Missing boy, missing morals
Loveless
(out of 4) Starring Matvey Novikov, Maryana Spivak and Alexey Rozin. Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 127 minutes. 18A Gloomy stories with impeccable craftsmanship. Such is the cinema of Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev ( Leviathan).
In the masterfully bleak reality check that is Loveless, lost boys and lost souls gather for another critique of life under Vladimir Putin’s dark rule.
Russian discovery Matvey Novikov plays a missing 12-year-old boy, outclassing his elders in this winter’s tale where emotions are harder than permafrost.
Young Alyosha (Novikov) lives in an affluent suburb where modern apartment buildings offer a bucolic woodland view. Inside his home, however, his mother Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and father Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are in the midst of a nasty divorce.
When Zhenya and Boris aren’t yelling at each other, or placating new lovers, they’re cold-heartedly planning to send Alyosha off to boarding school and later the military. He’s an unloved “accident.”
Alyosha gets wind of their plans and becomes a runaway. The film turns into a child-hunt procedural that is the equal of Zvyagintsev’s Cannes 2014 stunner Leviathan.
As the unhappy people in Loveless search for the missing boy, radio and TV newscasts in the background report on the rise of apocalyptic cults, bloody war in Ukraine and other anxiety-inducing events.
The battle at home is so much more immediate. Zvyagintsev and his sterling cast expertly paint the portrait of a family too blinded by selfish desires to see the pain they are causing others.
It reminds me of Winter Sleep, the 2014 film by Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan that won that year’s Palme d’Or, a film that similarly engaged the brain while also chilling the soul.
Also opening: Jonathan Olshefski’s African-American family study Quest, at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Brian O’Malley’s gothic horror The Lodgers, at the Royal; and Moze Mossanen’s urban-artists doc My Piece of the City, for a three-day run at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Peter Howell The gods must be crazy, or at least fans of young adult fiction.
So many such stories revolve around supernatural characters ( Twilight, etc.) and magical Groundhog Day circular narratives ( Before I Fall, etc.) and the fad shows no sign of abating.
Hence the conceit of Every Day, directed by Michael Sucsy ( The Vow) and scripted by Jesse Andrews ( Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) from David Levithan’s popular book. It concerns 16-year-old schoolgirl Rhiannon (Angourie Rice), who falls for a mysterious spiritual presence named A, who inhabits a different body every 24 hours.
The set-up is almost too twee for words, but Rice burnishes acting skills that were already gleaming after The Beguiled and The Nice Guys. And kudos to the inclusivity and diversity of the casting: Rhiannon’s love for A isn’t constrained by gender or race.
Another plus is the many Toronto locales on view — the story is set in the U.S., but it sure looks like A is roaming The Six, visiting Sugar Beach, Ripley’s Aquarium, the George St. Diner and other familiar spots. PH Indy filmmaker Ingrid Veninger strives earnestly to create an iconic Canadian coming-of-age story. It isn’t entirely successful.
Set around Port Severn, the story follows Bea, a shy girl spending the summer with Mom and Dad at the greasy-spoon diner the family owns.
Bea, a lonely child prone to fainting spells, is desperately seeking a best friend; local girl Kate, a rather bossy girl with a chaotic family life, happily obliges.
At home, Bea’s parents, Scotty and Ally, are struggling through a rough patch. Ally wants the diner sold; Scotty wants to keep it.
Veninger has a knack for creating interesting characters but falls short on storytelling.
Charlotte Salisbury brings an ethereal quality to her performance as Bea, the best thing about the film. Lucinda Armstrong Hall does her best as spunky Kate but it’s not difficult to see why Bea’s mom doesn’t take to her.
There’s an idyllic quality to the landscape that captures the mood of languid summer days. But there’s a sense of something missing that makes the story fall short of satisfying. Bruce DeMara Writer/director Brian Taylor takes a natural impulse every parent has experienced — wanting to kill their kids — and turns it into an audacious pitch-black comedy/thriller.
Breeders everywhere should see this film. It may even be cathartic.
In Anytown, U.S.A., a mother drives a minivan onto a set of tracks with a tot in the back and walks away, just ahead of the afternoon train. Disturbing? It’s just a taste of things to come.
There’s something in the air driving Mom and Dad to suddenly turn on their pampered and ungrateful offspring. The folks waiting outside the school gates aren’t there to pick up the kids, they’re waiting to take them out in the grisliest way possible.
Then there’s the Ryans, Brent and Kendall, each bemoaning the lost freedom and promise of their youth in their quieter moments, and suddenly kids Carly and Josh are trapped and fighting for their lives.
Nicolas Cage doing crazy is old hat but Selma Blair is chilling perfection as Mom.
It’s a madly satisfying mélange of suspense and comedy, though perhaps not recommended for family viewing. BD Pixar’s 19th film is its first with a minority lead character: Anthony Gonzalez’s Miguel, a 12-year-old in the tiny old town of Santa Cecilia, where he longs to be a musician in “the only family in Mexico that hates music.” He’s about to discover how far dreams — and nightmares — roam.
Miguel longs to be a guitar-strumming troubadour like his hero, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), who exited the world after a tragic stage accident, while another musician brought misery to Miguel’s family. This led to stories about a curse against the family — hence the ban on music, enforced by the watchful Abuelita (Renee Victor).
But boys will be ninos, and Miguel’s curious peregrinations land him in the Land of the Dead, located just across a golden bridge strewn with marigolds.
Coco is a brilliant original creation by the ’toon titan, although it borrows some supernatural inspiration from Spirited Awayby Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki, a favourite of Pixar animators.
Extras include multiple deleted scenes, commentary and making-of featurettes. PH