Song to Song

Starring Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett. Directed by Terrence Malick. Opens Friday at Cineplex Cinemas Yonge-Dundas. 129 minutes. 14A

Terrence Malick’s latestfilm isn’t so much a movie as it is a freeform collection of whispers and beseeching looks.

The Texas auteur’s long-held disregard for storytelling basics and conventional cinematic structure seemed inspired in his Palme d’Or-winningTheTree of Life in 2011, but his post-Cannes output makes indifference approach arrogance.

Song to Song is loosely based on the music scene in Malick’s vibrant home city of Austin, a topic and locale that by rights should offer some kind of artistic rejuvenation after the creative wheel-spinning of To the Wonder, Voyage of Time and Knight of Cups.

No such luck. Bereft of ideas and anything resembling a script, Malick sets loose his A-list cast – including Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett – to wander listlessly amidst couplings and uncouplings that are more tiresome than tragic.

Musical pursuits become incidental to the proceedings: Who’d have guessed that Del Shannon’s 1961 pop hit “Runaway” would be Malick’s sonic muse?

He never seems happier than when his gaze – and that of lenser Emmanuel Lubezki – is pointed skyward at a flock of seagulls, while the soundtrack exults in orchestral appreciation.

Song to Song becomes a test of who can best handle Malick’s indifferent direction: Fassbender hams it up Zepplinesque style; Portman and Blanchett push back against bad-girl stereotypes; Gosling treads water and Mara simply looks lost.

Real musicians like Iggy Pop, John Lydon, Lykke Li and Patti Smith enter and exit the frame, with Smith offering the film’s only genuine emotion as she lovingly remembers her late husband Fred (Sonic) Smith, guitarist for the MC5.

“We had a life and it was beautiful . . . I thought I would be with him for the rest of my life,” Smith says.

Listening with silent envy is Mara’s unhappy character Faye, a budding singer-songwriter caught in a love triangle between Fassbender’s scheming producer Cook and Gosling’s pretty vacant songwriter BV.

“I was desperate to feel something real,” Faye whispers in voiceover about her own life. Viewers of Song to Song can nod in weary agreement.

Peter Howell

David Lynch: The Art Life

Documentary on the early artistic pursuits of filmmaker David Lynch. Directed by Jon Nguyen. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 88 minutes. 14A

A more useful subtitle for this fans-only doc would be Everything Before Eraserhead, the surreal 1977 horror movie that launched David Lynch’s feature film career and eventual critical acclaim.

Director Jon Nguyen dutifully catalogues early Lynch creations that are amusing, terrifying and mostly paintings, while the wild-coiffed artist toils over new visual arts projects in his Hollywood Hills home, his young daughter Lula happily toddling nearby.

Lynch drones on in voiceover about his early life as a happy kid, diligent Boy Scout and indifferent student who pursued an avant-garde art career that shocked his parents. His found-object studies of decaying fruit, birds and mice prompted his research-scientist father to counsel his son, “Dave, I don’t think you should ever have children.”

The American Film Institute instead saw budding genius and gave Lynch a grant that led to the creation of Eraserhead and paved the way for other mind-blowing triumphs, TwinPeaks and Mulholland Drive among them.

“I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten that grant,” Lynch says. “I really don’t.” Indeed.

PH

Frantz

Starring Paula Beer, Pierre Niney. Co-written and directed by Francois Ozon. 113 minutes. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 114 minutes. PG

French filmmaker Francois Ozon reminds us of the adage, “the first casualty of war is truth.” He does so in a way that beguiles but also bedevils.

Ozon re-imagines Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 classic, Broken Lullaby, about a French soldier who travels to Germany post-First World War, but from the perspective of the fiancée of a dead soldier named Frantz.

The film is beautifully shot in black and white, with very occasional flashes of colour, with an exquisite attention to period detail.

Paula Beer plays Anna – still living with the parents of her late fiancé – who spots a mysterious stranger leaving flowers at Frantz’s gave. Adrien (Pierre Niney) is welcomed into the household of Frantz’s still-grieving parents when he claims they used to be friends. Here’s where the truth first gets compromised and it goes from there.

Beer is marvelous in the role of Anna while Ernst Stotzner and Marie Gruber turn in lovely performers as the anguished parents. Niney is rather the weak link here, too melancholy and self-absorbed to generate much sympathy.

The film’s quasi-tragic final act will surely leave audiences divided.

Bruce DeMara

Giants of Africa

Directed by Hubert Davis. 77 minutes. Opens Friday at Cineplex Yonge-Dundas.

Giants of Africa is the name of the film and the program, based on the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders, which offers training and life lessons to would-be players in four African countries.

It’s the brainchild of Nigerian-born Masai Ujiri, a former player and scout, and the first African president of an NBA team, the Toronto Raptors.

The program, started in 2003, follows four recent training camps and the struggles and successes of youth from varied backgrounds along with coaches and Ujiri himself, a mentor who throws himself into his work with obvious passion.

The film is inspirational in a nonchalant sort of way. The program has yet to produce a NBA star, but it has filled scores of young men with hope while teaching them leadership skills, the need to respect others – especially women – and to fight endemic corruption in their respective home countries.

The low-key style and the simplicity of its storytelling make the film all the more powerful.

BD

Toni Erdmann (DVD)

Starring Sandra Huller and Peter Simonischek. Written and directed by Maren Ade. Available April 11 on DVD. 162 minutes. 14A

Gobsmacked. This crazy and emotive father/daughter escapade from Germany’s Maren Ade is as fearless as it is entertaining, but it also digs deep into parent/child bonding.

Sandra Huller’s protagonist Ines stoically struggles with workplace sexism and a domineering father (Peter Simonischek), who significantly happens to be a relentless prankster.

But Ines is no victim in this shaggy dad story. She fights back in her own unique way, which makes for delightful and insightful viewing.

If this doesn’t yet sound like a laugh riot, hang on. Toni Erdmann has plenty of surprises in store to make you smile and roar — and in one scene in particular, make your jaw drop. Despite a nearly three-hour running time that feels at times like a miniseries, Ade’s script is that unique conundrum: an arthouse comedy with a deft pace and finely tuned emotional intelligence.

Extras include a commentary track with actors Huller and Simonischek (and producer Janine Jackowski), plus AFI Fest Q&A.

PH

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