When you only have time to see a handful of movies at a film festival, you do some research, pick some safe bets and some you have no idea about, close your eyes, and hope for the best. So if you manage to get one film out of ten that's a gem, it's exciting and rewarding and suddenly you feel like a film guru because hey, you picked it, and you get to call it a gem before everyone else does. We saw ten films at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, and I am happy to report that yes, we were blessed with a gem. All ten films are here, and they appear in the order in which we saw them, only because I tend to think of things in a somewhat chronological manner. I've also ranked them from 1 to 10, 1 being the gem, and 10 being, well... not.

06.09.02 :. Secretary, directed by Steven Shainberg [4]

The requisite festival intro dubbed this film "strangely perverse". It is about Lee Holloway and the way in which she deals with extreme situations and emotions: Lee practices self-mutilation. The dark humour in this movie coupled with the truly earnest performance (earnest in a good way) by Maggie Gyllenhaal, as Lee, put me on the verge of tears even while I was laughing. That was about as "strangely perverse" as I found the film though, because once the relationship between Lee and her boss E. Edward Grey (played by James Spader, who was born for this role) developed, the story became compassionate and tender.

07.09.02 :. Take Care of My Cat, directed by Jeong Jae-eun [2]

This film is a great look into that whole Asian-youth-buggle-gum-cell-phone culture. This is the story of five friends, recently graduated from high school, who are trying to come to terms with those universal twenty-something issues: finding jobs, dealing with parents and family as adults, and trying desperately to stay in touch with each other, yet all the while mourning the closeness they shared as carefree teenagers. I shudder to use the film-criticky term 'well-crafted', but that's what this movie really is. And the music is fantastic.

07.09.02 :. The Intended, directed by Kristian Levring [10]

This film is my festival bust this year. I second-guessed myself for the longest time because all I was reading was "must-see" in the same line as this film title, so I searched and delved, but the depth I was looking for just wasn't there. The cinematography is fine (looks a bit sound-stagey although it was apparently shot on location in Malaysia), the acting is OK (Olympia Dukakis plays a surprisingly minor role as a decently complex character that could have used more airtime), and the story has definite potential (I really enjoy the Conradian people-in-isolation-lose-social-mores theme); but put together, it just ends up being a boring, slow-moving, uninteresting film.

07.09.02 :. The Man Without a Past, directed by Aki Kaurismäki [5]

This movie has the potential to be a really depressing film about a working class, container-dwelling society in Finland, but it actually is a really sweet and practically uplifting film. It tells the story of M, a man who was brutally beaten, mugged and left for dead only to survive, but without any knowledge of his identity or past. He manages to get by thanks to the kind gestures of many individuals, and ends up falling in love with a Salvation Army worker who extends much kindness to him, in her own austere way.

08.09.02 :. La Turbulence des Fluides, directed by Manon Briand [1]

If the festival folk came to me right now and said here's the People's Choice Award, hand it out to someone, this movie would be the one; this one's our gem. La Turbulence des Fluides tells the story of Alice, a seismologist working in Tokyo, who is sent back to her native Baie-Comeau, Quebec, to help local scientists solve the mystery of the cease in tidal activity. Reluctantly at first, Alice gets drawn into the drama of local history and small town eccentricities, and while the halting of tidal activity is ultimately explained with a perfectly scientific reason, Alice (and the audience) clearly favours the enchanting local folkloric explanation. This is a beautiful film: great screenplay, wonderful acting, and haunting imagery that ties the two together perfectly.

12.09.02 :. Le Fils, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne [6]

This one surprised me a bit, not at all what I was expecting. It's a quiet, moral little tale; literally quiet because there's no soundtrack at all, the workshop's power tools comprise the 'music' of the film. And moral because Olivier, our lead character, struggles with a certain dilema, his reaction to which could potentially define his character (I'm giving nothing away, watch it). Not a lot happens in this movie, which is understandable given that the Dardennes wanted the film to be not just about Olivier, but to be Olivier. And that pretty much sums up it up right there. Le Fils certainly is Olivier, I don't think he is ever out of the active frame even once. And for a character piece, they certainly picked the perfect actor for the role.

13.09.02 :. Cul de Sac: a Suburban War Story, directed by Garrett Scott [9]

Documentary. The best part about this screening was that the guy who introduced it thanked The Documentary Channel for it's support of documentary film. Mike and I looked at each other and said, "Wow, there's a documentary channel?" Cul de Sac is about Shawn Nelson, the guy who stole a tank from an army base in Clairemont, San Diego in 1995, and drove it through the suburb, wrecking all sorts of personal and public property along the way. Scott juxtaposed this with a sub-narrative discussing the decline in the North American suburb, particularly Clairemont, from its promising beginnings as a stable, white-collar neighbourhood that housed the defense industry's skilled workers. The problem was, the sub-narrative was far more interesting than the main one - I would have liked to hear more about suburban decline than Shawn Nelson's minor neuroses from his meth-sucking neighbourhood friends. But maybe that was just me.

13.09.02 :. Railroad of Hope, directed by Xi wang zhi lu [3]

Documentary. This film documents the migration of Chinese farmers from Sichuan to the province of Xinjiang, where labourers are paid relatively decent wages for cotton-picking. Lu does a remarkable job getting to the heart of the travellers' motivations by asking questions like "Are you happy in your life?", whose simplicity often stuns his subjects into a poignant silence. This film provides a great look into these individual and collective lives and truly is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

14.09.02 :. Punch-Drunk Love, directed by P. T. Anderson [8]

Can we spell "anxiously-awaited"? Adam Sandler stars as Barry Egan, a neurotic small-business owner with a talent for spotting lucrative marketing scams, and Emily Watson plays Lena, Barry's newfound love interest. Sandler is, well, typical Sandler: a unique combination of lovable, creepy, charming and pathetic; and Watson practically glows, as usual. This is film is at once sweet and shocking, funny and sad, and ultimately really well-made. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, but then could anyone have expected this from Anderson, after Boogie Nights and Magnolia?

14.09.02 :. Aiki, directed by Daisuke Tengan [7]

This film is about a kid called Taichi and his struggle to cope with life after a devastating accident pulls him away from the world of boxing, and into a wheelchair. Sounds all sentitmental and uplifting, right? Well, it isn't. It's a happy story, but not in that made-for-TV-movie-of-the-week kind of way. Tengan does not idealize Taichi's struggle, instead he portrays a life thrown into complete disarray, and the way Taichi manages to climb out of that damning plight with the help of Aikido, and an Aikido master who refuses to accept Taichi's limitations.