Documentaries lead the pack at Toronto Film Festival

By Sarah Sluis
FJI critic and correspondent Erica Abeel concludes her report from the Toronto International Film Festival, which wrapped this weekend.

Telling the truth can be hazardous to your professional health. But here goes anyway. Maybe I just made exceptionally poor choices, but this year�with a few notable exceptions�the Toronto International Film Festival included too many lame features. A shout-out, first, for the exceptions: French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve's magisterial Incendies and South African Life, Above All by Oliver Schmitz, both due to travel stateside, and on the higher-profile end, Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, with its wicked, twisty humor, and Black Swan, the thrilling, over-the-top ride by Darren Aronofsky, which should prove a hot ticket once it bows in theatres here.

Among the duds, count two features from directors with great track records. The reliably kinetic John Cameron Mitchell stumbles with Rabbit Hole, top-lined by Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart playing a couple whose toddler has been killed in an accident. But to follow them through the stages of mourning is about as electrifying as queuing up at Toronto's Lester Pearson Airport, where the embalmed indifference of the officials is a movie in itself. Adapting from the play by David Lindsay-Abaire, helmer John Cameron Mitchell has failed to open it up, and the only fun on hand is ogling Aaron Eckhart's ripped pecs. Amazingly, this dreary ride comes from the director of such hell-raisers as Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

At least Rabbit Hole offers the charisma of its principals. Little, though, can rescue It's Kind of a Funny Story from the wonderful team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. I loved their Half Nelson. But I wonder what prompted the pair to film the story of a depressive, suicidal teen checking himself into a mental ward. Nothing happens. The teen (Keir Gilchrist) learns the ropes of the ward, hangs with longtime resident Bobby (Zach Galifianakis) and meets a girlfriend. Hey, if Nerve.com doesn't work� The attitude toward the mentally ill, who are a sad lot�One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest this ain't�comes across as condescending.

Then there's the hipper-than-thou Kaboom by Gregg Araki, who made the terrific Mysterious Skin. No point in trying to walk you through a plot. So far as I could tell, it concerns a sex-crazed, bisexual college boy plunging into a supernatural world of demons, cults and Armageddon. The film, I'm told, is about "existing in a borderline psychotic, psychosexually hyperactive imaginary universe that feels absolutely real and true." I want whatever that critic was smokin'. Sample oral-sex joke from hero's girlfriend: "It's a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti." Most improbable line: "I have a huge paper due Friday." Uh, you do? I don't remember college being so much fun.

If there was any compensation for such bombs, it could be found in a trio of superb documentaries. Along with Charles Ferguson's Inside Job (a pick of the New York Film Festival), count the hugely entertaining doc Tabloid by Errol Morris. At the center of the story is Joyce McKinney, a former beauty pageant queen, who falls for a Mormon, pursues him�after his church forbids their union�to England, ends up kidnapping him�and it only gets weirder. In Joyce, Morris has nailed a true American original who may or may not be barking mad. He also grapples with the way tabloids massage the truth, so the real story lies forever buried. Innovative devices, such as amusing stills and weird cartoons of Mormon rituals, break up the talkiness. And Morris uses to great effect the Interrotron, a customized teleprompter that projects Morris' face in front of the camera so that his subjects must look simultaneously into his eyes and the lens.

A brilliant, essential documentary is Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer by Alex Gibney. Though he might have appended "and Rise." Hardly a broadside, the film is marked by a cool, objective tone, which should expand its demographic. A tough crusader against Wall Street, on course to become America's first Jewish president, Spitzer was famously derailed by the Justice Department's prosecution of the Emperors Club escort agency, which revealed that Client #9 was Spitzer. Though the New York Post and others had a ball, unanswered questions remain: Did politics play a role in the investigation?

Bringing fresh insight to Spitzer's story, Gibney and writer Peter Elkind reveal that the guv's main squeeze was not Ashley Dupre, but "Angelina," who (played by an actress) talked for the first time (and don't you love it that she's gone on to work on Wall Street?) Gibney also centers the film on statements from the charismatic, blue-eyed Spitzer, both politic and revealing. Though we never�and likely never will�get to the million-dollar question: Why the hell did he do it and what was he thinking? Politicians not being known for introspection, maybe Spitzer himself couldn't answer.

The film is plenty juicy. You can watch Spitzer admit that the escort agency caper was a form of hubris "which goes back to the Greeks," thanks for the attribution. You hear the agency's giggly madame reveal that Dupre has "a perfect cooch." You learn that these high-end hookers look like all-American coeds. Makes it less of a transgression? Or is it compensation for the horny freshmen with dandruff who couldn't get a date with a looker?

But after we get off on the prurience factor, let's face it: How does Spitzer's need to explore sex outside his marriage impact on my or anyone else's life? Hell, in France he would have been applauded for it! Testosterone, a real man, etc. Yeah, I know Spitzer did something illegal, but consider this: The Mann Act that he violated wasn't pursued in other cases.

Most crucially, Gibney's film reveals that the Wall Street titans he'd spent his career targeting were allied to choreograph Spitzer's downfall. And why wouldn't they be? He went after such a fellow as a certain Blodgett, who quipped that he once made what he called POS�i.e., piece of shit, or $12 million a year. He went after Goldman Sachs years before anyone else, and venture capitalist Ken Langone, the New York Stock Exchange board director who signed off on an outrageous pay package for its chairman and CEO, Richard Grasso. Gibney trots out convincing evidence that these men maneuvered behind the scenes to unseat Spitzer. With the notorious former guv about to assume a new role as talk-show host on CNN, and public interest in him high, Client 9 should find a substantial audience.