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

MONTREAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006 WRAP-UP

While the rest of the world everyday becomes more and more Americanized, Montreal each year becomes more and more French.

I have attended the Montreal Film Festival - or as Les Montrealais themselves prefer to call it, Le Festival des Filmes du Monde - and I can say that the FFM is has an atmosphere that is its own intoxicating je ne sais quoi.

No other city in North America seems this truly European, and there is really no other film festival on this continent that boasts such a large (300 plus) international line-up of foreign films, almost to the exclusion, especially this year, of anything American.

You will see cinema at the Montreal Film Festival that you will never see again in North America, which is good news for cinephiles who like to travel, but not too far. And who, like the rest of us, are starved by the lack of foreign fare now screened on our shores.

The bad news is almost all of these films will never find an American distributor. So the only place to see them IS Montreal. And the vibrant city itself never disappoints, as I'm sorry to say, their films often do.

But knocking films that don't even have a distributor yet is like kicking a sick dog . So ...

Here are the cinematic highs. I hope that you may someday get to see these excellent films, too. But given the current, sad state of foreign cinemas lack of export value, you very well may not.

Ironically, the hands down Best Film in this virtually American-less Festival was indie-hit Half Nelson, already in release in the US and already a critical fave.

Half Nelson overcomes its' Sundance-y pedigree to be a real sizzling WOW! And it may very well turn out to be one of the best films of the year. It's the story of a well-meaning, white inner-city junior high school teacher (Ryan Gosling in a brilliant, career-defining role) who forms an unlikely friendship with his thirteen-year old African-American student, played with a gritty, quiet intelligence by Shareeka Eps.

The racial stereotypes here are deliberately reversed. He's an addict. She's not. But Gosling and Eps had me at "hello."

And of course, being a Guru o' Gold, let me point out that there will likely be Independent Spirit Awards nominations in both their futures.

But Oscar nods are a bit of a stretch, though the young Ms. Epps, in a weak Supporting Actress category year, may well have a shot. She's striking, nuanced, electric and highly original. As is Gosling. As is the film itself. Directed by 2002 NYU Film School grad Ryan Fleck. Fleck also co-wrote the seering, searching screenplay with Anna Boden. An Original Screenplay Oscar nod is not out of the question for them.

However, Oscar-wise, the rest of the 30th Anniversary Montreal Film Fest slate is bleak.

Not, God knows, that the Oscars are NOT the be-all and end-all of world film-making, but it's a shame that some stunning films and fine foreign performances will be less than likely to be seen stateside unless a major distributor picks them up.

At times this year in the Hyatt Hotel Festival headquarters in Montreal, the language heard most often was Spanish, not French. It seems the Almodovar effect cannot be underestimated even at the Montreal Film Festival, where he had no film playing nor was he there in person.

Goodbye, America was made by, yes, you guessed it ANOTHER Spanish-speaking, or rather Portugese-speaking director Brazillian Sergio Oksman.

Goodbye, America however is entirely in English.

The surprisingly fascinating and articulate Al Lewis (best known at the beloved Grandpa on the '60s TV sitcom The Munsters) simply sits in a make-up chair before a large mirror. Again another potentially chair-bound film like Camaron that was anything but.

The 90-something Lewis spellbinds as he ferociously recounts his surprising left-wing political activist background. Lewis tells of his "perfect memory, the only thing I have left" of his poverty-stricken Brooklyn Jewish ghetto/slum childhood with his parents who were activists. His mother sold apples on the street for a living during the depression.

There are incredible black-and-white clips of Lewis' close friend, the great Black actor/singer Paul Robeson, who Lewis poignantly describes as "paying a heavy price, for his beliefs, a heavy price." Robeson was black-listed and his passport revoked during the McCarthy era witchhunts for Communists.

During that terrible time Lewis claims that he wasn't blacklisted but ignored, because he (Lewis) was "a nothing, a nobody, a voice on the radio" at that time in his career in the '50s.

"McCarthy went after the Big Shots. He wanted to bring down the stars," claims Lewis, passionate still half-a-decade later.

It is midnite now in Montreal and as the 30th anniversary of this necessary and enduring Montreal World Film Festival comes to an end.

And as I try to relate the vitality and the diversity of this special annual celebration of international cinema, I can only find myself paraphrasing my fellow New Yorker, columnist Cindy Adams, "Only in Montreal, folks. Only in Montreal!"

- Stephen Holt

September 12, 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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