By M. Sellers Johnson.
Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light imparts a warm, humanist embrace that is as humorous as it is earnest, while Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl offers an odd blend of irreverent comedy and sharp drama….”
Late summer in Ontario signals the annual return of the Toronto International Film Festival. Mostly free from the labor disputes that affected TIFF 2023, this year’s Festival carries on with the usual promotional draw of red-carpet appearances, corporate abandon, and a massive array of visitors, industry persons, PETA protesters, critics, and cinephilic audiences. TIFF 2024 comes primed with a number of prominent titles passing along the festival circuit, such as Alain Guiraude’s Miséricorde, Bird by Andrea Arnold, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, and (fittingly) Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada.
Featured Canadian filmmakers include the likes of David Cronenberg, along with fellow directors Halima Elkhatabi, Sophie Deraspe, Santiago Esteinou, Philippe Lupien, and Marie-Hélène Viens, among others. Contemporary issues of familial strive, identity crises, poverty, and eviction are present in many of the films covered herein and remind audiences that fiction narratives and even documentary content always bear a refraction of the present concerns and realities of the world. Of the many stories on display at the opulent Princess of Wales Theatre, the modernist TIFF Lightbox, or the massive Scotiabank Cinema (nested humorously above a Michaels arts and crafts shop), the inspirations, conflicts, and beauty of the films in question, reverberate beyond the dim lights of theatre halls. Five select reviews below showcase the odd, tragic, transformative, and stirring stories from TIFF that are but a starter for the diverse content on display here at one of the world’s most familiar, accessible, and popular film festivals.
The Girl with the Needle
Magnus von Horn’s deeply unsettling third feature film The Girl with the Needle, shocked early festival goers, on the opening morning of TIFF ‘24. The layered meaning of its title holds tremendous effect, as we follow the impoverished seamstress Karoline, played with haunting fortitude by Vic Carmen Sonne. Set in Copenhagen, during the waning days of World War I, Karoline assumes her husband Peter to be dead, from a year of absent correspondence. Beset by extreme poverty and being unable to find accommodations beyond the dilapidated spaces that surround her, she seeks sexual and practical solace in her factory employer Jorgen (Joachim Fjelstrup). Once Karoline becomes pregnant, Jorgen reluctantly agrees to marry her. However, his bitter and disapproving mother The Baroness (the first of the film’s biting and dangerous matriarchal figures) quickly casts her out of their home. The unexpected return of her war-torn husband, who now adorns an eerie prosthetic mask to cover his disfigured visage, shakes the new mother who swiftly rejects Peter, though she later discovers him again at a traveling carnival employed as the main attraction “freak.” Through these trials, her beleaguered journey eventually leads her to the ostensibly caring Dagmar Overbye, played by the formidable Trine Dyrholm. However, the overall oneiric tone of the film portends the most harrowing events to come in her relationship to the mysterious Dagmar, and her crimes that summon the true story of one of Denmark’s most infamous killers.
The Girl with the Needle is a bold and expressive nightmare carried through by the tenacious, sympathetic Karoline. The film’s immersive black-and-white cinematography from Michal Dymek and Frederikke Hoffmeier’s melancholic (at times metallic) score echoes the works of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross while generating an unrelenting sense of foreboding and despair. The opening sequence of the film showcases an assemblage of overlayed and distorted faces. This call to German Expressionism feels equally in conversation with the likes of Maya Deren and her mid-century avant-garde compatriots. For fans of Terrence Malick, the sequence might even seem like a refracted counterpart to an opening black-and-white montage in Knight of Cups (2015). Other subversive citational moments occur, such as a cheeky walking/miming scene, similarly used in Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984) and Lion (Garth Davis, 2016). But any such extra-textual nods are dubious and obscure, at best, as the artistically morbid sensibility of the story is something all its own. Curious extreme close-up eye inserts ironically hint at Peter’s missing eye, while also reflecting the affected vantage of the viewer. And the characters’ common usage of everything from morphine and ether to naphtha and even kerosene, further entrenches the viewer in an impression of drug-addled, expressionist realism. It is a bleak and dirty film but undoubtedly well-crafted.
Despite the nefarious and unspeakable horrors committed by Dagmar, with Karoline as an unwitting or forced accomplice, von Horn (thankfully) never quite treads into showing us the horrors at face value which occur under the guise of foster care liaisons, masquerading at a confectionary shop. And while innocent children suffer most from the misguided violence, in monstrous efforts to spare them from the abject conditions of humanity, the film does end with a glimmer of hope. Von Horn’s affecting and dreadfully adept foray with The Girl with the Needle returns an impressive and powerful genre-bending tale that employs true crime, expressionism, and horror. To recall Karoline’s nocturnal whispers to the traumatized Peter as he screams and shakes on the cold wooden floor, “It’s only a nightmare.”
Grand Tour
Another period film set in 1918 arrives with Cannes Best Director recipient Miguel Gomes and his hazy mosaic feature, Grand Tour. The film follows Edward Abbott (Gonçalo Waddington), a civil servant of the British Empire who capriciously skips around Southeast and East Asia fleeing his intrepid fiancée Molly Singleton (Crista Alfaiate), who trails closely in his wake. Against any conjecture of Grand Tour as a romantic fable, Gomes forgoes conventions of a typical love story, instead offering a cryptic odyssey that blurs distinctions of documentary, diegesis, and fantasy. As Edward finds himself restless in his journey from Rangoon, Saigon, and Manila, to Osaka, Shanghai, and the Chinese mountains neighboring Tibet, his travelogue (and that of Molly) intimately acts as a foil toward exploring the nuances and realities of these varied locales. Gomes and his team also embarked on the grand tour themselves (a popular holiday venture for European travelers in the early twentieth century), before penning the script. Using the documentary footage of their travels throughout Asia as a foundation for the story, Gomes situates documentary “archives” of the present, in parallel with the fiction narrative of the past. As such, the director uses artifice to glean the present realities of these touristed sites, and these two artistic approaches, in turn, generate a mesmerizing sundry of dreamy anecdotes from the East, obscured through the vantage of Western perspectives.
The playful and jaunty spirit of the film surrounds both the onsite locations and the beautifully photographed black-and-white scenes, that are obviously rendered on a soundstage. In Lisbon and Rome, to be exact. While Edward is curious, evasive, and imprudent, Molly is candid and jovial, yet determined. The two seem an odd match, and the results of an aspired reunion with her absconded husband, all but verify this inkling. As the film continues its wandering voyage across greater Asia, local languages are often untranslated (save for the voiceovers), whereas subtitles accompany European-based languages like Portuguese and French. Echoes of silent cinema also resound here with playful iris shots effects during the Singapore chapter. Interestingly, the different Asian-language voiceover narrations are frequently incongruous with the events onscreen. In such cases, diegetic details described offscreen showcase similar events mirrored in documentary footage, like a fortune teller shuffling her deck or a group of ladies gambling over a game of mahjong.
Gomes remarks how the switched male and female perspectives generate a melodramatic quality to this comedic, yet melancholic film. While watching the film, one recalls American screwball films of the 1930s/40s. Think of Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938) but without a clear narrative finale. Grand Tour will surely test audiences with its meandering plot, dreamy atmosphere, and enigmatic conclusion. A final cinematic gesture from Gomes appears to break the fourth wall, while also resurrecting one of his characters—an ending both puzzling and inspiring. In essence, this hypnotic bricolage of film will have viewers both romanticizing uncertain vestiges of the past and pondering the hidden lives of places and people that frame each fleeting impression in our own grand tour. While reflecting on his film, Gomes offers the following: “Above all there is this immense tour that unites what is divided—countries, genders, times, reality, and the imaginary, the world and the cinema. More than anything I want to invite those who view film to take this last grand tour. I think this is what cinema is all about.”
All We Imagine As Light
Payal Kapadia’s richly textured All We Imagine As Light (see top image) imparts a warm, humanist embrace that is as humorous, as it is earnest. Kapadia’s feature fiction debut evinces noticeable traces of her early nonfiction style. Her celebrated documentary-fiction hybrid, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021) was received with praise at TIFF, just three years prior. The exhibition of her newest project received similar praise from Toronto audiences for its touching narrative, enlivened by a distinct humorous disposition. The story follows two roommates/friends, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) who work as nurses in contemporary Mumbai. Their noticeable differences in personality do little to undermine the strength of their friendship, even amidst interpersonal conflicts. The altruistic yet reserved Prabha loses patience over waiting for her husband, who has long since immigrated to Germany for work. All the while, she politely entertains the affections of another doctor (Azees Nedumangad). Anu, on the other hand, is young, carefree, and rebellious. Open to possibilities of young adulthood, she enjoys evening outings with her paramour Shiaz (Hridhu Kadam), whose Muslim identity, she fears, will provoke the chagrin of her conservative Hindu family, who reside in the southern state of Kerala. Their religious difference does nothing to dissuade the couple, though Anu frets over anxieties of parental backlash. At first, Prabha also seems to resist the couple. However, it is uncertain if this is out of annoyance or jealousy. The two Malayali friends later embark from the city to a rural seaside town (near Ratnagiri), to visit their friend Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam). During this passage, they further explore and negotiate their individual dramas, desires, and faith in one another. Working-class milieus, desires, and friendships are surveyed in this beautiful film that is more than deserving of its Cannes Grand Prix award, received earlier in the summer. Prabha and Anu’s story is a testament to the strength of friendship, malleable in its definition and unbound by societal conviction.
Kapadia’s work here shines as a humanist text on the nature of femineity, relationships, and learning when to let go and when to embrace. The doc-infused style that opens the film recalls her previous work, while the film’s more imaginative passages highlight her evolution as a filmmaker. All We Imagine As Light is a very “realistic” film, imbued with the liberties of imagination. In both the city and country, Kapadia captures the rapturous, quotidian beauty of everything from afternoon rainstorms to the occasional mundanity of work life. Dhritiman Das’ gorgeous score and expectational photography from cinematographer Ranabir Das, further buoys the overall impressive quality of the film. The inherent humanism throughout, as it presents the joys and struggles of life in Mumbai is countered with amusing scenes, such as a brief shot of an apparent Monkey D. Luffy figurine inside a hospital fish tank. Many warm and touching moments scatter the narrative, with nurses going to the movies, Anu and Shiaz sharing dreams and visions of the future with one another, as well as an intimate trip to a coastal cave adorned with ancient carved faces and amorous signatures drawn in graffiti. In a particularly resonant sequence, Prabha cares for a nearly drowned man whom she just saved. But as she tends to the ailing stranger, she also shares in an imaginative encounter with him “as her husband” and is finally able to let go of her emotional burden. Such visions and imaginations bolster Kapadia’s moving and euphoric feature film, and her uplighting conclusion compels one to feel nothing but blissful regard for her fully formed characters. The final scene finds the group seated by a beachside bar (apparently run by a young teenager?) and resounds as one of the most tender and complete denouements in recent memory. Kapadia’s core themes of inclusion and empathy linger here and throughout this astounding work.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, offers an odd blend of irreverent comedy and sharp drama, as an upper-middle-class Zambian family deals with the sudden death of an uncle. In turn, the family also must contend with his dark secrets and the resonant harm this has done to the young women of the family. Susan Chardy has an impressive debut as the lead Shula, as she navigates the tumultuous circumstances of patrilineal and generational trauma with much tact and solemn sensibility. After she finds her Uncle Fred (Roy Chisha) dead in the middle of the road after returning from a costume party, Shula’s memories of abuse at the hands of her, now-fallen uncle, resurge. The larger Bemba family soon gathers and criticizes her cold (but not emotionless) response to their emphatic grieving traditions, part of which implores its kin to look favorably on the deceased, despite their transgressions in life. Inevitably, cultural contradictions, extended families, and generations collide. With the ever-partying Cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela)by her side, Shula discovers that Fred’s child abuse is not limited to her and that her younger sister and cousins have suffered too. The family resists or rejects such notions about their “beloved” deceased, charging Shula and her cousins to make a stand against the damaging mindsets and traditions that afflict their family.
The Zambian-Welsch Nyoni dots her film with surrealist traces as the audience becomes more privy to the significance of the titular guinea fowl. Our understanding of the nature of the animal is rendered rather pointedly midway through the narrative in a flashback of a children’s education film. Scenes of this also, ambiguously, mark the opening scenes of the film. The guinea fowl is endemic to Africa and is a talkative, social bird, warning the other creatures on the savannah of surrounding dangers. However, the title of the film truly manifests in the closing scene as Shula arrives at a contentious family meeting (i.e., isambo lyamfwa) with Fred’s young and neglected children in tow. While the uncles, aunties, and in-laws bicker over the belongings, finances, and legacy of Fred, Shula “becomes” the guinea fowl as both a protective act and a witty attack on the memory of her evil uncle and the systemic behavior that willingly ignores his wrongdoings. The tonal array of Nyoni’s film often makes it difficult to determine when to laugh or when to feel solemn—the audience surely struggled with this throughout the screening. Nevertheless, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is an empowering tale of solidarity amidst the destructive patterns of excuse and abuse that so often damage families and their loved ones. Fortunately, Fred’s dubious memory is not the final point of the film, but rather the strength of childhood communities as they struggle for justice amidst the silencing power and inactions of elders and other women. Shula and her cousins refuse to inherit these familial traditions, unearthing their afflicted memories and demanding to be heard—even through the piercing screech of a guinea fowl. Traditionally in Bemba cultures, such piercing wails call to mourn the dead, but here, Nyoni calls us to honor the living.
Kill the Jockey
Luis Ortega’s wild and inventive new film Kill the Jockey unfolds in a series of bizarre events that nimbly interrogate the enigmas of promise and transformation. Led by a luminous performance from Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as Remo/Dolores, Ortegas’ delirious thriller/comedy/art film only furthers the director’s reputation as one of the most audacious voices in Argentine cinema. Co-produced by Benecio Del Toro, Kill the Jockey features collaborations with cinematographer Timo Salminen and writer Fabián Casas, both of whom have worked with fellow Argentine auteur Lisandro Alonso. Viewers will likely recognize Biscayant from his leading role in Robin Campanillo’s 2017 French drama, 120 battements par minute, but his dual role in this Ortega outing attests to his strengths as a versatile and quietly magnificent actor. In Ortega’s most recent film, we see the alchemy of inner and outer worlds within Biscayant (and others) and how this catalyzes pathos, hilarity, and transcendence.
For some strange reason, Kill the Jockey feels almost familiar, like a zany dream or surrealist imagination. The distinct events of the film are unruly and bizarre, as Ortega centers his tale around middle-aged mobsters, Queer jockeys, and curiously powerful babies. Remo is a stoic and substance-abusing horse jockey—when we first meet him in a bar, he is nearly catatonic. His competitor and lover Abril (Úrsula Corberó Delgado) is pregnant, but neither are ready to be parents. Her sexual preoccupation with another female racer furthers this sentiment. After she determines that only death and rebirth will renew her faith in motherhood (and in our protagonist), Remo finds himself thrown mid-race from the new Japanese prize horse and down a rabbit hole of peculiar consequences. After awakening in the hospital, Remo abruptly leaves dressed in an oversized head bandage and fur coat, armed with a colorful makeup kit that he/they use to stylize their new identity as Dolores “Lola.” Remo/Dolores eludes and confronts angry gangsters, dissatisfied with their continual defeat on the track and injury of the thoroughbred. Their journey carries them through the sordid avenues and shops of Buenos Aires, to prison, and finally to a countryside racetrack where an unexpected rebirth occurs in the film’s final moments. Awash in Queer/trans perspectives, sexual ambiguities, tormented identities, and several infectious dance sequences, Ortega’s Kill the Jockey arrives on the scene as one of the most unusual, sexy, and provocative films of the mid-2024 festival circuit.
M. Sellers Johnson is an independent scholar and editor whose research interests include French art cinema, transnationalism, historiography, and aesthetics. He received his MA from Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2021 and his BA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2018. His work has appeared in Afterimage, Film International, Film Quarterly, Media Peripheries, Mise-en-scène, Offscreen, and sabah ülkesi, among other outlets. He is the founding Citation Ethics Editor for Film Matters, and the current Book Reviews Editor for New Review of Film and Television Studies.
Read Ali Moosavi’s coverage of TIFF 2024 here.