[TIFF 2024] From Uninhabited Tropical Islands to Midtown Manhattan
Star-studded casts and new festival favourites
Time flies when you’re having fun, they say.
TIFF 2024 is nearly halfway through, and I can confirm it feels like it started only yesterday, which might be a good sign that I am having fun.
So far, I have seen eleven films, ten of which featured Q&As1 with the director and the cast. I’ve only eaten one bag of popcorn but have drank more diet coke than is probably advisable, and I am happy to report that the films so far have been largely delightful.
I shared spoiler-free reviews of the first five films I saw at TIFF on Sunday, and today, I am sharing the next six, for films I saw on days 4 and 5 of the festival. All reviews are spoiler-free!
My first three days at TIFF 2024:
![[TIFF 2024] Bonjour from TIFF](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GqqF!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3812cec1-674d-4389-8db5-c913d0e8b44b_3024x1909.jpeg)
Eden
I kicked off the fourth day of the festival with a morning screening of Eden, after attending the red carpet for the film’s world premiere the evening before. Given the star-studded cast — including some of my favourite actors — my expectations for Eden were pretty high.
The film is based on an absurd true story about the first European settlers of the Floreana Island in the Galápagos Archipelago. It’s a character driven thriller about survival, filled with campy, comedic moments that are executed expertly by its strong cast. I am a massive fan of both Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby and I had a great time watching them play a somewhat unhinged couple but the standout performance of the film is Ana de Armas in the role of the wicked Austrian Baroness von Wagner Bosquet.
It’s a wild ride at every turn and the film’s most memorable moments got loud reactions from the audience in the theatre. From an entertainment value standpoint, Eden is a hit, though your personal enjoyment of the film will likely hinge on your affinity for the cast.
All of You
A sci-fi romance that challenges the idea of soulmates, All of You is — perhaps unexpectedly — one of my festival favourites so far.
I will admit, I only decided to see this film because I love Brett Goldstein in Ted Lasso and generally have an affinity for British humour, but I also wasn’t sure what to expect from the story itself, especially after I didn’t like the first sci-fi romance that I watched at TIFF this year.
All of You is a very different type of sci-fi, though. It’s less abstract, and the only sci-fi element is the existence of the so-called soulmate test that one can take to find their soulmate. It’s a very simple concept that works well because of Goldstein’s chemistry with Imogen Poots. Both are great in this film but I particularly enjoyed Goldstein as a romantic lead. His Ted Lasso character is very distinct, and as I’ve learned during the Q&A after the screening, Goldstein seems to share some of his personality. There is a note of that in Simon, the character he plays in All of You, as well, but he is able to add a layer of emotionality to him that’s heartwarming and realistic, which ultimately makes the character unique even if parts of him feel familiar.
The cinematography is beautiful throughout, and the film does a terrific job of using breathtaking landscapes to build on the romance and contrast the London environments that help in portraying the main conflict.
Friendship
My first (and only) screening of the Midnight Madness series at this year’s TIFF was Friendship, a dark comedy about male friendship starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd.
If you are not familiar, Midnight Madness is a series of midnight screenings that TIFF does every year to showcase the best of the horror and thriller genres, usually filled with gore but sometimes throwing in a dark comedy or two for good measure. Personally, I don’t do well with gore which is why I chose Friendship as the one midnight screening I would attend this year. It certainly didn’t disappoint.
Midnight Madness audiences are the most fun audiences of the festival and the audience at this screening was no exception. The reactions throughout the film were loud, almost giving the screening a concert-like feeling, and given the hour of the day, you can’t help but wonder if the film is actually that funny or if we were all just sleep deprived.
I think it’s a bit of both. Friendship truly made me laugh a lot, and I loved my experience seeing it at the Royal Alexandra Theatre after midnight. However, I am not sure if I would have found it that funny, had I watched it at 2 p.m. It’s a film I definitely recommend seeing, and one I would recommend seeing at a late hour, with an audience, if possible.
Sad Jokes
After a very late outing at Friendship on Sunday, my first Monday screening was Sad Jokes, a sensible, tragicomical story of modern family life and perseverance as an artist.
The story is told through a series of vignettes that range in tone from heart-wrenching to hilariously absurd, and follows Joseph (Fabian Stumm) as he works on a script for a new film while navigating the challenges of co-parenting with his best friend who suffers from depression.
I really appreciated the humour in this film and how it merges it with more serious topics and life’s challenges, but even more-so, I appreciated the beautiful interiors and set design. Visually, the film relies heavily on light grays and blues, giving it a minimalist yet tender look that pairs really well with the narrative itself.
The film gets its theatrical release in Germany later this week, and while there seem to be no details on an international release date yet, I really do hope it gets one.
Relay
Director David Mackenzie brought up Hitchcock as his inspiration for Relay during the film’s introduction, something that became very evident right off the bat once the film started. As a Hitchcock fan — and particularly a fan of his collaborations with Cary Grant — I thought Relay was a blast.
In a lot of ways, the chase in Relay is reminiscent of North by Northwest and there is a tiny mention of Archie Leach in Relay, whose name is used as an alias, which excited me to no end seeing as Cary Grant happens to be among my all time favourite actors and I love when directors and writers add engaging details like this into their set design and scripts.
The corporate espionage thriller is set in New York, and uses the city to its advantage in a very impressive way. Mackenzie spoke about shooting at Times Square, among the public in the middle of the day, during the Q&A after the screening and I love when such intentional yet absurd — because why would anyone in their right mind shoot a film among the Times Square crowds — choices pay off, and this once certainly did.
I really enjoyed this one, and I will be sure to come back to it when it gets its wide release to try and catch the easter eggs for the film’s twist that I missed this time around.
Julie Keeps Quiet
My Monday evening choice of film was a Belgian tennis drama, Julie Keeps Quiet, which follows a young tennis prodigy in the wake of a scandal that gets her coach suspended from their tennis club.
The film is quiet and understated in its delivery, appropriately utilizing silence to communicate the strong emotions at play. There are quite a few very aesthetically pleasing shots and the use of light was particularly enjoyable. The script itself is very strong, too, and even if I felt the film dragged a bit at times, you can tell just how intentional the choices to leave things out and keep quiet were, which I appreciated as it really emphasised the overall message.
Tessa Van den Broeck delivers a fantastic performance in the lead role and I was quite surprised to learn after the screening that she had never acted before auditioning for this film. For such a young and seemingly inexperienced actress, she does a terrific job leading this film, especially because so much of the film’s success depends on her, given the story’s focus on her character.
As I wrap up the first five days of TIFF, I am so pleased with my film selections this year. It’s hard to put together a realistic festival schedule when there are well over 200 films playing over the course of 11 days, and I know I had to skip out on a few films that I thought sounded good but ultimately overlapped with others I wanted to see or simply got sold out before I managed to snag tickets (which unfortunately happened for Babygirl and The Room Next Door). However, it feels very good to come out of my first 11 films and be able to say that I thoroughly enjoyed nearly all of them.
There are still 6 days to go, and quite a few films that I look forward to seeing, but TIFF 2024 is already a firm success in my book!
For those at TIFF or those who may have read about it online — yes, I attended that We Live in Time screening with premium priced tickets and no Q&A and yes, I am bummed about it, especially because the director was there to intro the film but didn’t stick around for the Q&A…