Friday was a three movie day – starting with The Love Punch at 11:00 at the Elgin. Romantic comedy with Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson as a divorced couple who reunite to steal a diamond from the hedge fund manager who’s stolen Brosnan’s company’s retirement fund. They bring in their next door neighbors, played by Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie. Kind of a reassurance that us old folks can still kick ass. It was especially funny, given Brosnan’s former cinematic career as 007, to see them all donning scuba gear and scaling cliffs to break in the villa on the Côte d’Azur to get the diamond. Even funnier – during the Q&A, the director, Joel Hopkins (Last Chance Harvey) tried to get Emma Thompson to join us by cell phone – the TIFF staffer who got to get the call connected was quite charming about how this was her absolute best festival moment.
We had a gap until our next film – it wasn’t until 6:00. We ate French toast & bacon and fried apples, then Mark took off ofr a walk and coffee, and I did a bunch of work. Wrote a paper proposal for the class I’m taking; worked on the library school website; did various email catch up.
French toast, fried apples and bacon
Movie #2 was at Roy Thomson Hall, home base for the Toronto Symphony. We were kind of jealous after looking at the schedule, and I think Overture probably has better acoustics, but Thomson’s got better sight lines. Anyways, the film was Bright Days Ahead (Les Beaux Jours), about a 60-year-old woman who is having an affair with her computer teacher – from the senior center, which is called Beaux Jours – her grown daughters, who are just a little younger than the computer teachers, in their 30s, have given her a free trial coupon for some activities at the center. The main character is played by a great French beauty – Fanny Ardant. It ended badly, no surprise, but somehow without ending her marriage as well.
We hoofed it right over to the Elgin, and played the get-in-the-short-line-by-flashing-your-platinum (or signature)-Visa-card game. Movie #3 was Rock the Casbah, the story of three sisters reunited in Morocco for the 3-day Muslim mourning ritual of “gnaza” on the death of their father. They are the remaining three of four sisters – one of them has committed suicide since she was forbidden to make a bad match. Omar Sharif plays the dead dad’s ghost – one of the more humorous touches. It was well done – the review says, “This French-Moroccan tearjerker is classically formulated yet highly effective.” – and beautifully shot – but I couldn’t stay awake. I got dozy during day one, woke up for most of day two, and then missed the majority of day 3. We stopped at the Metro grocery and got ice cream and drano for the slow running bathroom sink drain in the condo, that’s been annoying Mark when he shaves, sort of proud of ourselves for being out purchasing odd items at 11:00PM at an urban grocery.
