Toronto fest a mixed bag

TORONTO — Just three days after Canada's World Film Festival drew to a relatively quiet close in Montreal, Toronto's International Film Festival opened with an abundance of big-name directors and high-profile stars almost everywhere you looked.

Interestingly, however, most of the films by well-known directors fell short of expectations, and occasionally even first-class actors found themselves in disappointing duds.

• For my money, the best of the festival was a film from France by Zabou Breitman: "L'Homme de sa Vie" (interestingly translated as "The Man of My Life"), starring Bernard Campan, Charles Berling and Lea Drucker. Ostensibly about a family vacationing in the French countryside and the man who has moved in next door, it subtly draws you in and then refuses to let you go, even as the last scene ends. Intelligently written, creatively directed and excellently performed, it gained my admiration right away and reminded me that, in the hands of the right people, cinema can still be art.

• Another gem is the first film directed by Canada's best-known young actress, Sarah Polley, and she certainly proves her mettle. Titled "Away From Her," it features the wonderful Julie Christie as a woman coming down with Alzheimer's, with a magnificent and heartbreaking performance by Grant Pinsett as her husband, and Olympia Dukakis as the wife of a man whose memory has also left him. This is one you won't want to miss.

• Also excellent and not to be missed is the German film "The Lives of Others," which deals with the 1984 Stasi agents — East Germany's secret police — who, in this particular case, bug apartments of questionable playwrights, actors and directors. It deservedly swept the Germany equivalent of the Academy Awards, winning no less than seven, including best film, director, lead actor and cinematographer. It will hopefully appear in U.S. theaters — and is likely to be nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film.

• Not everyone at Toronto liked "All the King's Men" as much as I did — and I think it has a lot to do with my having known and written about the novel's author, Robert Penn Warren. But it also has to do with my love of cinematography, lighting and the perfect capturing of a certain "period feel" in the surroundings, and even the faces of the extras. I'm sure what would be a drawback for many — and it was for me as well — was the excessive dialogue which, unfortunately, could have used a major trimming.