TIFF '08 and Liverpool

This year's Toronto International Film Festival seemed to me to be less well-run than in previous years. Whether it was the depressing experience of trying to buy tickets for the public screenings and discovering that a contribution of $250 could get me to the head of the line (whatever happened to democracy?), or the mind-numbing wait of two and a half hours in the ticket pickup line on the last day of summer vacation, or again, the experience of having an afternoon film screening rescheduled at the last minute to Sunday morning which resulted in there being about 10 people in the audience for the poor filmmaker who had traveled all the way from mainland China for this, the fact is that there seemed to be a deterioration in the way in which things were being handled at TIFF 08, and it was the public who suffered. On the other hand, the films that I managed to see, were for the most part quite decent. This was a pretty low-key festival, with not a lot of buzz generated for any particular film. One of the perks of a press pass is that there are 2 weeks of press screenings prior to the opening of the festival, and as a film buff with a full-time job and a limited capacity to watch more than 2 films per day, this enables me to see up to 30 out of a potential 300 or so. Once the festival starts, and I'm back at work, I rely on purchased public tickets because that way I can make sure I get to see specific films. Up to a few years ago, most of my tickets were dedicated to East Asian cinemas ... films from Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and to a lesser degree, South Korea. Unfortunately for me, what has happened over the course of the last few years is that fewer and fewer of these films are being brought in for the festival. In 2002, for example, there were 33 East Asian feature length fiction films screened at TIFF; in 2008, there were only 17. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] So this year I found myself asking around for recommendations for other films, which is how I came to select Liverpool, an Argentinian film that I had not heard of whose director, Lisandro Alonso, was unknown to me. While another film that I saw at TIFF, Terence Davies Of Time and the City was (a meditative autobiographical documentary) about the English city of Liverpool, Alonso's film is most emphatically not. Liverpool has nothing to do with Liverpool ... the only explanation of the quizzical choice of title comes close to the end of the film where it serves as a kind of self-reflexive punch line. However, after a month-long feast of international films, it was this film that made the biggest impression on me. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The film itself is just under 90 minutes in length, its narrative a seemingly simple picaresque trajectory that follows Farrel, a somewhat disheveled 40ish sailor, whom we first see on board a freighter, where very tight shots of the interior rooms and corridors intersperse with traveling shots following our protagonist as he moves through these claustrophobic spaces. Alone in his cabin, as well as when he's around others, it becomes apparent that Farrel prefers his solitude and his vodka bottle to human contact. The 'action' begins when Farrel asks his captain for a shore leave when they arrive at Ushuaia, a seaport located on the island of Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of Argentina. His explanation is that he wants to visit his mother who lives inland, and whom he hasn't seen in 20 years. In fact, he doesn't know whether she is still alive. The captain gives him a few days only, as the ship is on schedule to depart then. Farrel leaves the ship, spends a night or so in the city and then manages to hitch a ride on a logging truck that travels inland where it eventually drops him off in what looks like the middle of nowhere. Continuing his journey on foot, he leaves the road and what civilization there is behind as he heads off through the snow-covered terrain, crunching across frozen fields and through barren forests. …

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