The two largest - and most impressive - international film festivals of North America both happen to be Canadian. Representing the country's two major rival cities, French-speaking Montreal and English-speaking Toronto, the festivals themselves are rivals, Toronto's falling just three days after Montreal's festival ends each year in early autumn.
Each festival runs for 10 or 11 days with the latest films from all around the world showing two or three times each at several different venues. Montreal, this year, screened some 250 films from 65 different countries and Toronto featured 296 films representing 50 different countries. Attendance at both festivals was up approximately 10 percent from last year, with both cities already looking forward to next year when Montreal's World Film Festival will honor its 20th year and Toronto will celebrate its 21st.So which is best?
That may be hard to say. I've been attending each one on and off over the past 10 years and as my feelings have gone up and down, my allegiances have tended to swing back and forth. Some appreciate the fact that at Toronto all subtitles are in English, but even in Montreal almost any film shown with French subtitles may be viewed at another screening with the subtitles in English and sometimes, in fact, simultaneously, with one set of titles in its usual spot on the bottom of the screen, the other running digitally in a specially prepared area just below the screen.
Both Montreal and Toronto make special efforts to have as many of the directors and actors as possible at the screenings, introducing them before the showings and often allowing question-and-answer periods immediately afterward. It is not unusual to see someone like Zhang Yimou, Bernard Tavernier or Richard Harris walking down the street between films. Unlike some American film festivals - Seattle and Chicago, for example - Montreal's four festival theaters (with a total of 11 screens) and Toronto's five participating theaters (15 screens) are all within walking distance of each other, usually no more than three or four minutes away.
Visitors from the United States would find both of these cosmopolitan cities attractive mixtures of the old and the new, with Toronto perhaps achieving a more aesthetic blend between its Old World buildings and its ultra-modern skyscrapers and shopping centers, but Montreal having the edge in feeling decidedly more "foreign" and therefore more of an "adventure" for U.S. feativalgoers. The campuses and ivy-covered stone buildings of both McGill University in Montreal and the University of Toronto are just a stone's throw from the festival screenings, and friendly charcoal-colored squirrels not only inhabit the shady lawns there but may follow you to the doors of the theaters as well.
Both festivals attract a multitude of out-of-town filmgoers, most of whom are in some way connected with the industry (international press members, producers, directors, actors, screenwriters, distributors, exhibitors and so on), but residents of both cities are avid movie buffs, which tends to guarantee full houses at most screenings. Toronto merchants even acknowledge the festival by redoing their windows with attractive displays in which cinemabilia - huge reels of film, old movie cameras, photographs of the stars, etc. - are imaginatively interwoven among whatever would normally be for sale.
Montreal, however, has definitely become the most "user-friendly" of the two festivals, providing not only free open-air showings of some landmark film each evening to those who otherwise might not be able to get into the festival screenings, but also setting up their prestigious press conference (off-limits to the public at other festivals) in the great open space of the Desjardins hotel/shopping mall where many of the screenings and all the festival offices are located inviting anyone who wants to attend. It's a wonderful and benevolent gesture, and hordes of grateful fans crowded the balconies of each level to see and hear Gerard Depardieu when he was honored there this year.
Though neither festival boasts itself as competitive quite the way the international festivals such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin do, each does give awards. Besides the fact that both festivals give cash prizes to the best Canadian feature film and best short film, Toronto also announces both an Audience Award (chosen by the public) and an International Critics Award, while Montreal more elaborately honors best picture, best first feature, best director, screenplay, acting, and so on.
This year, Montreal's Grand Prix des Ameriques went to an American film, "Georgia," with Best Actress honors also going to its star, Jennifer Jason Leigh. In Toronto the critics picked an American film as well - sharing top honors with the off-beat Norwegian comedy/drama "Eggs" was Tim McCann's first feature film, the low-budget U.S. film "Desolation Angels," featuring a solid ensemble of relatively unknown actors in the simple story of a young man's increasingly fanatical jealousy over a possible liaison between his girlfriend and his best friend. Toronto audiences voted another off-beat comedy/drama, "Antonia's Line" from the Netherlands, the most popular of the festival. Montreal's Audience Award went to the haunting and provocative Argentinian film, "Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going" directed by Eliseo Subiela (best-known in this country for his intriguing "Man Facing Southeast").
As usual, some of the most fascinating films of the festival don't always walk away with the big prizes. Among the best at Montreal were "Burning Snail," "Pretty Baby" and "The Promise" (Germany), "The Awakening" (Hungary), "Flamenco" and "King of the River" (Spain), "White Balloon" (Iran), "Provocator" (Poland), "Play for a Passenger" (Russia), "Pharoah's Army," "The Usual Suspects" and "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" (USA).
Of special interest was the new film by this decade's most honored director, Zhang Yimou from China. Called "Shanghai Triad," starring once again - but perhaps for the last time since the director and his leading lady have since split - the ubiquitous and icily beautiful Gong Li, this time as a cabaret singer in the gangster world of 1920s Shanghai. In some ways "slicker" than his other films, it's still a remarkable cinematic experience and, if not quite up there with "Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lantern," still better, for my money, than his last two films.
In Toronto, besides many of the same films mentioned above (including the full-length version of Carlos Saura's dance film "Flamenco" which was only shown in part at the Montreal fest), there seemed to be even more films of note. In addition to Zhang Yimou and Carlos Saura, whose latest films we've been waiting for, Wim Wenders' ("Wings of Desire") latest outing is "Lisbon Story" - and though it's decidedly a "little film" (about a German in Portugal waiting to help work on a film by his director friend who hasn't shown up), it's nevertheless a charmer and the soundtrack is exceptional.
"Cyclo," by the young new Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung (known for is poetic first film, "Scent of Green Papaya"), is definitely an abrupt and startling change of pace for this director as he enters into the frantic world of a pedi-cab driver in present-day Vietnam who must either fight the brutal gangs dominating the streets or join them. For me, it unfortunately goes way over the top in its brutality and sensationalism, but it's still dazzling and engrossing filmmaking.
Liv Ullman's adaptation of the classic "Kristen Lavransdatter" is good, but regrettably long, puzzlingly edited and sadly miscast in its title role. But an Australian version of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" called "Country Life" fares much better, though, for my tastes, it plays up the humor of the play too much and misses some of the pathos of this year's wonderful "Vanya on 42nd Street." And Doris Dorrie's delightfully refreshing "Nobody Loves Me" from Germany could, with the right marketing, be an international audience favorite.
The best art direction of any film at either festival could well be Jos Stelling's fascinating-to-look at "Flying Dutchman" from the Netherlands, which played to a fascinated audience in Toronto. A mixture of James Christensen's fantasy paintings, Terry Gilliam's movies and a cesspool in a mad house, this unique and bizarre retelling of the Flying Dutchman legend is, like "Delicatessen" or "The Navigator," a film whose very "look" delights the dyed-in-the-wool art-film addict and puzzles the heck out of everyone else.
But the one clear-cut "classic" to emerge from Toronto (and a film that's opening on some U.S. movie screens right at this moment) is the latest little gem from Great Britain, an exquisite adaptation of Jane Austen's "Persuasion." No Merchant-Ivory, no Helena Bon-ham-Carter, Vanessa Red-grave, Emma Thompson or Anthony Hopkins, but an absolutely first-rate cast and director creating an on-target little masterpiece that eventually wins you over completely.