TIFF Review: TORONTO STORIES

As with all anthology projects Toronto Stories ebbs and flows, it has strengths and weakness that will see individuals respond to different parts for different reasons but taken as a whole this seems like a decidedly lesser entry into the recent anthology sweepstakes.  All of the film makers involved have done better work elsewhere, the available budget was obviously extremely limited and the whole project has a decidedly film-school sort of feel to it.

Toronto Stories is built around a simple, over riding connecting story, that of a young refugee boy arriving at Pearson Airport and simply slipping out and taking the bus into the city, where he wanders through different neighborhoods and different people’s lives.  Only one of the films within the project uses the child to any significant degree but he is present in all of them.  And, really, considering what the four film makers choose to show him I’ll be surprised if the poor kid wants to stick around our fair city for very long at all.  An escaped con holds an ex-girlfriend at gunpoint in Sudz Sutherland’s Windows, David Weaver’s Lost Boys takes a guided tour through the hardscrabble world of the homeless, Sook-Yin Lee fails to find love in The Brazilian, and Aaron Woodley’s Shoelaces weaves together elements of child abuse, suicide and hidden underground monsters.

Lee’s film is clearly the cream of the crop here, a quirky story of an awkward girl - played by Lee herself - trying to forge a relationship with an even more awkward boy who may or may not have Asberger’s Syndrome.  The characters here are the thing and Lee has such a fine eye for detail, dialog and those awkward, uncomfortable pauses that they spring to full and complete life on the screen.  As for Twitch-fave Aaron Woodley, his effort is hampered some by unconvincing performaces from his young performers but manages nonetheless to showcase the fusion of realism and dark fantasy - in the form of a stellar stop motion dream sequence - that is quickly becoming his particular niche.  Sutherland’s effort is reasonably solid but unremarkable while Weaver boasts both the finest individual performance in the project - from Gil Bellows, who seems to be channeling Christophr Lambert - and the most distinctive visual style.

Walking away from Toronto Stories I had to mull over whether it was a bad sign for the local scene that I felt as unsatisfied by the film as I did or if it was a good sign that earlier efforts by each of these film makers had raised my expectations enough for me to be so unsatisfied in the first place. I’m going to opt for door number two.  There is certainly no lack of talent involved in Toronto Stories and each of the component films has its own distinct strengths but none of them quite manage to bring the whole package to the table, the project on the whole taking on the distinct feeling of one pulled together a little too quickly with barely adequate resources.