I think CRA may be suffering from a bit of overhype syndrome. It's a fluffy rom-com with many delights, but not very deep. It resonated with me much more because of my shared Asian-American (Asian-Canadian in my case) experience with the heroine -- that sense/fear of being not good enough for either side of the hyphen, deep-down, is very real, and seeing Rachel asserting herself felt like a genuine moment of triumph. But without that sense of recognition, I could see how it would be mostly a cute rom-com with some excellent food porn and clothes porn, not the second-coming of whatever.
The book is a very fluffy and pretty shallow beach read. Astrid gets a bit more depth in the book, but I find that Rachel and Eleanor in particular are much better realized in the movie rather than in the book, mostly on the strength of the performances. It may be fun if you want a 20% brain page-turner with a lot of designer name-dropping (insert eyeroll) but you won't get much in terms of deeper characterization from the book.
Yes, the performances made the movie for me. My only real objection was I would have had less OTT partying and more banter. I'm more a fan of banter. And yes, overhype did make me think there might be a bit more depth, which I should not have expected from a summer rom-com.
OK, we're a week away from Toronto International Film Festival and I redeemed my 20-film package just yesterday. Overall relatively painless process, except for the new-to-this-year shenanigans of random assignment of seats in half the theaters, which meant I ended up getting seats waaaay in the front or waaay in the back for bunch of the screenings. Ehh, whatever. If it's physical comfort I wanted, I'd be lying on a beach drinking cocktails with little umbrellas in them, not lining up to see 3 movies a day.
Among the tickets scored: the new Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk), the new Damian Chazelle (First Man, the new Neil Armstrong biopic starring, who else, Ryan Gosling), the Timothy Chalamet addiction-weeper (A Beautiful Boy), the Lucas Hedges gay conversion therapy weeper (Boy Erased), a pair of Eastern European period pieces from directors who won foreign film Oscars (Sunset, and Never Look Away, from Son of Saul and Lives of Others directors, respectively), the new Zhang Yimou (Shadow), the new Alfonso Cuaron (Roma), a Korean drama that took Cannes by storm without winning anything (Burning, starring Steven Yeun!), the actual Cannes Winner from Japan (Shoplifters), the new Steve McQueen in which Viola Davis leads a posse of gangster wives on a job (Widows, which looks BADASS), the one in which Nicole Kidman plays an ugly detective (Destroyer), the new Oliver Assayas/Juliette Binoche joint (Non-Fiction), and the new Claire Denis sci-fi thriller starring Robert Pattinson (?!) called High Life, which might be amazing or terrible. Oh, plus a Robert the Bruce biopic in which Chris Pine will attempt to do a Scottish accent (not very well, judging from the trailer) -- I'm watching that mostly for lulz (and because I have the hots for Chris Pine, sue me).
After the package redemption days, there comes the individual ticket purchase day. I'm gonna try to get a few more tickets to random interesting-seeming films I haven't heard much about. I usually end up doing about 25 films over 9 days or so.
RIP my eyeballs in advance
Go Vonnie! I salute you! And your eyeballs. That's some serious film fest commitment.
I had a friend who organized her whole year's vacation around the SF Film Fest (back when it was more of a thing than it has been of recent years). Dag, they had a great programmer through the 80s and 90s.
Dude, Vonnie, you are a monster. respect!
That is one helluva list. I really want to see (and probably eventually will, but not all at once!) about 90% of it.
Go Vonnie.
Every year I say I'm going to go to TIFF and it passes me by every year.
Go Vonnie! Worth the eyestrain no doubt.
Thanks, all! It's a beast of a festival. There were several other films I wanted to see that I couldn't fit into my schedule, but overall, I am psyched with the ones I got. Will report back on the films periodically!
