Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “American Fiction,” “The Critic” & “Mother, Couch”

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

AMERICAN FICTION (Orion/MGM/Amazon – Nov. 17):  The Toronto People’s Choice Award has been something of a golden ticket to a Best Picture nomination over the years, and this year the prize went to Cord Jefferson’s directing debut American Fiction.  Jefferson’s script (based on the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett) for the most part deftly toes the line between satire, social commentary and character drama, and it’s laced with excellent performances, led by the great Jeffrey Wright.  He plays Thelonious Ellison, nicknamed “Monk,” a serious literary novelist who’s unable to get his new work published after his previous books languished on the shelves, even as cynically stereotypical “Blacker” books are gaining critical praise and climbing the best-seller list.  (The title of the novel particularly driving Monk crazy is “We’s Lives In Da Ghetto”.)  Furious and desperate, Monk decides to write his own over-the-top account of Black life, one riddled with crime and stilted proclamations about life on the streets.  He also adopts a pseudonym, and a persona as a con on the run to go along with it.  As tends to happen in stories like this, his impersonation brings unimagined success but also more complications than he’d expected, as he’s now the face of a literature he loathes.  Although American Fiction is pointed and funny about both Black and white attitudes toward art and commerce, it’s not an out-and-out comedy, as it also deals with Monk’s relationships with his mother (Leslie Uggams), the new woman in his life (Erika Alexander), and especially his brother (Sterling K. Brown).  The latter is a difficult one, and it’s a pleasure to watch Wright and Brown navigate these two thorny individuals.  Jefferson is careful to modulate the the literary satire so that the character beats won’t be too inconsistent, although when the story’s scope widens to include Hollywood, the tone becomes broader.  American Fiction is incisive and fierce without sacrificing the humanity of its characters, and it gives Jeffrey Wright the meaty lead role he’s merited for a long time.

THE CRITIC (no distrib):  The premise of Patrick Marber’s script (based on the novel “Curtain Call” by Anthony Quinn [not that one]) seems to lend itself so much to farce that it takes a while to realize The Critic means to be serious melodrama.  In 1930s London, the acidic lead theater critic of the Chronicle is Jimmy Erskine (Ian McKellan).  One of the chief targets of his pen is the actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton).  but when a new owner at the Chronicle (Mark Strong) threatens Jimmy’s job, Jimmy offers Nina a lifetime of good reviews if she’ll help him bring the owner down.  The prospect of bitter foes joining forces against a shared enemy seems like it could be a lot of fun, but that’s not where The Critic heads.  Instead, it delves into the disastrous consequences of Jimmy’s plan, amidst the fascist gay-bashing of the pre-World War II era that victimizes him and his friends, and Nina’s crushing feelings of inadequacy and her regret at being pulled into Jimmy’s web.  By its final act, the tale turns very dark indeed.  This may or may not have been the best way to tell the story at hand, but director Anand Tucker takes it there with style and precision.  McKellan revels in Jimmy’s vicious wit, and one can’t help but enjoy his full-hearted viciousness, even if the character of the spiteful, scheming spider comes a bit close to certain anti-gay tropes.  Arterton embodies the more complicated Nina with increasing desperation.  The typically stacked British supporting cast includes Alfred Enoch as Jimmy’s secretary and lover, Ben Barnes as Nina’s married boyfriend, and Lesley Manville as her mother.  There’s creamy photography by David Higgs, and luxurious production design by Lucienne Suren.  The Critic, well-made but perhaps wrong-headed, earns a thumb neither clearly up or down, but rather more of a tentative nod.

MOTHER, COUCH (no distrib):  Dream logic is alluring to many filmmakers, but the ones who aren’t David Lynch, Luis Bunuel or the like proceed at their own peril.  Niclas Larsson’s feature directing debut Mother, Couch won’t be confused with the masterworks of surrealism.  The film starts small, as David (Ewan McGregor) is at a local furniture store, where his mother (Ellen Burstyn) was supposed to be shopping for a bureau.  Instead, she’s planted herself on a couch in the storage room upstairs, and refuses to budge–even wielding a knife to ward away anyone who would try to move her.  She won’t explain what she’s doing or why.  At a loss, David calls his siblings, but the amiable Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) and the waspish Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) are of no help.  Store manager Bella (Taylor Russell), the daughter of the owner and niece of his identical twin (both F. Murry Abraham), is strangely unperturbed by the whole thing, and offers to let Mother and David both sleep at the store.  David sputters and rages, tries to apply logic and charm, but he can’t alter the situation.  Eventually, things get even less tethered from reality, and David finds himself adrift in allegorical set-pieces and existential crises.  This kind of material is extremely difficult to make work even in secure hands.  The weirder it gets, the more it requires certainty both of purpose and technique.  Larsson, working from a novel by Jerker Virdborg, piles on the absurdity yet is unable to express more than David’s frustration, and the catharsis intended by the grand finale doesn’t come through.  McGregory, Ifans, Boyle and Burstyn work hard, but only Russell finds the right note of a few casual inches to the side of normal.  Mother, Couch is a big swing that doesn’t connect.