Toronto Review: Frances O’Connor’s Feature Directorial Debut ‘Emily’

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off her feature directorial debut world premiere of Emily at TIFF, actress-turned-filmmaker Frances O’Connor has inked with WME.

As the Toronto International Film Festival comes to its official Closing Night we say goodbye to the re-energized fest for another year, but not before we say ‘hello Dali’ or actually the final World Premiere of the festival, Daliland  which picks up the celebrated artists’ life in its later years focusing on the odd relationship between his and his controlling wife. If only this film stuck to that idea and didn’t take a detour into a misbegotten coming of age plotline about the young assistant both Dalis take a shine to in their own way.

Jessica Kiang There are no flirtations with the fourth wall in Frances O’Connor’s “Emily.” There is no synthpop on the soundtrack. No one ranks the relative attractiveness of the Brontë sisters on a scale out of 10, or attempts, bustle be damned, to twerk. Yet despite lacking all markers of the recent trend for girlbossified costume drama, the directorial debut from O’Connor — an actor who is no stranger to corsetry herself after “Mansfield Park” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” — gives us a strikingly current take on the Brontë behind “Wuthering Heights.” Unlike many a literary biopic, it feels anything but pagebound. If “Emily” were a book, however, it would be a fresh reissue of a Penguin Classic, with its timeless orange cover unobtrusively updated to be crisp and covetable all over again. 

Watching Peter Farrelly’s new film, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, and knowing little about it going in, I kept thinking this would be a totally absurd, beyond belief story if it isn’t one that really happened. By the end I saw it is indeed 100% true, proving life can sometimes be stranger than fiction.  As such it turns out to be one of the more memorable, and certainly heartfelt movies this year, as well as a Vietnam War movie that couldn’t be further from The Deer Hunter, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now,  but a character-driven drama that defies logic but makes you believe once again in the power of the human spirit. This is the rare Vietnam film seen from the POV of a civilian, a key reason it works as well as it does.

The mix of musical genres in the title of this Toronto Film Festival Gala Presentation reflects the wildly uneven tone of this rare drama from Tyler Perry Studios, a lush romantic musical telling the story of a Southern lynching with echoes of the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi 1955. An imminent bow on Netflix is probably the best strategy for it; Perry may have his following, but it’s hard to imagine a crossover audience for A Jazzman’s Blues.

Director  JD Dillard says he grew up hearing all about his own father’s  experiences as the second African American Blues Angels pilot, so naturally when Adam Makos’ book, Devotion came out he was instantly intrigued about adapting to the screen. The book tells the story of the friendship and, yes, devotion (where the title comes from in part) of two elite US Navy fighter pilots who made a big difference in one of the Korean War’s most intense battles in the early 1950’s.  But the story has great significance as it really tells the extraordinary tale of Jesse Brown who became the first Black  aviator in Navy history, and together with his unique friendship and working relationship with Tom Hudner the pair became legend as authentic Navy wingmen heroes.

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 classic, All Quiet On The Western Front was based on the 1928 novel by Erich Maria Remarque and became the first adaptation of a book to win the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as the first Best Picture Oscar winner to also take Best Director. It has hardly been touched by filmmakers since then save for a TV Movie remake by director Delbert Mann in 1979 that starred Richard Thomas. Now that has changed, and in a significant way , as the book has finally been taken on by Germany with director Edward Berger’s (Patrick Melrose, Your Honor) adaptation (co-written with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell) that finally shows us the perspective from the German side. It has already been selected as the German entry for the 95th Academy Awards Best International Film race, and just had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival today.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Pathé, which operates France’s leading cinema circuit, is planning to enter the Paris stock exchange in 2024, Variety has confirmed. The company’s president, Jérôme Seydoux, revealed the group’s long-gestated listing project in an interview with the French publication Les Echos. Seydoux said the company suffered a loss of approximately €100 million during the financial years 2020 and 2021, mainly due to the fact that theaters in France were shut down for a total of 300 days during the pandemic. While it ruffled feathers by selling “Coda” to Apple at Sundance in 2021 in a splashy $25 million deal, the company was one of the rare French studios which maintained its release plans for major local productions during the health crisis, for instance Martin Bourboulon’s “Eiffel” with Romain Duris and Emma Mackey, and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Notre Dame on Fire.”

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off starring in Toronto Film Festival drama North Of Normal, Sarah Gadon is set to make her directorial debut on feature Lullabies For Little Criminals, based on Heather O’Neill’s 2007 novel which won the Canada Reads competition.

Did you ever see those videos of women giving birth in high school anatomy class? It’s like watching a David Cronenberg film because childbirth is body horror. The impending task of motherhood is draining, and for some, Postpartum depression is a large part of the horrifying ordeal of being a mom. This is what director/writer Bess Wohl aims to portray in her new feature film Baby Ruby which stars Noemie Merlant and Kit Harrington.

Alice, Darling follows an abuse victim as she comes to terms with the end of her relationship. The script was written by  Alanna Francis and director by Mary Nighy. The film stars Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Wunmi Mosaku, and Charlie Carrick.

Chevalier is a biopic about violin virtuoso Joseph Bolonge Chevalier de Saint George directed by Stephen Williams and written by Stefani Robinson.

For questionable reasons, some very talented people got it into their heads that it would be a great idea to redress Georges Bizet’s classic 1875 musical Carmen for the big screen by throwing out everything—the setting, the era and, most of all, the music—and replacing it with a misguided attempt at relevance by setting it on the contemporary U.S. and Mexican border.

Lena Dunham directs the Medieval comedic drama Catherine Called Birdy. The film is an adaptation of the book by the same name by Karen Kushman and stars Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper.

There is definitely a trend of late for film directors to take a look in thinly disguised cinematic memoirs of their early influences that shaped the artist and person they have become. Kenneth Branagh with Belfast and Paolo Sorrentino with The Hand Of God did it last year. Of course there is Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, others over the years. Sam Mendes, while not drawing a portrait of his younger self revisits the movie palaces of his youth in another 2022 offering, Empire Of Light, which premiered last weekend at Telluride and will also hit the Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF is also where the man I recently described as the GOAT, Steven Spielberg, has chosen to debut his own story where the names have been changed but the story is  clearly his. The Fabelmans basically chronicling his early Jewish family life and infatuation with making movies  had its World Premiere Saturday night, the first of Spielberg’s directed movies ever to premiere at a film festival. This one seems entirely appropriate, and it has been gestating in the director’s head ever since he and his co-writer Tony Kushner started kicking it around during the making of Lincoln over a decade ago. He says he finally made it primarily as a way to bring his late parents Leah and Arnold (to whom the film is dedicated) somehow back to his life. Movies can do that, and no one knows it better than Steven Spielberg.

A group of wealthy people arrive on a mysterious island and receive the meal of a lifetime in Mark Mylod’s psychological thriller The Menu. Written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, the film stars Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor Joy. 

A group of wealthy people arrive on a mysterious island and receive the meal of a lifetime in Mark Maylod’s psychological thriller The Menu. Written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, the film stars Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor Joy. 

It beggars belief that what started out as an idle thought — to continue the adventures of detective Benoit Blanc, the world’s “greatest detective” — has resulted not in just the inevitable franchise placeholder but one of the most exciting, funny and downright enjoyable movies of the year. Shrewdly cast, it boasts one of the most brilliant screenplays of the year, not just in terms of its exquisite, laugh-out-loud dialogue and satirical barbs at pop culture but in the meticulous, meta plotting of a traditional whodunnit that keeps the mind ticking over from start to finish. Unusually for a recent Netflix presentation, hardly a minute is wasted, and it’s no surprise that a Christmas release is planned for an intelligent crowd-pleaser that hits a bullseye with every beat.