Sad Jokes A regular competition story: I had plans to see a specific movie on the finish of TIFF 2024 day one, however my schedule needed to be rapidly rearranged, I had time to kill and thought I’d as effectively see a film I used to be form of interested in. So there I sat on the P&I screening of Kenichi Ugana’s Midnight Madness world premiere The Gesuidouz, sandwiched between two impartial theater bookers having a catch-up. The man on my left began reeling off each anime he’d programmed for the final two months and can be displaying for the foreseeable future; the one on my proper lower him off with “I think your knowledge of anime is far greater than mine and I’d love your help with that.” (Translation, I believe: will you please be quiet, please.) The air was thick with unrepentant geek vibes—by no means my scene however I assumed, “This will be good for me. This is what festivals are supposed to do: remind me of all the other parts of the ecosystem beyond my hermetic arthouse comfort zone, all of which matter to the bottom lines of theater bookers just like the ones around me, and therefore ultimately to me as well.”
I assume it was good for me, at the least as a reminder of why I keep away from this type of factor, as a result of The Gesuidouz is a really unhealthy would-be prefab cult film. The TIFF program capsule recommended that the movie “recalls the deadpan humour and vignette structures of an Aki Kaurismäki film (Leningrad Cowboys Go America in particular).” What this implies is that the film is a few band, one in all whose members has a mohawk—the American drummer performed by Rocko Zevenbergen, whose resume consists of time at Troma, which presumably was good for calling in a Lloyd Kaufman cameo (all the time an ominous signal). Why was the movie programmed in any respect? A small second unit is credited to director Joseph Kahn, a TIFF common whose Ick premiered in the identical part this 12 months, which doesn’t appear to be a complete coincidence.
A wretchedly detached band, the Gesuidouz retreat to the countryside to attempt to create an indelible track earlier than 26-year-old frontwoman Hanako (Natsuko) has her subsequent birthday and commits suicide to hitch the 27 Club. The jokes are totally on the extent of e.g. having a canine known as John Cage (wacky!) who finally talks (wackier!), together with a (very) small handful of extra imaginative bits designed to be snipped out for YouTube consumption. Kaurismäki’s received nothing to do with it: his movies are all superbly shot on 35mm, whereas it is a hideously unlit digital sketch meeting. The large recurring gag is that earlier than beginning a jam session, Hanako will shout out what she needs to the track to sound like—e.g. “like Johnny Thunders holding a devil baby in his arms while riding a rollercoaster.” This isn’t actually a joke, however it is a nice method of summing up what a number of movies identical to this one are: a sequence of cultural references dropped in putatively loopy circumstances and invariably extra enjoyable to explain in two sentences than watch at characteristic size. I emerged grateful to retreat again to my typical competition movie turf in any case.
TIFF’s plans for reversing their downward trajectory—in status, premieres, ease of attendance, quantity of trickle-down choices from the 12 months’s main festivals—stay as ominously hazy as they’ve been for some time now. In 2026, they plan to launch a full market part whose exact particulars are pending. (Per chief programming officer Anita Lee, “Packaging and finance is going to be a key part of the official market […] there will be a co-producing forum. There will be a project market. There will be a works-in-progress salon.”) Meantime, in a single longtime attendee’s succinct verdict, “people seem to be over it”—not least the director who approached my group’s desk late at evening, gave us a blast on TIFF’s filler-clogged lineup and challenged us to discover a single factor value watching within the Sunday 8-am-to-noon P&I block. (We checked out that schedule after the director departed. Grim certainly!) Another business vet described how they envisioned a number of the international movie reserving course of: discover a nation with cash and a few actors they need to fly over for the purple carpet, program accordingly. The infrastructure is, to cite Kamala Harris, “weird.” The back-end appears to be disintegrating (getting tickets was a buggy, trial-and-error guessing recreation) and public costs are outrageous as soon as they enter the realm of resale; scanning rapidly, I noticed tickets for a 9:45 pm Cloud screening that from $135 CAD to over 200—translated to USD, greater than opening evening of this 12 months’s NYFF for a neck-crane seat. I heard a man at one screening telling his pal that he didn’t perceive what TIFF membership will get you: the prospect to purchase competition tickets every week earlier than most people at double the value? I’m undecided who is being serviced by these maladept processes moreover Ticketmaster.
Toronto is beautiful in some ways (go to Balfour Books when on the town) and a weirdly underrated meals metropolis, so I’d like to hold coming again in good religion to scour for gems deeper within the lineup. This 12 months the massive pile of semi-unknown portions yielded a winner in Fabian Stumm’s Sad Jokes, which premiered on the comparatively low-profile Munich Film Festival. A prolific actor in Germany, that is Stumm’s second characteristic as writer-director, and his efficiency has extra confidence than what usually occurs when a director casts themselves in an element to save cash. Here he performs Joseph, who’s…a writer-director engaged on his sophomore characteristic. I’ve a number of ideas about why movies-about-making-movies are an growing share of the competition movie financial system, which I’ll save for an additional time; simply know that this beginning premise doesn’t end in computerized tedium, however does permit an in-character Stumm to outline the tone he’s working in the direction of in a gathering along with his skeptical producer: “My background is more naturalistic. I’d like to move in a more absurdist direction.”
Putting that concept into observe, the subsequent scene has Joseph getting his hand caught in a merchandising machine’s grate and attempting to extricate himself with the help of the individual you’d least prefer to be round on this scenario—a girl extremely flustered by his predicament and unable to name the ambulance as a result of she retains getting distracted—whereas classical piano music gives an upscale slapstick accompaniment. Throughout, Joseph’s facial features is extra panic-stricken than he realizes; it is a portrait of the director as an inveterate people-pleaser out of economic necessity who’s not really good at enjoying that recreation, and his proposed challenge offers indicators of the extra selfish eccentricity effervescent beneath. He attends a model-drawing class led by Swedish trainer Elin (Ulrica Flach), who glances in alarm at his sketch. “I’m trying to keep it abstract, he says. “That’s…interesting,” she says. “Fun is good.” Afterwards, Joseph’s actual motive for attending is revealed: for his forthcoming movie, he needs Elin to sculpt a big head modeled after his personal. (We all have management points.)
In reality, Sad Jokes is best on the latter a part of its title than the previous, minus a nervewracking second scene introducing Sonya (Haley Louis Jones), Joseph’s finest pal and co-parent who’s having some form of nervous breakdown requiring institutionalization she retains escaping. In his review, Jonathan Romney occasions the shot at eight minutes, and it’s a standout of one-setup blocking that releases a bunch of data with out being overly apparent about both. The movie’s worst sections are different, extra maudlin ones about Sonya, however the jokes are terrific, resulting in standout setpieces together with the post-premiere get together for Joseph’s first movie, the place his two lead actresses, who started a relationship whereas capturing, get into an enormous battle and a sleazy Italian who works in insurance coverage (i.e., a financier) senses his alternative to leap into the breach. The triangle change between German and Italian in entrance of an more and more attentive viewers (together with, in a cameo for the German cinema heads, Victoria director Sebastian Schipper), a masterfully staged face-off with an surprising punchline. Throughout, Stumm demonstrates his adeptness for bringing comedy again to the arthouse, the place it’s largely sorely missed. Was I simply experiencing competition fever, a key symptom of which is the will to make discoveries the place none are to truly be made? I hope not, and hope as effectively that TIFF can determine its infelicities and get again to assembling extra such movies.
