Newsletter: Indie Focus: To Toronto and back again

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Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

A few weeks ago we held one of our Indie Focus Screening Series events with the film “Learning To Drive.” After the screening we had a Q&A with actors Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson. It was a very lively talk, as their obvious friendship and affection for each other came across with an infectious energy.

You can listen to our podcast of the Q&A here.

And check here for more info on future events: events.latimes.com/indiefocus/

Toronto International Film Festival

With fall film festival season in full swing, Steve Zeitchik, Glenn Whipp and myself, along with photographer Jay Clendenin, have decamped up north to cover the Toronto International Film Festival. Each year, Toronto is a great way to both catch up to films from Cannes and others released earlier in the year that you haven’t had a chance to see yet, but also to look forward to many of the aspiring awards contenders of the months ahead and films that will be coming out well into the next year.

Steve recently took a look at just how crowded the fall movie season can be, a pile-up of prestige titles vying for the attention of audiences.

Cutting right to the chase, Tom Bernard, co-chief of Sony Pictures Classics, said, "I think for some of these movies it's suicide coming out this time of year."

And Glenn took a look at the Oscar chances of some high-profile Toronto titles.

Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, in Tom Hooper’s “The Danish Girl.”

(Focus Features / AP)

Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, in Tom Hooper’s "The Danish Girl." (Focus Features / AP)

'High-Rise'

To my mind one of the most exciting filmmakers of the last few years has been Ben Wheatley. His new film “High-Rise” is an adaptation of the 1975 novel by J.G. Ballard starring Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans and Jeremy Irons and has its world premiere at Toronto.

Adapted by Amy Jump, who co-edited the picture with Wheatley (they are also married), the film feels like another step forward, with bigger stars, a bigger budget and a cult classic novel for source material.

“We tried to make a film that was a bit sexier than the other films we’ve made, and is a bit more designed and controlled, but then obviously there’s no escaping the things that we like,” Wheatley said.

Tom Hiddleston plays Dr. Robert Laing in “High-Rise.”

(Aidan Monaghan / Toronto International Film Festival)

Tom Hiddleston plays Dr. Robert Laing in "High-Rise." (Aidan Monaghan / Toronto International Film Festival)

“It’s that loud/quiet Nirvana-style of playing, where you go from heavy emotions into lighter moments,” he added. “I’ve always enjoyed that kind of filmmaking. You can’t be heavy all the time and it’s dull to be light all the time. When you have those emotions together that feels more like life.”

The film is set in the year the book was published, adding another layer to its rich evocation of a world going mad. Added Hiddleston, “Ben always said that our ‘High-Rise’ was an adaptation of a book which was written in the past, looking forward to the future, and that we were making a film from the future, looking back to the past.” 

'Sleeping With Other People'

It's not all-Toronto around here, as there are still movies opening closer to home. Playwright-turned-filmmaker Leslye Headland turns the romantic comedy upside down with her new “Sleeping With Other People,” in which an audience spends much of the movie hoping the central couple (Alison Brie, Jason Sudeikis) would not get together. (Needless to say, it’s complicated.)

One might naturally assume that Headland purposefully attacked the tropes of the modern rom-com while writing, but in fact she didn’t.

Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis in “Sleeping With Other People.”

(Linda Kallerus / IFC Films)

Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis in "Sleeping With Other People." (Linda Kallerus / IFC Films)

“I have to say it really didn't hit me until I watched the assembly," she said recently, referring to her first time watching the footage of the movie put together. "I called Jessica Elbaum, my producer, and I was like, 'It's a rom-com' and she was like, 'Yeah, I know.' And I said, 'Nobody told me.'

"Once I embraced the fact that it was a rom-com, that's what it ended up becoming."

'Innocence' at Cinefamily

One film I am looking forward to seeing in Toronto is Lucille Hadzihalilovic's “Evolution.” It is the long-awaited follow-up to her 2004 feature “Innocence.” As luck would have it, for anyone who has not seen “Innocence,” a tale of bad behavior at an all-girls' boarding school, on Sept. 16 the film is screening at the Cinefamily as part of the ongoing French film program La Collectionneuse. "Innoncence" stars Marion Cotillard and was shot by cinematographer Benoit Debie.

As New York Times critic Manohla Dargis said in a 2005 review, “The line between cinematic art and exploitation has rarely seemed finer and nervier, at least in recent memory, than in the French film 'Innocence.'”

Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.