H’wood butts in
TORONTO — The 40th Toronto International Film festival trekked to foreign and alien terrain during its opening weekend — but Hollywood glamour was never far behind.
And for those who preferred their searches to be more personal, there were performances that wrestled with identity, politics and the places where those converged.
At Friday’s debut of “Our Brand Is Crisis,” a wry satire of American political strategists who insert themselves into a fictional presidential campaign in Bolivia, the film’s star, Sandra Bullock, and its co-producer George Clooney had a reunion after their pairing in “Gravity” (2013). This time, they weren’t floating over the Earth, but talking about, well, mooning.
During a postfilm Q&A at the Princess of Wales Theatre, an audience member asked if it was indeed Bullock’s bottom shown onscreen during a comedic moment when her character is in a bus race with a rival (played by Billy Bob Thornton). Bullock turned this way and that on stage, puckishly showing off her best side, to let folks decide for themselves.
That’s when Clooney stepped forward and chimed in, “It was mine, actually!” Hoping to outdo his fellow Oscar winner, Clooney spun around and did a mini-twerk toward the audience.
The crowd ate it up, especially when Bullock added, “It’s his, because George’s is smoother than mine, actually. It’s like a baby’s. Mine is like a Chia Pet!”
The audience erupted again when Clooney, after being asked how he cries on cue, immediately broke down.
Later that evening, Clooney’s pal Matt Damon joined co-stars Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara and Chiwetel Ejiofor and director Ridley Scott for the premiere of “The Martian.” The zippy and thrilling space drama stars Damon as an astronaut accidentally abandoned on Mars, as his former crew members and NASA try to figure out a way to get him off the Red Planet.
On the red carpet, Damon commented that one reason he liked his character from the best-selling book, who never loses his sense of humor as he struggles to survive, was that, “He’s ingenious in how he figures out how to save his own life.” While filming in the desert in Jordan, Damon said, it “felt like we were in another world. It’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”
Another dangerous place, as shown in “Sicario,” which debuted Friday, is the Mexico-U.S. border towns that are on the front lines of the drug war. Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent recruited by a mysterious DEA agent (Josh Brolin) and his partner (Benicio Del Toro) to follow a trail of murder and money all the way to a drug kingpin.
The film is the latest from Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, a Toronto festival favorite — his “Prisoners” wowed here in 2013. “Sicario,” opening in theaters next Friday, plays like a Donald Trump nightmare, starting with a raid on a cartel’s Arizona hideout, proceeding through a mileslong tunnel to Mexico and finishing in some very bloody retribution.
The bloody world of London’s East End during the 1950s and ’60s is the setting for “Legend,” with Tom Hardy (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) playing two roles: Twin brothers and murdering gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray. The film went into the festival with a lot of buzz for Hardy, whose recent string of performances (“Inception,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Drop”) have made audiences hungry for more Hardy. Here, they certainly get that.
Another Brit poised to steal the spotlight at Toronto 2015 is Eddie Redmayne, last year’s Best Actor Oscar winner for “The Theory of Everything.” In his newest, “The Danish Girl,” Redmayne plays Einar Wegener, who in the 1920s in Copenhagen became the world’s first recipient of a male-to-female sex change, becoming a woman named Lili Elbe. The movie is directed by Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”), and buzz is that Redmayne could possibly be a member of another exclusive club: Actors who’ve won Best Actor Oscars two years in a row. That club includes only Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks.