At Toronto, the star is the ensemble of films

By Sarah Sluis
FJI correspondent and critic Erica Abeel continues her reports from the Toronto International Film Festival.

So I was just beginning to appreciate the virtues of the Scotiabank megaplex, where the screens are bigger than in the fondly remembered Manulife on Bloor Street, and the seating mightily raked so no Mohawk can impede your view.

But then I got my first look at the newly opened TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Yikes! The place is cinephile heaven, Opening day, press and public flowed freely in and out minus any security drill. The Lightbox features clean, sweeping lines; walls of orange and purple offset by shades of grey; saturated blue-lit panels flanking the elevators; washrooms like those in trendy hotels; a bar, bistro and rooftop terrace; and a dramatic square monitoring room cantilevered out over the lobby, its window framed in orange. And, of course, a brace of five state of the art theatres of varying sizes. During my flyby, a video installation by Canadian director Atom Egoyan using clips from Fellini's 8 1/2 filled one gallery space, while viewers filed into a theatre for a TIFF screening. The place reads like a futuristic vision that will surely cement Toronto's preeminence as a film center.

This year's Toronto Fest offers fewer must-see, high-profile films or auteurist masterworks than in the past. I'd say that in this 35th edition it's the ensemble of films�their variety, range, and out-and-out cojones�that's impressive. So how among upwards of 350 films, you might ask, do I choose which to see over roughly a week? Well, on arriving here I pore over the 448-page, doorstopper TIFF encyclopedia, which gives glowing rundowns�sometimes misleadingly�of what's on tap. I gravitate towards auteurs�French, American, German, Chinese; exotic venues; sex and nudity; favorite actors (Mads Mikkelsen, Helen Mirren); dramatic or provocative stories; films that treat social injustice; those that carry buzz from Venice and Cannes. Oy, that still leaves over 100 films...

Among the best-received here�and touted in Telluride�is Incendies (pronounced "An-sahn-dee") by Quebecois Denis Villeneuve, a hot-off-the-griddle pick by Sony Pictures Classics. It's based on Wajdi Mouawad's play about Canadian twins who discover, after their mother dies, that they have a father they thought was dead and a brother they didn't know existed. The film takes the form of a quest, following the twins on a journey to the Middle East as they attempt to piece together the story of their mother.

Some will find it a slow starter. I was in its corner from Go, partly since it arrived here with lavish praise. But it also demonstrates Villeneuve's confidence in a story that requires a stately pace, fluidly shifting from present to the mysteries of the past. And mystery is the operative word. Incendies is a politically charged detective story that solves a riddle and uncorks a shocking denouement you won't soon forget.

Though it delves into the background stories of immigrants, often invisible or mere fixtures to the West's well-off, the film never hectors or falls into political correctness. The canvas of Incendies is wider, drawing on ancient myth to explore the crimes of the past and break the chain of suffering and violence.

A second film focusing on social justice: Life, Above All by Oliver Schmitz, also distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. It's hard to remain dry-eyed as a young girl in a South African village at the start of the AIDS epidemic defies her local community, consumed with fear and superstition, in order to care for her dying mother. Twelve-year-old newcomer Khomotso Manyaka as the girl who must maintain the faade of a normal life amidst utter instability imbues the role with emotional gravitas.

The theme of big boys behaving badly marks Little White Lies by Guillaume Canet (Tell No One), a frivolous, meandering exercise. The setup: A passel of friends descend on their rich buddy's home in some idyllic part of France for their annual vacation. This year, though, the trip is abbreviated because one of their crowd has been battered by a motorcycle accident and lies in hospital, his life hanging by a thread.

In no way can this group's shenanigans justify the more than two-and-a-half-hour running time. Mainly the film is a display of male boorishness, in which the friends seem to forget about their ailing buddy, and one guy has the gall to feel aggrieved when the woman he's screwed over walks. Only Franois Cluzet as the obsessive-compulsive host injects humor, while Marion Cotillard, whose real-life boyfriend directed the film, radiates sensual fulfillment.

Barney's Version by Richard J. Lewis, a sweeping saga about a charismatic scapegrace, is far meatier. And why does Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti) act out? Well, see, it's just his irrepressible, ebullient nature�though he ends by driving away the love of his life. I haven't read the novel by homegrown Canadian author Mordecai Richler, but I find the film stands on its own as a vital, entertaining adaptation, following its hero from his success as a TV producer, to his marriage to the vulgar, nouveau riche Minnie Driver, to his years with the divine Rosamund Pike as his final wife, Miriam�whom he meets at his own wedding to Driver, no less. The jokes about unpolished Jews yukking it up in Montreal feel a bit dj vu, and it's clear Miriam's goyische poise is part of her appeal for Barney�but what's the appeal of this schlubby guy for Miriam?

Overall, director Lewis and screenwriter Michael Konyves have done a bang-up job of compressing Barney's unruly life into a picaresque romp that seldom lags. But�about those naughty boys. Our hero pretty much brings his love troubles on himself and suffers big-time. Male viewers will sympathize, women less so.