..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Toronto Film Festival 2006
Wrap Up: Part I

A PAIR OF QUEENS:
Lounging Queers and Launching Oscars
at the Toronto Film Fest 2006

The Toronto Film Festival 2006 was more festive than ever thanks to the presence of the brand-new Queer Lounge and queer films. I am happy to say, Queer Nation was really stepping up to the plate this year, as they did last year so historically with the landmark launching of gay breakthrough, Brokeback Mountain, and the eventual Best Actor Oscar Winner, Capote. The Toronto Film Festival, the undisputed greatest festival in North America, has now also become a queer touchstone par excellence.

Oscar possibilities came together with two BIG QUEER films in Toronto, starring two queens of two very different realms. The first, Volver written and directed by Out Gay legend Pedro Almodovar, really was - hands down - the Best of the Fest. It does not deal openly with gay themes. In fact, it is Almodovar's most heterosexual work to date. But its queer credentials are impeccable due to its maker's lifetime of Out activism in his films and in his life. And it certainly was as campy as all his previous films were, a haunted, illegal, home hair-dressing salon, being one of its' primary locations, where much hilarity, and drama ensues amidst the all-female cast.

The first glamorous, startling Festival Queen was Volver's stunning, sultry leading lady, Penelope Cruz. There to promote the role of her career and the performance of her lifetime, Cruz made headlines and front-pages all over Canada in a flowing, magenta gown that matched her magenta lipstick on a red-carpet that seemed dull in comparison to her dazzling Latin beauty.

And Senor Pedro was beating the Oscar drums himself by showing up at TIFF for the first time in its history, though many, many of his films have been premiered here. His esteemed presence added to the excitement of festival-goers. "Toronto is very European," he claimed to the clamoring hoards of press, who dogged his every step.

I think Volver's tumultuous reception by all and sundry in Toronto marks just the start of a very strong Oscar campaign. If it is nominated by its' own country, Spain, for Best Foreign Film, it totally has that one in the bag, and Penelope seems poised for an Oscar nomination, becoming the first actress in a Spanish-film to be so nominated. The Best Actress Oscar is hers to lose at this point.

At Cannes, Volver almost won the Palme D'Or, but instead got an ensemble award for its' great group of female performances, and Almodovar got a screenplay award. These Cannes kudos may foreshadow Volver's Oscar journey.

At the sweltering Volver press conference at the Sutton Place Hotel, where the air-conditioning had broken down, I just had an opportunity to ask King Pedro and Queen Penelope about their Oscar chances. They both looked askance, and with sharp intakes of breath, both said, in Spanish and English, that it was far too early to talk about such things. But it was obviously very strongly on both their minds as Penelope quickly responded, "Every night I say a little prayer that Pedro gets his Oscars." And Pedro said, "Every night I say a prayer that Penelope gets an Oscar nomination."

So I think that "Answered Prayers" might be a good title for Volver's award chances, and that it was in Spanish was something that was entirely beside the point this being in Canada, a bi-lingual country.

America and Oscar may be another story entirely.

However, Sony Pictures Classics is spending MILLIONS on its Viva Pedro! festival, eight of the maestro's greatest films, remastered and re-released one-a-week, now rolling out across the country, culminating in Volver's triumphant opening on Nov.3. Oscar is about nothing, if not advertising dollars spent. Nominations for all concerned are a moot point.

"Answered Prayers" could also be the title of the other big queer film that wowed me at Toronto, and it was shockingly, the OTHER movie about Truman Capote. Yes, ANOTHER one. This time it's called Infamous, based on the book by George Plimpton and written and directed by Douglas McGrath about the Queer Lounge Lizard of all time.

I had heard nothing but negative buzz about it and went into it with lowered expectations even though it was a Gala Presentation, Toronto's estimable line-up of what they consider their best (read: Oscar-ish) films. I actually found myself falling in love with Infamous, and was very deeply affected by it, much to my shock and surprise.

I was astonished. Infamous was telling a story that I thought I knew all-too-well and really did not want to hear again. Now a THRICE-told tale, it recounts, or re-recounts (if you count Capote and the film of In Cold Blood) late author Capote's intense entanglement with the two murderers of a Kansas farming family and his writing his greatest literary work, a self-styled "non-fiction novel" "In Cold Blood" about them.

I was astonished that it was affecting me so deeply. Why? Hadn't Capote really covered this same ground definitively last year? Well, no, actually it hadn't.

I found Capote dark, stark and more than anything else, disturbing. For someone who is mistaken for Phillip Seymour Hoffman AND Truman Capote on an almost daily basis, I felt Capote was a very, very negative take on the late great author's life and work. It diminished him. He seemed like a petty tyrant. A literary pig.

Hoffman's performance, lauded though it was, I felt was intellectualized to a fare-thee-well. There was great technique, but no heart there. You came out thinking less of his Truman Capote, who seemed a heartless mercenary, period. As sick, or sicker, than the murderers he was writing about. No great artist or writer was present, just a master manipulator. It could've been called "In Cold Cash." I could never imagine Hoffman's Capote having gay sex with anyone, even himself. He was cold, cold, cold, and scary. I really did think that film anti-gay in this sense.

Infamous is not. It's VERY gay. It's gay, gay, gay, and puts the sex back into homosexual.

Infamous is all heart, I was astonished and delighted to find, and meticulous down to its' tiniest detail. Olivier Award-winning British actor Toby Jones gives yet ANOTHER tour-de-force performance as Capote. It seems that when playing the legendary Capote, you HAVE to.

Tiny, squeeky-voiced, outrageous, and over-dressed Jones' Capote is warm, adorable and caring to his lady friends, his "swans" (played with great zest and elegance by no-less than Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini, Juliet Stevenson and Hope Davis). And he's genuinely sympathetic to the killer he falls in love with, Perry Smith, who is embodied by the new James Bond, British actor Daniel Craig, in a dangerous, sexy-as-hell, but ultimately heart-breaking performance. Clifton Collins Jr. in "Capote" was soft. Craig's Smith is as hard - as nails. He could kill you. Do I hear Oscar calling Mr. Craig? Oscar skipped Collins' murderer. Maybe he'll skip Craig's killer, too. But Craig's is a great performance that balances and makes sense of the film. In Capote, Hoffman was the strong one, the hard body, and Collins was the softer, passive one. In Infamous, these roles are totally reversed and I think Infamous gets it right.

Yes, Jones' Capote is using Smith, but he also is the only person who seems to have ever really cared about Smith in any way at all. And Smith's homosexuality was not as openly portrayed in Capote as it is here. And Capote's, too. They're both gay and attracted to one another and it really becomes a heart-wrenching, almost tragic love story, and beautiful, in its own way, as love between two men can often be.

And yes, Capote and Smith get physical, and yes, it is shocking and scary and then, well, yes, they kiss…Did they ever REALLY kiss like Craig and Jones violently, erotically do in Infamous? Well, they were both gay and came to care deeply about each other, and were both stuck in that tiny jail cell for five years of their adult lives, so yes, it's possible. Truman was creating his own self-imprisonment by going there so often year after year.

The fact that the only real, caring relationship the killer Smith had in his life was with Capote, who was writing about his every thought, word and deed, makes their story almost ineffably poignant. So Infamous becomes something totally unexpected, a heart-rending star-crossed love story of a love that cannot be.

The guilt that "friend Truman," as Smith used to call him, feels after the two killers are hung, leaves Infamous's Capote devastated and alcoholic, unable to write for the rest of his life. Both films end this way. But in Capote it was shown as pure greed, and an insatiable desire for fame that drove Hoffman's Capote. In Infamous, it shows that a great work of art sprang from love. Which is where all great art springs from.

Will Toby Jones' Capote duplicate Hoffman's Oscar nomination and win? That would be historic. Two actors in two successive years nominated for playing the same character.

A much sure scenario might be betting on the other true astonishment in Infamous which is Sandra Bullock (of all people!) delivering a great, caring performance as Truman's masterful amanuensis, assistant and traveling companion, childhood friend and Pulitzer-Prize winning authoress of "To Kill a Mockingbird" Harper Lee.

The splendid Catherine Keener was Oscar-nominated for this role in Capote which she played with titanic understatement and again an actively intellectualized coolness. Bullock actually lets you feel Lee's pain in her also pitch-perfect performance.

Bullock gets to say movingly one of the film's great quotes, regarding the ultimate effect of the killers' executions on Capote, "I've come to feel with deep heart-sickness there were three deaths on the gallows that night."

More tomorrow...

- Stephen Holt

September 21, 2006

Stephen Holt is a veteran NY-based journalist. The Stephen Holt Show continues to run weekly in NY.

Also by Stephen Holt ...

Viva Pedro! Part II
Viva Pedro! Part I
Wrapping Up The Newport Film Festival
Will The History Boys Continue To Make Awards History?

 

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