace of his hand in it all, and the actual crimes and moral codes he’s defiled in the pursuit of…what I don’t know exactly. But he’s guilty of something. And to that add another layer of the mystery of grief, and how we mourn loss as we ask ourselves and the world around us “Why? Why did this happen?”
Twisting and turning from a portrait of loss, to an out and out whodunit, to psycho-sexual thriller, I tried to keep up, searching for clues as to how this film would end, ready to assign meaning and say to myself, “yes, I understand”. But I couldn’t keep up, and I didn’t understand and I still don’t. I have been constantly turning over conspiracy after conspiracy, hoping that something sticks. As a morbid, death-obsessed person with mourning rituals and rites all my own, I’m grateful that I have art like this that invites such speculation and introspection about life’s greatest mysteries. It’s such a treat to spin out from this story and get trapped in a web of obfuscation, lies, and red herrings. I think that’s the real point, people can interpret this film and interpret grief and loss in so many different ways, there isn’t one and only way to cope with those heavy emotions and there isn’t one and only way to interpret this film.
the substance
coralie fargeat, france
Review by Grace Winburne
Our obsession with youth and beauty culture becomes the perfect playground for body horror. One part Picture of Dorian Gray, and one part Frankenstein, The Substance is a gory and gorgeous mess with its foot on the gas. It is the sickness and the cure all in one single-use shot.
Elisabeth Sparkle, a famous Hollywood celebrity, smartly played by Demi Moore, has become a household name as a home fitness personality, cheering on stay-at-home moms, and young, impressionable women everywhere that if you move like this, step like that, you too can look like her! Elisabeth is cruelly fired from the network on her fiftieth birthday, as apparently fifty is a woman’s expiration date. What happens to Elisabeth when the career she sacrificed everything for, and the industry that gave her everything she’s ever wanted decides there’s no place for her? What will she do when it’s all taken away?
Enter the Substance. “Have you ever dreamt of a better you?” a cold, unaffected voice asks from her television set. From my seat, I quietly replied, yes. “You. But better,” the voice continues and the injectable infomercial gives Elisabeth all she needs for a second chance at life. These simple instructions for this product come with a warning, “you are one…respect the balance,” fairly straightforward, with seemingly little consequences. All warnings aside, Elisabeth tries the Substance. Just like Athena sprang from Zeus, Elisabeth gives “birth” to Sue. Sue is everything that Elisabeth once was, young, beautiful, skinny, perfect. Sue is Elisabeth, and Elisabeth is Sue. Sue will take over; she will become the new and improved Elisabeth Sparkle, even though she is Elisabeth Sparkle. The two must share this new existence because one couldn’t exist without the other. But neither “one” can respect the other’s “existence”, feeling equally entitled to life. Sue gets to enjoy all the glamor and fun that comes with her celebrity status. While Elisabeth isolates herself from the outside world, only venturing out of her apartment for more substance. Boundaries are pushed to the extreme when Sue refuses to follow the schedule, permanently disfiguring Elisabeth as a result. Motherhood certainly isn’t easy.
I felt almost overwhelmed by the story, with all its flash and guts, and I essentially white-knuckled my way through the film as it surged ahead. I was hurt deeply by the disrespectful and violent treatment of Elisabeth’s body, as it is nipped, stitched, slapped, and injected into submission. I was angry with the degrading treatment of Sue’s body as it is objectified into oblivion. And I was defensive of the cruel treatment of Monstro Elisasue, whose very existence is meant a shocking joke, but she represents the total of all our insecurities. It’s difficult to watch the hatred and disrespect with which we as a youth-obsessed culture, treat age and aging. Our society values youth and beauty and equates youthfulness and beauty to goodness. Things like wrinkles, loose skin, and thinning hair, all natural effects of aging become a problem to fix, an outward indicator of your failure as a woman, and a direct reflection of your goodness as a person.
The Substance is what happens when our body dysmorphia, self-esteem, and self-worth all meet in the bathroom mirror and fight for dominance. This film hits high note after high note, topping every climax with another punchy and bloody climax, it was like a shot of adrenaline right to my heart and self-esteem. As I left the theatre, absolutely rabid, completely radicalized by what I had just seen, I still reapplied my lipstick and fixed my hair, perhaps there’s still a ways to go.
wishing on a star
Peter Kerekeš, Czechoslovakia
Review by Grace Winburne
Coming off its nomination for Best Film at the 2024 La Biennale di Vineza, Wishing on a Star made its North American premiere at TIFF. Something for documentary film fans and astrologists to enjoy. Two communities that so rarely intersect. Luciana, possesses a unique gift and has an interesting line of work. She is an astrologist, specializing in astrocartography. As an astrocartographist, she charts your stars, calculating the cosmic positions of the heavens upon your birth, and where they’ll be on your next birthday. As you cannot change the stars you were born under, Luciana believes you can be reborn under them. During their visit, people will share their hearts’ deepest desires, be it love, children, or freedom. That desire becomes their wish. A flight is booked, and off they’ll go to celebrate their birthday under those same stars that welcomed them into this world. Upon their return, their wish will be granted, although not exactly how they thought it would. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in us.
While this is a documentary, it felt almost like a narrative film. The director, Péter Kerekes said his goal was to “combine the cinematic feel of a fiction film, with the ability to capture real emotion from real people,”. I have a very different idea of what documentary filmmaking can be, and I was curious as to the process for capturing these stories. Luckily, the premier had an extra special Q&A with Kerekes himself.He said he was able to capture people at their most vulnerable because neither he nor his crew spoke Italian. Due to the language barrier people were able to speak freely, their language providing them with a layer of protection. At least until the footage was translated. People come to a consultation with Luciana, and willingly share their innermost hopes, dreams, insecurities, and intimate details about their lives; with about five or so stories singled out and followed through to completion. We watch as these people either accept their lives as they live them or change their circumstances. As a believer in astrology myself, I found it interesting that we never actually knew the clients’ birthdays, signs, or stars as intimately as did Luciana. Realistically it didn’t make a difference one way or the other. Their signs aren’t important, their willingness to change is what matters most. Still a skeptic? Kerekes said that while he didn’t believe in astrology, he believed in Luciana. Wishing on your lucky stars can only take you so far. If you seek change, yes, ask the stars for guidance, but the real change must come from you.
Best of the Fest
Andrew’s pick
bird
Andrea Arnold
Grace’s PICK:
the substance
Coralie Fargeat
Zach’s Pick:
ANORA
Sean Baker
See you next year!