PERRIER'S BOUNTY directed by Ian FitzGibbon Ireland

Another Irish gangster flick -- is anyone ever really safe in Dublin? -- once again with Brendan Gleeson. But the sensibility here is not gritty, gutter reality. It's more like Guy Ritchie, or maybe Martin McDonough, with a twist of Yeats for garnish. And it features a who's who of Irish acting -- Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Conleth Hill, Gabriel Byrne, and the almost inescapable Cillian Murphy. Only Colin Farrell plays more Irish thugs.

Murphy manages again to muster more power out of his spare frame than you would ever expect. Broadbent can infuse greater meaning, humor, pathos, and pain into a shrug than most actors get out of a 2 page soliloquy. He has become my favorite actor. Gleeson can still mine fresh takes on his oft-repeated, cold-blooded, dump-'em-in-the-Liffey gangland chief; he has a way of finding offbeat humor in amoral angst.

What raises the film above a retread is the element of Irish mysticism that underlies both plot and character. It is evident throughout in the unseen Byrne's narration (which isn't fully clarified until the end of the film), and in the essence of Broadbent's character.

It's funny, grisly, observant and mystical, and it moves like a DART train through Dublin -- fast, jumpy, with more stops than you'd like, and it ultimately reaches its destination.

I rate it a B+


BACKYARD directed by Carlos Carrera Mexico

Part of why the Toronto Festival is so rewarding is that it provides a window into cultures which are little known to most Americans, certainly to me. In this case, it is a culture I know something about -- Mexican border towns -- but the film underscores how ignorant I am of that world. I am probably not alone in that ignorance.

The usual tale of Mexicans and Central Americans struggling their way north to sneak across the border into the US is turned on its head, or a least knocked on its side. Apparently, many people come north and stop short of the border to work in the bleakly bustling border towns. Ciudad Juarez, the "backyard" of El Paso, has had a particularly shocking a crisis over quite a few years in which hundreds of young women have been abducted, raped, murdered and dumped in the desert. The corrupt and ineffectual police and government turned pretty much of a blind eye to the whole situation until a front-page New York Times article blew the lid off the crisis and forced the government to take drastic action.

The film charts the effort to expose and remedy the situation (which ultimately led to the Times article), told from the viewpoints of a few fictional characters -- a young woman who migrates from Chiapas, a courageously incorruptible policewoman, a crusading free clinic doctor, a sleazy Mexican-American businessman(played by Jimmy Smits) and a few others.

The collective cast, multi-plot film is all too familiar by now, but the naturalistic acting and directing and the occasionally grisly fate that meets some of the principals make this film surprisingly effective. It is a heartfelt, well told plea for justice, an indictment of government chicanery and corporate greed, and an informative look at a world so close yet so unknown.

I rate this A-.


AN EDUCATION directed by Lone Scherfig England

60s London, before it really started to swing. Nick Hornby has taken an eight page memoir of a smart girl who yearned for something more than the boundaries of her Twickenham adolescence and expanded it to a feature length. For the most part it works; it's still her story of yearning. Along comes a 30-something man to take her well past those boundaries -- culturally, geographically, and morally. They meet cute; he offers to give her cello or ride home in the rain while she walks safely alongside the car.

But the creepiness factor grows steadily as the film progresses and as his ardor escalates. This is despite highly effective performances by Carey Mulligan, who gives her 16 year old poise and budding sophistication of one a few years older, and Peter Sarsgaard who, as he said in the Festival Q&A session, has managed to invest even rapists and murderers with a measure of charm . His British accent is a trifle sketchy, but everything else about his performance is right on the money. And money -- the lack of it, the desire for it, and what one will do to get it -- is at the heart of this story.

All the actors invest their characters with depth, even when they appear to be constructed largely of cardboard. Alfred Molina ("Tom Wilkinson turned down my role.") balances the blustery, buffoonish aspects of the father with tenderness and vulnerability. Cara Seymour walks a similar tight rope between airy suburban mom and grounded voice of reason. Olivia Williams finds unexpected depth and humanity in the stereotyped, hair-in-a-bun spinster schoolteacher. Emma Thompson's cameo is a real challenge, to make the oh-so predictable headmistress (did she really have to be anti-Semitic too?) remotely believable.

It is a morally complex tale for what is essentially a coming-of-age comedy. And once the moral crisis comes to a head, the resolution is somewhat abrupt and elliptical. Whatever its shortcomings though, it is a film that encourages analysis afterward. The slippery moral slope that 16-year-old Jenny travels is troubling. Different audiences will have different thresholds of outrage, points at which they will feel that the 16-35 affair has gone too far. For me, it was way ahead of when the characters, except the rigid or authority figures Thompson and Williams, reached that conclusion.

Here in Toronto, there is the highly prized and highly touted Oscar buzz about Mulligan's performance, comparing it to Ellen Page's breakthrough in Juno. It is undoubtedly impressive work, and Mulligan carries the film, appearing in virtually every scene. But I don't think it is going to have the widespread appeal that propelled Juno and Page to nomination country. Of course, it all depends on the competition. Carey, meet Meryl.

I rate this A-.


RABIA directed by Sebastian Cordero Spain

Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. This kind of moody, tension inducing suspense story rises and falls on maintaining the right atmosphere. Rabia does that job rather well. It's not Hitchcock-smooth, but it plays a hide and seek game of mice, mayhem and murder to great effect.

Two Central American immigrants to Spain have a casual affair, but he becomes obsessed with her, and with punishing anyone who looks at her the wrong way, or worse. When in one of his outbursts he accidentally murders his boss, he takes refuge in the attic of the house where his girlfriend is the maid. He hides there for months; even she doesn't know he is there. He scrounges his food, spies on the family she serves, and observes the progress of her pregnancy with his child.

He grows more and more obsessive, paranoid and delusional and ultimately commits another murder. Through general deprivation and his reaction to pesticides, he deteriorates drastically. Gustavo Sanchez Parra is convincing and even frightening, sustaining a DeNiro-like weight loss to portray his character's wasting away as the film progresses. Martina Garcia combines sweetness and strength as the maid.

The whole film is disturbing and very well done. The direction and camerawork are exemplary, often telling the story from his point of view, hiding in the attic, in a closet, on the stairs. The final shot of the film, an exceedingly long tracking shot that travels from the unhappy couple in the attic down through three floors of the House to the kitchen and out the door to take in the whole exterior of the house is astonishing. That shot alone may garner this film a good deal of critical attention. It should stand up to the test.

I rate this a B+.