Though it may be a toss-up about which is actually the single best film festival in North America, there is little debate about the top two - and they both happen to be Canadian.
Opening each year in late August and running into early September, the 20-year-old Montreal World Film Festival is followed just two or three days later by the 21-year-old Toronto International Film Festival. Both are big gatherings, running 10-12 days with lots of films playing at many venues. Toronto this year boasted 274 new films from all around the world, and Montreal topped it with 318.As the only competitive festival in Canada, Montreal awards several prizes to the films selected by a special international jury (this year headed by the grande dame of French Cinema, Jeanne Moreau). Toronto, on the other hand, contents itself with announcing the winner of an audience vote for "favorite film," and one selected as "best of the fest" by international critics.
And there were plenty of good films this year at both festivals - although the films that captured festivalgoers' hearts and won admiration were not always the big prize-winners.
The Grand Prix des Ameriques, given to one of 21 films selected for competition in Montreal, went to "Different for Girls," a British film with Rupert Graves playing a transsexual. Graves also won the best actor award - not, however, for this one but for another film at the festival, the black comedy, "Intimate Relations."
The Special Grand Prix of the Jury went to the French film, "Un Air de Famille," with superb ensemble playing, and a first-rate script unveiling the tragi-comic relationships during a French family get-together.
Australia won big in Toronto as both the audience vote and the critics' pick fell on "Shine," which was also a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival in January. A crowd-pleasing bio-pic about a disturbed and, for a time, institutionalized real-life Australian pianist named David Helfgott. A little more slickly commercial than similar films such as "Angel at My Table" and "My Left Foot," it nevertheless features in the leading role an amazing performance by a newcomer to the screen - Geoffrey Rush, who plays the talented adult David as hyper and eccentric, yet not unlovable. Well-known international actors John Gielgud, Lynn Redgrave and Armin Mueller-Stahl round out the interesting cast.
For me, among the films chosen from 60 different countries for the Montreal World Film Festival, the highlights were new productions from Scandinavia, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Iran and Indonesia.
A Norwegian/Danish/Swedish/German co-production, "Hamsun" is a solid, handsome biographical film, centering on the last years of the life of Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun. Masterfully directed by Jan Troell ("The Immigrants," "The New Land"), this quality production features a career-capping performance by the excellent Max von Sydow in the title role. A controversial figure, the famous Nobel-prize-winning Hamsun was branded a traitor when he sympathized with Hitler during World War II, and the film movingly chronicles those delicate years.
Another memorable co-production is the Danish-French "Breaking the Waves," set in a small coastal fishing village in Scotland, directed by the exciting Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier ("Zentropa," "The Kingdom"). Undeniably disturbing, the story centers around a simple religious woman whose intense devotion for a foreign oil-rig worker causes her to believe that God is directing her to perform strange and ultimately tragic acts. In the leading role, Emily Watson delivers a stunning performance that deservedly won the best actress award earlier this year at Cannes.
From Portugal comes "Six Days, Six Nights," a beautifully photographed little film focusing on the odd friendship that develops between two opposites, as one man guides another when they escape from prison and travel through dense woods to across the border to freedom. Moments of this little gem resemble a Corot painting come to life.
The Spanish film "Adosados" ("The Suburbs") is amazingly involving as it follows a young father's simple lie about the death of the family dog through a tangled web involving fear, paranoia and even murder. Never sensational and always believable, this refreshing new film won not only the best screenplay award but also the international critics' award for best film.
From France comes "L'leve," a very good adaptation of Henry James' short story, "The Pupil," and from Germany, "Little Angel," an intriguing and heartbreaking story of a wallflower whose relationship with a handsome Polish immi-grant leads to disaster. With his latest film, "In Full Gallop," Polish director Zanussi ("Year of the Quiet Sun") wonderfully recreates 1940 Poland as a young boy and his aunt try to cling to their former aristocratic life by keeping horses and staging fox hunts, even as socialism and Communism take over the land.
From Hungary comes one of the year's most original films,"Vasca Easeoff" - a delightful satire that whimsically observes history during the Soviet era. And from Iran, a surprisingly affecting film called "Father," about the relationship between a young boy, embittered by his mother's remarriage after his father's death, and the stepfather who his invaded their household. Not to everyone's liking - but for me the most memorable film of the year - is the dazzlingly beautiful, arty "And the Moon Dances" from Indonesia. With very little dialogue, its striking images and enigmatic story take us to puzzling and unfamiliar places. I couldn't resist sitting through it three times, mesmerized even more with each viewing.
In Toronto, among the nearly 300 films from 70 different countries, a trio of new English-language films - all in the "Masterpiece Theater" vein - made a big impression.
Trevor Nunn's new version of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" may be considerably more melancholy than people ex-pect from this darkish comedy, but the cast is first rate, and several bits of comic "business" make the play come alive in a refreshing new way. Helena Bonham Carter, Nigel Hawthorne, Ben Kingsley, et al, make this a Shakespeare screen adaptation to treasure.
Also impressive is the new adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent," with Christopher Hampton ("Dangerous Liasons") not only writing but also directing, and Bob Hoskins ("Mona Lisa," "Roger Rabbit") not only producing but also starring. Patricia Arquette co-stars as the wife, with Gerard Depardieu and Robin Williams (better and more subdued in this character role than we have ever seen him) among the excellent supporting cast. The background score by Philip Glass is also one of the year's best.
And the film that recently won a prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival - "Jude," based on the novel by Thomas Hardy - is another high-quality production in a recent string of excellent literature-based films from the British Isles.
Swedish director Bille August ("Pelle the Conqueror," "Best Intentions") has once again come up with a fine new film - this time, a production of the novel "Jerusalem," depicting the difficult choice a young man must make between remaining in his quiet and familiar village in Scandinavia or following the woman he loves across the seas to the unfamiliar Holy Land that seems to be drawing villagers like a magnet.
And there were many others of interest - from Peter Greenaway's inventive and beautiful (but, even more than usual, graphically frank) "The Pillow Book," to Steven Soderbergh's very odd, quirky, and unfortunately not-as-funny-as-he-probably-hoped "Schizopolis," starring Soderbergh himself. Also, the lush and amusing period film "Ridicule," from France, set in the Rococo 18th century and starring Fanny Ardant; the touching Rus-sian/Kazakhstanian war film "Prisoner of the Mountain," set in the Caucasus Mountains near Chechnya; master-director Michelangelo Antonioni's quartet of stories involving strange encounters, "Beyond the Clouds," with cameos by everyone from Marcello Mas-troianni and Jeanne Moreau to Peter Weller and John Malkovich.
Most impressive for me at Toronto, however, were two wonderful new films from France: "Micro-cosmos" - an absolutely gorgeous and mind-blowing close-up documentary view of insects inhabiting a meadow, and "Ponette," a startling look at a preschooler's attempt to understand her mother's death in an automobile accident. The latter features a performance so incredibly realistic and memorable, that it won for its 4-year-old star the best actress award at last month's Venice Film Festival!
So which of the two festivals is best? Let's just say I'm grateful to have had the chance to attend both of these top-notch events - and to be reassured in the mid-'90s that the quality film is still very much alive and well.