"sex and violence"
I just got back from the last movie since, well, crash that was so full of pretentious sex and violence. Yes, it was definately a Toronto Film Festival experience. Complete with booing.

It was the North American premiere of Twentynine Palms and for the first hour, it was tolerable. A little slow maybe as we followed two people through a drive in the desert, but with some breathtaking images--particularly a stop at a wind farm and a graphic sexual romp on top of a rocky cliff. Then it deterioates into ridiculousness. First, they decide to accentuate the "animalness" of the guy by having him have the world's loudest orgasm. I mean, as Christy and Matt would note, my idea of male orgasm isn't particularly noisy, but this guy would outgrunt a bull seal. I think it was meant to be a serious moment, but the theatre erupted in laughter. From that point, the rest of the movie is largely incoherent. The most sensible scenes are those of dramatic close-ups of the leads looking aimlessly and pointlessly off into the distance. There was some swimming, an encounter with a three-legged dog, and some running along the road. Finally, the pair is brutally attacked by three guys in an f-150 truck and the man raped, which causes him later to cut his hair and stab the woman about a hundred times. It was unbelievably graphic and totally ridiculous at the same time.

The director was there to answer questions afterward, and he looked suitably chastened by all the booing. He did inform us though that he usually uses non-actors in his movie, but since he was in Los Angeles, regular people *were* actors. Fortunately, he said, the leads were bad actors so it was okay.

Unbelievable. Hopefully, the other TIFF movies will be better.