WIFF - Day 1

Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami has Juliette Binoche and English opera star William Shimell (he doesn’t sing) in this tale of attraction, introspection, philosophy and meditation on life and relationships. Reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, a man and woman – seemingly strangers - meet and spend several hours walking the bucolic landscape and timeless villages of Tuscany. As the movie progresses the identity of the two changes in terms of what each means to the other. Or does it? This movie was utterly absorbing.....Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love has Tilda Swinton as Emma Recchi, wife of the inherited owner of a huge Milan linen factory. Her character breaks out of her bourgeois family through a personal romantic obsession, a story paralleling the fall of the company’s fortunes. This is an elegantly-made film with strong studied visual shots and a fantastic music score which underlines the film’s sophisticated look. But it’s a weak story that seems less than convincing.

WIFF notes: There seemed fewer people Friday night compared to the almost-couldn’t-move crowds in the Capitol Theatre lobby last year, and neither of the two performances I attended were sold out. Many people seemed to order tickets online and one volunteer had a big stack of Will Call envelopes, mingling among the crowd on the street and handing them out – a nice touch. But if you didn’t buy online, you were reduced to lining up on University Ave. – in a cold bitter wind – and purchasing from a couple of box office staff. A further inconvenience was that tickets could only be purchased with cash; no credit cards. For some reason the inside ticket booth in the Capitol’s lobby was not used.