David O. Russell continues establishing himself as a top name in mainstream prestige fare with Joy, albeit in a different direction compared to his last three features. The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle showed off Russell’s strengths when it came to working with ensembles, whereas Joy prefers to keep its focus on one character. That means a more streamlined narrative compared to, say, American Hustle, although Russell’s own formula since his career’s resurgence is still here, even if it doesn’t cast as wide of a net. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Joy is a rather simple and entertaining film, a biopic of sorts that works best when seen as a strange, unique and slightly true success story.

In a clear case of not fixing what isn’t broken, Russell works with Jennifer Lawrence yet again in her biggest role for him to date. Inspired by the true story of Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop and other successful household items, the film starts with Joy (Lawrence) bearing the burden of her needy family. Joy’s mother Terry (Virginia Madsen) stays in bed all day watching soap operas, and her ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez) lives in the basement. Joy’s grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd) takes care of Joy and Tony’s two children while she works whatever jobs she can to pay the bills, including helping out the business run by her father Rudy (Robert De Niro) and half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm). On top of all this, Joy can’t shake her own disappointment in not pursuing her dreams of inventing.

It’s only when Rudy starts dating the wealthy Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) that Joy seizes on the opportunity to see her idea of the Miracle Mop through. It’s in this early section of the film that Russell leans on the familial elements that made The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook so successful. Joy’s family oscillates between being a support and a weight for her, with their individual idiosyncrasies either providing a funny narrative detour or an obstacle to Joy achieving her goals. Russell sometimes likes to start a new scene with only Joy before bringing in her family to overpower the proceedings (at one point Russell frames a meeting between Joy and Trudy as a one-on-one before revealing her friends and family surrounding them in the same room). Russell never goes so far as to paint Joy’s immediate family as villains in the story, understanding the complexities of blood relations. For instance: when Joy complains about needing a good sleep, her family’s response is to feed her a bottle of children’s cough syrup while she lays down on the stairs. They’re not malicious people so much as their best intentions do more harm than good.

The specificity of Joy’s family and experiences goes a long way to helping Russell establish that Joy should not be taken as some sort of symbol for the American dream in action. At first blush, Mangano’s tale does come across as an ideal example of working hard to make one’s own success, but in this film’s reality (Russell embellishes a lot of facts, and not enough is publicly known about Mangano to know just how accurate some of the film’s events are) it’s too bizarre and specific to be taken that way. It’s only when Joy winds up at QVC that a station executive (Bradley Cooper, acting like Russell called him in as a favour to take advantage of his and Lawrence’s on-screen chemistry) starts hammering home the virtues of America as a land of opportunity. The fact that these themes get delivered around artificial sets within giant, empty spaces is probably not a coincidence.

If anything, Russell’s film is more of a celebration of individual resolve. Joy faces constant rejection over her ideas, but she never doubts her own instincts about her mop having the potential to be successful. Russell’s script vindicates Joy through a simple and clever move: the narrative always advances because of a decision Joy makes on her own. Her decision to use Trudy as an investor gets the mop made, her decision to go on TV to sell the Miracle Mop herself gets people to buy it in record numbers, and in the film’s anticlimactic final act—an attempt at a climactic confrontation that fizzles out as quickly as it’s introduced—Joy’s acting entirely on her own. Still, watching Lawrence (who turns in another great performance, although her youth gets the best of her in a clunky flash forward) seize control of her dreams from the hands of those trying to pilfer off of them is fun to watch, and Russell’s unwavering commitment to highlighting her self-earned achievements make it all the more effective.

Not only have the films of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival taken me to a variety of points along a historical timeline, they have also taken me to numerous places around the world. Locations featured in the films I’ve screened include Israel, Palestine, Romania, and Hollywood. This next offering finds a familiar point in history—World War II—but a new location: Italy. Making its Canadian premiere is the documentary My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes. Writer/director Oren Jacoby’s documentary tells of the plight of Italy’s Jewish community during World War II from several perspectives.

The first perspective is a history of the time. This is narrated by Isabella Rossellini and features considerable historical footage and photos, as well as dramatic reenactments of some events. These pieces also feature interviews with several people who lived in Italy during the war and were either persecuted or protectors.

The second perspective belongs to select Italian Jews who lived in Italy during the war. These are the most personal moments of the film, of course, as these film participants return to Italy for the doc, some for the first time since the war. They visit old houses and offer personal anecdotes, and some are reunited with family members of those who rescued them.

The third perspective comes from the memoir of famed Italian cyclist and Tour de France champion Gino Bartali. Excerpts from that memoir are read by actor Robert Loggia. Bartali, in addition to being adored by the sports fans of his country, played a critical role in aiding Italian Jews during the war.

These three perspectives are woven, with the occasional crossover (such as when Rossellini narrates part of Bartali’s tale) to present the full story.

However, director Oren Jacoby is his own film’s worst enemy. My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes covers interesting subjects, such as Italy’s unique position on Jews (Italian Jews received different treatment than Jews from other countries); or the Italian doctor who made up a disease so he could keep Jews in the hospital for protection; or the Bartali story, which not only showcases a Tour de France champion secretly working against the Nazis by hiding Jews, but also recounts that same champion working with the Catholic church to help Jews escape Italy. Then there are the stories of those who lived, and returned, to tell their stories.

All of it is set up to be fascinating, compelling stuff. And yet…

Each tale is presented in such a way that the stories not only interfere with each other—thus preventing the film from establishing any kind of narrative flow—they also appear incredibly lifeless on the screen. This is no reflection on the stories themselves, of course, or their subjects, but on how they are told by Jacoby. These people lived in harrowing times, resorting to hiding in basements and sleeping with the thought that each day could be their last, yet Jacoby does nothing to create any sense of drama, despite there being very real drama in these stories.

Other technical decisions are curious and hampering as well, particularly Loggia’s reading from Bartali’s memoir, which lacks much connection to the subject, and Joel Goodman’s score, which sounds as if it recognizes the dullness of the material and tries to force a little aural drama into each scene.

My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes is an opportunity missed. Rather than recognize and present fascinating material, the film instead plays like passages from a history text read aloud to a class.

Denis Villeneuve has been keeping himself very busy. At the Toronto International Film Festival last year, it wasn’t enough that he had the tightly wound Prisoners making its world premiere, but he managed to have another film finished in time to double dip at TIFF. Though if you end up seeing Enemy (which only got its theatrical release this month) it will be easier to wrap your head around Villeneuve’s ability to pull that off. Smaller in scale, lighter on actors and directing a more local crew, Enemy has all the ingredients of an indie flick. It really feels more like an experimental visual monograph on delusion and paranoia than just your run of the mill film, which goes from point A to point B, ticking all the boxes in the screenwriting rulebook along the way. No, this is a film that crawls out of all boxes and weaves its way around a singular phenomenon with no interest in really going anywhere. And that’s okay.

The opening sequence of the film perfectly sets the tone for the kind of absurdity, confusion and intensity that’s prevalent throughout this picture. A bearded man (Jake Gyllenhaal) walks into an underground strip club where male eyes gaze at a dancing naked woman. A tray appears covered by a silver lid and the woman lifts the top to reveal the hors d’oeuvre: a hairy tarantula. The bearded man stares at the creepy crawler with acute intrigue, almost welcoming him. Out of this surreal scenario, we are brought into the reality of this man’s life. His name is Adam and he is a History professor at the University of Toronto. His life is a web of boredom: repeating the same things in his courses, riding the stuffy public transportation system, going back to his barren apartment and sleepwalking through his relationship with Mary (Melanie Laurent). Then, in one of the film’s lighter moments, a colleague asks Adam if he’s a movie guy and recommends that he watch a movie called “When There’s A Will, There’s A Way.” Adam finds the movie in a local video store and watches it one night, but when he has dreams of a particular sequence from the movie, he wakes up in the middle of the night and plays the sequence again. This time around, he notices a person in the scene who looks exactly like himself. After some digging, this turns out to be actor Anthony Saint Claire (Gyllenhaal) and it’s obsession at first sight.

Villeneuve manages to create something truly unique with Enemy because, as mentioned, no conventional rules guide this movie. Rather than progressing in a linear, plot-driven manner, the story slowly fades into the distance to make way for an aimless type of suspense, which keeps the viewer glued to Adam’s possessed idea of meeting Anthony. Gyllenhaal commands the screen, a key factor because he’s in practically every frame of the film. As the quirky, fidgety and mild-mannered professor Adam, Gyllenhaal creates the kind of sympathetic character pitiable from a distance but too strange to befriend. And while Adam looks like he couldn’t hurt a fly, Anthony is the confident and cocky B-movie actor who gives off the impression that he tortured loads of flies as a kid. When the two worlds collide, the suspense begins to reach boiling point and what looked like a thriller morphs into something much, much stranger.

Despite some of its more outlandish moments, and putting aside the stinging sensation of watching a film where virtually none of the characters feel fleshed out, Enemy‘s mood is what makes it worth seeing. Thanks to its experimental nature, by the time those (slightly demented) yellow closing credits roll, there’s an undeniable aftereffect of the experience. What sort of experience? An experience that Villeneuve inflicts on us through the language of cinema, and that was well transcribed from the film’s basis, Jose Saramaga’s novel The Double. Watching Enemy, the influence from a few masters is noticeable and very much welcomed: master of the macabre David Lynch, master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock and master of the bodily absurd David Cronenberg. The film’s frantic editing–the cuts often synchronized perfectly with the eerie score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans (seriously, these guys need to be working way more than they are)–coupled with an oozing yellow color tone secreting from the feverish camera angles, all work together to build an atmosphere that is oddly satisfying in and of itself. Oh, and how could I forget all those wonderfully creative spider motifs? Arachnophobes take this as a warning, even with no spiders on-screen their presence is often felt, making for a decidedly creepy tingling sensation.

Enemy is worth your time if you’re the sort of movie-goer who doesn’t mind being forced into slight discomfort for a little mind prodding. But you’d have to be willing to forgive its disembodied approach to narrative and swap character development for visual development because you won’t get both. Ultimately, Villeneuve creates an absorbing experimental movie which manages to linger long after the credits roll despite the missed opportunity of digging deeper into the concept of doppelgängers. In many ways it’s a fitting companion piece to Prisoners, because above all else it proves that Villeneuve is becoming a natural for unsettling the mood and creepily crawling under your skin.

Enemy trailer

When I was a kid, movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Sandlot, Toy Story, and Star Wars opened the floodgates of my imagination, inspiring me to dream up some big adventure stories of my own. These films have only grown more precious to me as I get older and, looking back, the common denominator seems to be that they didn’t talk down to me or insult my intelligence. These movies had real danger, intense emotion, and high stakes, unlike a lot of squeaky-clean, pandering, cookie-cutter kid’s movies that made me feel dumber after watching them.

Vincent Bal‘s The Zigzag Kid is a fantastic film that I’d be more than happy to share with my (future) kids. Its wondrous, whimsical imagery, playfully elusive mystery plot, and sprawling sense of adventure make me jealous of any kid who’s lucky enough to add it to their budding movie memory bank (much like Scorsese’s Hugo, which is cut from the same cloth.) The ending has a touch of morbidity that may be a bit too complex and distressing for the youngest of crowds, but it goes to show the respect Bal has for the intellect of his audience. This is a smart film, meant for smart kids—one character in the film sums it up nicely, “Maybe I gave you a hint now and then, but it’s better than being spoon-fed like a baby.”

Nono (Thomas Simon) is a wide-eyed, unusually perceptive kid who wants to be just like his dad, Jacob (Fedja van Huet), the world’s best and most amazing detective. Nono’s been trained since birth to be a formidable super-sleuth by his old man, but he’s more mischievous than his straight-laced dad would like. When at an outdoor Bar Mitzvah, Nono tries to spice up the party by jumping off of the roof of a building with an umbrella. He imagines the feat will be a party-starting spectacle (which we see realized cinematically, a frequent occurrence), but he instead ends up landing butt-first onto the other kid’s cake.

Nono’s mom has never been around (the only evidence he has of her is a photo of her back), but he isn’t lacking female influence—his dad’s “secretary”, Gaby (Jessica Zeylmaker), is a loving, nurturing mother-figure who encourages Nono to be himself and have a blast.

Upset by the Bar Mitzvah fiasco, Jacob sends Nono off on a train to see his uncle to tame his transgressive behavior, two days before his own Bar Mitzvah. On the train, Nono discovers that his father has pulled a fast one on him, and has instead given him the gift of an adventure. He meets a mysterious old man named Felix (Burghart Klaußner, a skilled burglar) who takes him on a wild ride full of cat-and-mouse foot chases, disguises, a giant chocolate factory (so fun), clever deception, and some life-changing revelations. They meet an old chanteuse named Lola (Isabella Rossellini), who Nono heard about through Gaby. As Nono begins to piece together clues that point to the true identity of Felix and Lola, a larger truth—about the true whereabouts of his mother—comes to light.

The Zigzag Kid whizzes by in a flash (the 90 minutes feel like 45), but when you slow down and take a step back, what you’ll find is a story of age-old themes—trust, family, the hero’s journey, self-discovery. Bal frames these classic themes in a world that’s hugely imaginative, stylized, and super cool. The performances by the cast are all fantastic, particularly Simon, a gifted, endearing young actor who hangs beat for beat with the veterans.

Bal and DP Walter Vanden Ende fill the screen with delightfully inventive, wildly varied images that’ll keep your eyes glued. The world displayed is undoubtedly our own, but the colors, compositions, and exhilarating editing up the fantasy factor. In my favorite sequence, we go from a thief tip-toeing across a crane, silhouetted by the pale moon, to the same thief being handcuffed by a policeman while neck-deep in a vat of chocolate. The film’s endlessly amusing, unpredictable moments had me grinning from ear to ear from start to finish.

The film’s final reveal is surprisingly bitter and sobering for such a high-speed joyride, but it doesn’t derail a thing. Actually, it’s nice to see a challenging topic being tackled in a family-friendly film like this. The Zigzag Kid‘s irresistible charm leaps off the screen thanks to Bal’s flourishing imagery and gifted cast. I see it gracing my TV screen for many a family movie night in the future.

The Zigzag Kid trailer