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TIFF 2023

By September 20, 2023 Film

There is never enough time to see everything. TIFF is always about choices. I was lucky with mine. I missed out on all the award winners but saw some gems before COVID-19 sent me home, missing out on the last three days.

Peter and I are well into our second decade of sharing this annual cinematic blitz. I have been coming to see films at this Festival since volunteering when it wasn’t called TIFF but the Festival of Festivals. That was a million years ago.

I did interviews during TIFF for a spell while working as an entertainment journalist for Global TV. Now, we are that couple who grin at each other when the lights go down…school is in session again, and we must suppress our giggles at our sheer delight that we are back.

Ignoring the chatter about prestige films skipping Toronto in favour of other festivals was hard. Is it all because of the actors and screenwriters’ strike? Or is Toronto becoming a less palatable city to visit?

TIFF used to be the jewel in the crown.

Toronto lost the ecosystem celebrities bring when they show up to pump their films. The parties and fashion branding were missing; many people who made those events shine needed work in this city.

The buzz in every corner… I missed that. Thousands of creatives in one corner of the city, making plans, collaborating, scheming, sharing. That was missing this year.

My heart aches for all the actors and all the writers. All the crews that are out of work. All the new work shut down. Projects scuttled.

Directors did come to share their stories, and that’s my jam.

  I was grateful that 70% of the Festival’s programme comes from independent and international producers. This year, TIFF programmers did their job once again with spectacular results, offering me glimpses into corners of the world I have never been to.

Favourite Films

Anatomy of a Fall 

The setup: a successful German writer is charged with murder after their son finds her French husband dead at their chalet in the Alps. Did he commit suicide? Did she push him out the window? The film is less a whodunnit than a provocative exploration of marriage, parenthood and the essence of truth and the collective gaze: all of us implicated in ambiguity. This is a must-see for anyone in a long-term relationship, as it will hit all sorts of buttons. French director Justine Triet co-wrote this legal thriller with her partner, writer/director Arthur Harari, but insists neither wrote along gender lines. Instead, they switched back and forth to ensure parity. As the lead, Sandra Hüller delivers the most commanding performance of the year. She is simply masterful. I could not take my eyes off her throughout this gripping story, all of it coming to a crescendo in a spectacular courtroom scene. While accepting the Palme d’Or in Cannes in May for this film, Triet caused controversy by expressing solidarity with protests over social reforms and creative diversity in France. I know only this: this talented artist made a fabulous film. Of all my screenings, this one tops my list.

Monster

Another puzzle film, another story about truth, and another stunning work of cinema by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. As the film begins, it focuses on a single mother attempting to solve the mystery of her son’s disturbing behaviour change. But wait…there is a second and third act, as the film starts again, then again, alternating perspectives as we learn more about this child and his world. There are no spoilers here, as the intricate parts are purposeful and necessary. I cried at the gorgeous scenes of childhood dynamics, just as I did when I saw Kore-eda’s Shoplifters which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2018. Also notable here was the spectacular soundtrack by legendary musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died earlier this year. When the film ended, the young man beside me had tears in his eyes. I did, too. We both sighed and shared a hug. There are no strangers in these moments. 

The Zone of Interest

 Tiff programmer Doroto Lech told our audience, “You are about to see the most important film of the year, if not the decade.

Can any film live up to such a headline?
This film pulls off a clever and supremely sobering conceptual trick. We are introduced to the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Höss in their dream house right next to the camp… right over the fence. The film, adapted from Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, depicts their everyday bucolic life. Ordinary bourgeois people. Children go to school or play in the lush gardens; their mother (Sandra Hüller) opines about her blooms and finding her “paradise.” British director Jonathan Glazer shot this film with hidden static cameras. To assume a critical distance,  Glazer allowed no point-of-view shots. The characters move in and out of frame. They live in the shadow of the camp, but there is no confrontation with reality. Here before us is the ultimate banality of evil.

Glazer chose not to reenact any of the violence. 

People are already aware of those horrors. The images live in our heads“.
Instead, he used sound to interpret the world on the other side of the fence, effectively creating two films…the one you see and then the one you hear. This film’s soundtrack was more disturbing than any other screened this year. Apathy, complicity, disassociation: this is the conversation Glazer wants us to have. And so we shall. No other film will creep under your skin as slyly.

His Three Daughters

Anyone who has witnessed the death of a parent will connect with this intense drama about three estranged sisters who come together at their father’s bedside in his dying days. Carrie Coon is the control freak sister, Elizabeth Olsen is the anxious peacemaker, and Natasha Lyonne is the chain-smoking youngest, ready for a break after assuming the central caregiver role for the past year. What lifts this from an everyday maudlin trope is a beautiful script from writer/director Azazel Jacobs and formidable acting talent. All three actors deliver mesmerizing portraits. Jacobs also edited his film, and the result is an essential film about loss and that strange sense of time collapsing and elongating for those witnessing a loved one fade away. In 2019, I lost my beloved dad and then, within months, my dear father-in-law. The idea that siblings all play a role in inhabiting that sacred space rang authentic to me. 

Ru

Ru is one of three excellent Canadian films I saw at TIFF. The story was written by Kim Thúy, who fled with her family from Vietnam in 1975 to a refugee camp in Malaysia before landing in Quebec. I read her novel a decade ago, which won the Governor General Award and was pleased to see this beautiful adaptation from Quebecker Charles-Oliver Michaud. The entire experience of watching one long shot after another was akin to snuggling by the fire with a book and a blanket. The film is full of stunning visuals, a beautiful score and a tight cast handily delivering the story of forced migration with tremendous heart. In her first film role, the lead, Chloé Djandji, showed up at the film’s premiere to delight us all with stories about life on her first set. Her excitement was contagious. Thúy, the film’s producer, was also on hand at the premiere,  jumping up and down with elation.

I Don’t Know Who You Are

Brace yourselves. This was the advice given to us before watching this Toronto production about a musician desperately trying to pull together funds for HIV-preventive treatment after potential exposure from an assault. Toronto musician and poet Mark Clennon plays out the panic with a dazzling performance filling the screen in every shot, a star turn thrilling to behold. Director M. H. Murray studied film at York University, and this is his own harrowing life story, adapted first for a short film and now made into this stunning micro-budget first feature. Most of the film was shot in Clennon’s own Toronto apartment. I loved the warmth permeating much of this story, lifting it, in many moments, from hopelessness. The mix of it, the panic and the passion, never wanders from the underscore of urban strife. To those who believe a great film is made only with massive budgets, here is proof that artistry bursts from the tiniest cracks.

Screening this film also offered one of my TIFF warm fuzzies. In front of me was a whole row of the filmmaker’s family members, including a proud aunt who assured me I was about to see something wondrous. We connected, that aunt and I. She was bang on.

Days of Happiness
Another excellent Quebec offering, this one from Montreal writer/director Chloé Robichaud, is about a gifted conductor struggling to get control over her career. A compelling portrait of a young perfectionist as she works through a thorny emotional map with her family, and her lover comes alive with a note-perfect performance from Sophie Desmarais. What truly soars, though, is the musical backdrop. Montreal Métropolitain Orchestra principal conductor Yannick Nézet-Sequin acted as artistic consultant here, and the film’s orchestral sequences, filmed as three acts, are majestic to see and hear. Feel the Music sounds like a cheesy tagline. Here, it is the doorway to understanding and harmony.

Concrete Utopia

If you like disaster movies and black humour, this is your film. My Korean-Canadian seatmate assured me this director would knock my socks off. She and her seven sisters spent the pandemic having watch parties of Um Tae-hwa’s films. Representation matters. TIFF does this better than any festival in the world. After a massive earthquake, one single apartment stands in the city of Seoul. The residents band together to keep what they have to themselves and create their own Utopia. So begins the parable. Things quickly become messy and chaotic; lines are drawn, and foolish men fall. Much of this film is satirical and then melodramatic. The thriller pace makes for riveting stuff, as in any post-apocalyptic epic and here is a cast who made it all believable. The young couple, played by Park Seo-jun and Park Bo-young, are at the story’s heart. As the newly elected leader of the apartment tenants, actor Lee Byung-hun has the most work to do as loyalties shift and his own story comes into the fray. Expect this to be a monster hit.

Les Undesirables

Again, housing, or the lack thereof, is the focus as we move from Korea to France. Director Ladj Li’s incendiary follow-up to his acclaimed 2019 debut, Les Misérables is again set in a Parisian suburb, where the newly appointed mayor sets upon rehabilitating a working-class neighbourhood. A young community worker, played by newcomer Anta Dias, fights to keep her family and their friends in the home where they grew up. Now and then, a scene presents itself in the middle of many TIFF screenings that takes your breath away. The film around it may be imperfect, but this one scene is so potent it sticks with you through the rest of the Festival. And so it was here in this film, as the housing project is evacuated forcefully by local police, residents are ordered to leave with minutes to spare, and we are taken in and out of this frenzied space as hell soon breaks out.

This director grew up and lived in these suburbs and again serves up severe tension on his platter of social commentary. High marks for nailing the issue of our time. Less successful is the broad strokes of his villains. 

Achilles 

I love seeing films in the Discovery section and stumbling upon a talented new voice. Writer/director Farhad Delaram’s feature debut follows a filmmaker who has given up his work in despair over the political repression in Iran. Working now as an orthotist in a crumbling hospital, our protagonist Achilles meets a sedated political prisoner in the restricted psych ward and snaps out of his malaise to free her. This begins a journey around the country, all shot on location. Delaram worked on this film as the crackdown on protesters unfolded around him in real time, and he could not get his two lead actors’ visa clearance to attend the Festival.  Most of this film comes from his own experience of suffering to make the kind of art he wanted. This road movie has poetry in image and symbolism, and I am eager to see what this filmmaker does next.

Nyad

Another thrilling ride comes from the doc team, who scooped an Oscar for Free Solo, this time on the ocean. The film is based on the real-life story of American long-distance swimmer Diane Nyad, as she resumes training at the age of sixty to realize a long-ago dream to become the first person to swim from Cuba to the US without a shark cage. Sixty-five-year-old Annette Bening inhabits this role ferociously…there is no scene where she becomes anything less than the arrogant, driven Diane. As her best friend and coach for this crazy caper across dangerous waters,  Jodie Foster matches her frame for frame. There is so much to root for here. Both of these fine actors, in their prime, gorgeous lined faces—so rare in Hollywood it’s almost shocking —making every scene sing. The whole time Jodie is on screen, I was smiling- why is she not in a million more movies? She is just So DAMN GOOD. Co-directors (real-life partners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin ) are at the top of their game in their first narrative feature outing, zipping back and forth through archival material and current timelines. Actor Rhys Ifans is also terrific as the navigator with the guide boat. I loved it all and wanted to stand up and cheer, whether she made the swim or not. Cheer for the third act. I’ll be there soon. I need to remember the message. Never Give Up.

Hit Man

Let’s get this out of the way first: I love Richard Linklater movies… most of them. Boyhood slayed me. The Before trilogy inspired me. I was excited to see his latest, Hit Man, and delighted to find he didn’t disappoint. Finding comedy at TIFF is rare and always welcome. Linklater tucks the comedy into a simple sauce of film noir narrative. Hit Man stars Glen Powell, who co-wrote the script, as a professor by day and an undercover police operative at night. How he becomes a hitman is immaterial, but when he does, he begins a series of hilarious costumed setups that allow Powell to show off. The charismatic actor is at his career best when he connects with his co-star, Adria Arjona, a woman who needs her husband killed. The chemistry between them is fun to watch: here is the sexiest couple of the Festival. This film brought to mind one of those pop songs that you can’t figure out why has stuck with you all those years later. The hook is simple, straightforward, and smart. It’s never as easy to pull off as it goes down.

Frybread Face and Me

Billy Porter is a Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo filmmaker known for documentaries. In his narrative feature debut, he brings some of those doc skills to a touching coming-of-age story that kept me smiling the whole time. Most of the cast had never acted before, and their naturalism never appeared hokey under Porter’s guidance. The plot was simple enough. Benny’s parents are divorcing, so he has to leave San Diego and head to rural northern Arizona to live with his Nahajo grandmother, who doesn’t speak English. There, he meets up with his cousin Dawn, otherwise known as Frybread Face. Their relationship is the apparent sweet spot of this lovely, gentle film, but the most potent scenes were between the beautiful grandmother and Benny, played by young new actor Keir Tallman. Cultural awakening may have been the thesis, but family is family anywhere. For all those who wonder if film festivals deserve the hoopla, this is the film that festivals are made for.

Arthur & Diana

Siblings Arthur & Diana are on a road trip from Berlin to Paris with Diana’s two-year-old son, Lupo. Bickering ensues, and various hijinks, including a run-in with the police, a beach party, and a detour through Italy. The action seems random, and plot points appear without much explanation. It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but there is a purposeful pulse to director Sara Summa’s Euro circus, down to the film’s colour grading. Shot on three cameras (Mini DV, Betacam and 16 mm), the result is a lovely nostalgic vibe. All of this was boosted by a wonderful score by Summa’s real-life partner, Ben Roessler. I fell for it all. This was Summa’s film school graduate project. And here’s the kicker. In the best use of auto-fiction I’ve seen in ages, Summa and her real-life brother play Arthur and Diana, a version of themselves. The toddler in the film is Summa’s real-life child who steals every scene. The cuteness should be annoying, but it never was. These people managed to be equally charming in the Q&A following the premiere, where Summa calmly answered questions about film technique as her now three-year-old son goofed around on stage. At one point, a baby cried off in the distance. ” sorry, that’s my three-month-old,” shrugged Summa without missing a beat. TIFF has worked hard to spotlight female directors; I see more of them yearly at this Festival. This was a leap in every direction. I am woman; hear me roar.

Dream Scenario

This was the wildest ride at TIFF this year (and no, I don’t do Midnight Madness where wild reigns… although Peter did for a long while). Nicolas Cage is a bland, tenured professor who suddenly discovers he appears in other people’s dreams… lots of people and lots of dreams. I won’t give much away as that is all you need to know other than what begins as a laugh-a-minute setup soon slides into absurd horror and a brilliant and handy guide to the hell of celebrity. Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli, a clear favourite among the hipster crowd, wrote and edited this clever film and told our audience he loved introducing the picture to us as the film was shot in Toronto.

I don’t know how many of you are accustomed to film festivals and how we see movies at festivals but let me just walk you through it. You are going to sit and watch the movie and you can react the way you want to react…everything is okay…Once the movie is over, we are going to see the credits and sit through them to pay respects as a lot of people here in Toronto worked on it…and then, after the the credits, you’ll do a standing O…that’s industry standard. I’d recommend ten minutes but each to their own. Then we’ll do a little Q & A.

Our audience roared and gave him what he wanted. Look for the film to be released by A24 in theatres on November 10th.

Good but flawed: the B List. See them on your couch.

Knox Goes Away

It’s fun and well-made… it’s always good to see Michael Keaton…but forgettable. 

Last Summer

A middle-aged lawyer has an affair with her teenage stepson. It so wants to be provocative. I just found it icky. And the sex was lame and non-believable.

Royal Hotel

Julia Garner is immensely watchable, yet the message is overkill. I just kept asking why these intelligent, capable women were so dumb. The men are all dicks. Which was evident from the get-go.

The Boy and The Heron 

Stunning animation, breathtaking, really. Too bad about the convoluted plotline. 


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Weddings and anniversaries. Italy was ready to welcome us for both.

By October 7, 2022 Life, Travel

Every September, Peter and I return to school and travel from our seats as we immerse ourselves in cinematic stories from around the globe. At TIFF, we attempt to make sense of our chaotic world. Does it work? My brain is always jumping during the festival, that I know. This year, we attended the first half of TIFF (read here for my picks), then flew to Europe for a special family event and our own anniversary. Celebrating thirty years together in Italy seemed impossible in the heart of lockdowns. Yet here we were!

Jet lag is a bitch; swiftly tamed by the jolt of new vistas unfolding before you. Montepulciano. Monticchiello. Pienza. San Gimignano. Florence. Lucca. Greve in Chianti. Siena. Montalcino. Rome. Magnificence was our banquet, but our surest delight came from sharing the limpid light of Tuscany with my eldest daughter, Kate and her partner, Nico, who live and work in Paris. Like us, they began their visit to Italy for a magical family wedding in a dreamy setting, the wedding of my niece Caileigh Langford to her Aussie partner Sam Lavery. The pandemic moved these nuptials through one calendar year than another. That we could be there for their triumphant moment was fortune smiling upon us. Renaissance artists must have painted the sky surrounding us at their beautiful outdoor wedding dinner.

Young love, indeed, is a contagion.

Medieval towns and marble ruins. Prosciutto paninis. Sumptuous sunsets and ancient church bells. An ode to Puccini’s Women sung in the great composer’s hometown. Living history. Rural landscapes with rows and rows and rows of wineries and olive trees older than time itself. Grand allées of tall pencil cypress trees and curving hills seduced us at every turn.

What of the food, you ask? Of course, nothing is surprising in discovering the wealth of wine and pasta in these parts, but dammit, it sure goes down easy.

September is an excellent time to travel, we hear. You won’t have the heat. We will have millions of tourists, all of us avoiding (by the narrowest margins) the madcap circus of scooters, Vespas, and cab drivers. Crowds usually don’t deter me: oohing and aahing at the fireworks on the Toronto beach, inside a sports arena, cheering until my voice is hoarse. At a concert in August, I was belting it out with all the rest of the Alicia Keys fans at her Toronto concert. Watching movies in a crowded movie theatre is always a kick. I feel at ease in large gatherings. In Florence, we navigated narrow sidewalks on narrower streets choked with visitors and elbows and air space as I tried to get close to paintings I had waited my whole life to see up close. In Rome, inside the Vatican museums, we ceased being individuals but instead one human stream shuffling along the vast corridors of opulence. In these moments, there was something entirely claustrophobic in how I interacted with all of this rich culture, even though most of the time, my thrill of being there trumped everything else. Travelling anywhere is precious post the wretched pandemic. Italy’s income from tourism is expected to reach €17 billion from the 2022 summer tourist season alone.

What moved me?

For many of our days, we put ourselves in the hands of a series of brilliant Italian tour guides: artists and scholars, a savvy young anthropologist here: a witty writer there, one who managed to take us through the vast Colosseum of Rome and keep our group, including a young boy, enthralled for several hours from start to finish.

The gladiators? Think of Broadway with blood.

Art, art, and more art. Absorbing masterpieces, one after another. The sculptures by the brilliant Bernini in the Borghese Gallery were my last and most cherished outing.

Career wait staff beamed as they poured our medicine wine and unveiled deliciousness in every region we travelled.

The immense pride of cab drivers, pointing out landmarks and dishing politics with my other half. Italians don’t vote with their minds; they vote with their wallets, lamented one. (We were there for a sobering election result).

At an intimate wine resort, we met three other couples celebrating their thirtieth year of marriage; all hailed from Toronto. Can you hear the glass clinking as we toasted one another?

Are you Canadian? Lucky you, says one American couple we met outside a café in Rome.

On another afternoon in Chianti, we shared a long banquet table with strangers who ceased to be such within minutes: six were brothers who lived in different cities but managed to make a trip once a year together: instant party.

The ceiling in our hotel room in Florence.

First order of business upon arriving home: Paint a fresco on all our ceilings. I need to channel some Michelangelo and stare up at something celestial. Secondly, spruce up my vocabulary now that we are again in the land of skyscrapers. Most of my language while visiting Italy was reduced to “Wow! Wow!” and” Wow!” To visit Italy is to be awed and amazed. Wrapping ourselves in this magnificent culture (and copious amounts of wine) was an easy chapter in our long marriage.

If this is thirty years, we’ll take another, thanks.

For more travel and favourite spots:

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TIFF 2022

By September 30, 2022 Film, Urban gadfly

We bought in for the 2020 couch version. Put on our masks for a hybrid Festival 2021. When it came time for an entire, in-person TIFF festival, Peter and I sat down again with our coloured sticky notes and schedules as we have done for years. We filled them in with one anticipated title after another. Giddy and gleeful on opening night, we put on our glam (the geezer version) to join the crowds on Festival Street.

A family wedding mid-festival meant we had half the time to screen films. Here are my highlights:

Festival Favourites

Empire of Light

TIFF programme notes described it as “a love letter to the people who come together under the glow of the cinema.”

Consider us sold for these two film nerds, perhaps our easiest pick this year.

We live in cynical times and this is a deeply UNcynical movie.

Sam Mendes, at TIFF premiere, re his film Empire of Light

As Hilary, the always sensational Olivia Colman brings myriad shades to her portrayal of a front-of-the-house movie employee who finds a kindred spirit in a new, much younger staff member, Stephen (Michael Ward). Their relationship within the beautiful Empire cinema house is the film’s core. Ward is simply spectacular; their chemistry is profound. The film is set in 1981 in a seaside town in the U.K. and is deeply personal for the 57-year-old Mendes, whose mother’s struggles with mental health inspired the story. Mendes, making his screenwriting debut here, told audiences at the Canadian premiere he wrote the screenplay in 2021, during the pandemic, specifically for Colman. She is among the talents in front and behind the camera: the film looks and sounds stunning. Look for it in theatres in early December.

Exiting the film, Peter and I found ourselves serendipitously with the rest of the cast in the backstage exit tunnel en route to the stage door. There, idling limousines and fans wait on the street after all the screenings. Shaking hands to congratulate director Sam Mendes (knighted in 2020) as he stood before me was one possible move. If I had seen Roger Deakins, I would have hugged him for his exquisite cinematography. As I came around the corner, about to step out into the daylight, there, inches from my face, was the prodigiously talented Michael Ward. In what proved to be my 2022 TIFF moment, I could not help being anything but honest.

Your performance was spectacular. I want to see everything you do next.

Ward grasped both my hands.

Thank you. That means so much to me.

Autographs and selfies are for the crush outside. To meet the artist who moved you to tears following their performance is the stuff of life. Peter and I once hung out for an hour on the sidewalk outside a Broadway theatre to meet the stars of Kiss Me Kate. They eventually emerged. We shared how we once played their roles in another lifetime. Magic was ours that frozen February night.

The Menu

The most fun we had at TIFF was for the world premiere of The Menu, and not because star Ralph Fiennes happened to sit across the aisle (we love your work, we whispered to him). Nor was it the food trucks waiting outside with themed food treats from the production company. Here, finally, was ripe satire, pitched perfectly to horrific ends. The story of a young couple visiting a famous restaurant on a remote private island is aimed squarely at pretentious foodies. As the lavish tasting menu from celebrated chef Slowick (Fiennes) unfolds, so did the twists and turns of a plot meant to shock and humour audiences. There are no spoilers here except this: I will never enjoy a campfire S’mores treat again without referencing this film. The story comes from the genius mind of Mark Mylod, one of the producers of another wickedly black show, Succession, but the film belongs to Ralph Fiennes from start to finish. Give this guy an Oscar already! The Menu heads to theatres in late November.

The Banshees of Inisherin

More fun to be had in this fable from Oscar winner Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin is a master class of two of the screen’s finest, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, as two former best friends. The dark and often hilarious story surrounds a falling out between two friends as the 1922 Irish Civil War rages across the bay. As the guileless Pádriac, Farrell is instantly all of us confronted with heartbreak. As the friend who wants out, Gleeson explores ideas of legacy and his relationship to music that will speak to artists in every discipline. I will admit to a general bias for all things Irish and any project with Colin Farrell attached, so embracing every bit of this black comedy is hardly surprising. Witty and grim: signature cocktail ingredients for the dramatist McDonagh. The film also prompted a memory jolt to our fabulous family trip to the Aran islands; the film was shot on the largest of those beautiful islands, Inishmore. Special mention goes to Kerry Condon as Pádriac’s clever and loyal sister, Siobhan. I was cheering for her the most. Condon is one of Variety’s ten actors to watch in 2022. Look for the film in theatres in late October.

BROS

If The Menu was the most delicious fun I had at a TIFF screening this year, Bros was the rowdiest. Our audience laughed hard at comedian Billy Eichner’s gay rom-com. Eichner stars and co-wrote the screenplay with hit filmmaker Nicholas Stoller. We laughed, too. It’s just sexy and funny enough to hold up to an overkill marketing message: “the first queer rom-com from a major studio.” If you love rom-coms, you’ll have a riot here. Investing in the two leads is easy, even if the sappy, overly mainstream soundtrack was a turn-off and lost opportunity; this film won’t change your mind if you are NOT a fan of the genre, and it remains to be seen whether Bros will have success bringing back audiences to theatres. (The film is now streaming.) Festival premieres ending in long ovations and cheers are rarely barometers of a film’s success. “Papered” audiences are to blame: sponsors, family, friends, members of the film crew — Judd Apatow was the production company behind the film— and other biased constituencies will flavour a festival reception more often than not. They sure make for one helluva good party, though.

R.M.N.

Fans surrounded acclaimed filmmaker Christian Mungiu after screening his latest film set in the foothills of Transylvania. All wanted to know more from this brilliant artist who generously answered one question after another about his craft. If Peter were giving out awards, he would start here. His interest in the Romanian New Wave put a star on our TIFF schedule. This is the most layered film I have seen this year and the most urgent, exploring an event exposing prejudice and xenophobia in Romanian society. In the movie, a community comes apart after the local bakery hires Sri Lankan migrant workers. The ensuing racist indignation stokes prior fissures, threatening to explode in the most memorable TIFF 2022 scene for me: a town hall meeting shot in one engrossing seventeen-minute take. The film premiered at Cannes earlier this year, where Mungiu is revered.

The Hotel

Chinese master Wang Xiaoshuai got my attention with his 2019 film So Long, My Son. Here, the auteur has done it again. Stuck in a Thai hotel during the early days of the pandemic lockdown, the director and a group of fellow artists decided to make a movie in and around their milieu. Sure, okay, and what did YOU do during a lockdown? In 14 days, the crew shot a story about a young Beijing woman who meets an older man in the hotel’s swimming pool. Artful and moody, Xiaoshuai’s masterful black-and-white take on isolation and entrapment may serve as a sobering marker of the global pandemic and the best case of artistic invention yet.

The Woman King

I love a good epic tale and Viola Davis. She leads the best cast of all my TIFF screenings this year as leader of the Agojie, an all-female military regiment protecting the African kingdom of Dahomey. Based on actual events, the film roused the sleepiest TIFFgoer (and a Twitter war). Hell, I wanted to stand and cheer. Davis is just so damn ferocious. Fans of violent battle scenes will be content, as will those craving intimate character studies: the film navigates both with beautiful, majestic results. Among director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s inspirations were Braveheart and Gladiator. I loved watching the powerhouse co-stars Lashana Lynch and Thuso Mbedu (also one of 2022 Variety’s Actors to Watch). The film is now in theatres.

Living

Director Oliver Hermanus had a powerhouse helper making this adaptation of Kurosawa’s 1952 Japanese classic, Ikiru. His screenplay comes from 2017 Nobel prize-winning writer Sir Kazuo Ishiguro and stars the mighty talent Bill Nighy as a bureaucrat facing his imminent mortality. This film is simply a thing of beauty. I want to see it again immediately to inhale the lush soundtrack, the elegant colours and lines in every shot, and the understated brilliance of Nighy’s performance. Nighy abandons his usual comic energy here for an entirely new texture.

I must have been very very good in a previous life. One of the most eminent writers in the world suggests that you might be good for a film and then agrees to write it with you in mind?! Then to meet Oliver who turned in something absolutely exquisite and powerful…

Bill Nighy, star of Living, at the TIFF screening

Imperfect yet festival-worthy

Causeway

Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence turned down a splashier big-budget David O’Russell film to star in theatre director Lila Neugebauer’s feature film debut. Lawrence delivers a moving and restrained performance as a military engineer on leave from Afghanistan after suffering a brain injury. Cast as a mechanic who befriends her, co-star Brian Tyree Henry brings much-needed energy to every frame. Unfortunately, the film is a little too subdued in parts; however, it is purposeful. This film is the first out of the gate of Lawrence’s production company, and I look forward to seeing what she produces next. Look for it in theatres and on Apple T.V. in November.

Glass Onion: a Knives Out Mystery

Bloated and missing the late Christopher Plummer—easily the best thing about the first instalment of Knives Out. Here, the plot surrounds tech billionaire (Ed Norton) offering an intriguing invitation to his spectacular private island. Director Rian Johnson again pleaded with the TIFF audience at the premiere to avoid spoilers before the film opens in theatres this November. Forget spoilers. The only thing I recall is the pure candy of cast and location. I’m a sucker for the Greek islands; I got hitched there eons ago. Glass Onion‘s production crew filmed in Spetses during the summer of 2021, where the cast, all present on stage for our screening, partied hard throughout the shoot. It’s hard to feel much on-screen for either the characters or the mystery involved. Wait to see it on Netflix, who forked over millions for two more sequels after the boffo box office of the original. Johnson plans to make a string of these stand-alone mysteries.

I’ll keep making these as long as Daniel Craig can stand me.

Director Rian Johnson

The Whale

Director Darren Aronofsky is again the provocateur in this adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s play about a highly obese creative writing teacher. However, none of the film’s controversy will hurt its release later this fall. While the film is overly theatrical-—its origins transparent in every frame (Doorframes to be exact. Every actor seemed to halt there, which quickly became annoying)—Brendan Fraser, buried in a fat suit, manages a raw and shocking performance of a suicidal father. Look for his name on the Oscar ballot. The film will be in theatres in early December.

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TIFF 2021: We’re back…I think.

By September 23, 2021 Film, Headlines

This year, TIFF was offering a choice.

A hybrid festival meant we could choose to be INSIDE A THEATRE!

Or
Stay home (as in the 2020 version) for a digital package of screenings, some offered across Canada.

Throw in a few drive-ins; all looked hopeful. Dare we get excited? Drive-ins worked for TIFF last year, after all.

Do we even remember being excited?

Peter and I primarily chose to see the festival back in theatres. DUH! My couch at home and I are now estranged. We tried to work it out during the first 18 months of the pandemic but agreed to part amicably. TIFF brought us back together briefly. Couch closure eludes me.

So back to the theatres it was! Around here at Wit’s End, we are doubly vaccinated. Those who were not were barred entry to all screenings. Festival staff indicated several safety measures, including distanced seating inside theatres and washrooms. No food would be sold as mask removal to eat or drink during a screen would not be permitted.

Emotions threatened to erupt in the first screening (our first time going back inside a theatre!), but I resisted tears. See pandemic mood. Been there, done that.

The Friendly Greek and I grasped hands and squeezed tightly. TIFF has been our school since time immemorial. September new pencils. A new season. It’s all here in this space. Movies are for big screens and extensive sound systems.

Two vacancies between each seat meant I could stretch my achy knee and plunk a handbag on a chair instead of stuffing it under a seat. Ticketed seat numbers told us we didn’t have to hurry between films to find a good heart. Vaccine checks were without incident; nobody gave me cause for Covid anxiety as masks were routine. Indeed, few places are so carefully monitored.

Programmers again delivered. Again, I travelled around the globe from my seat, seeing unknown films. Again, I discovered new storytellers, many of them women. TIFF has worked hard to support female filmmakers in the past several years, and here is the evidence. Again, I heard from diverse directors sharing their creative journeys with audiences. TIFF also works hard to involve audiences; I was again happy to participate in post-screening Q and A’s. Maybe I could forget the pandemic…

Bliss was not mine all the time. I missed my peeps: the lineup chatter with film fans from all over the world. I missed turning to strangers-who-are-really-fellow film nerds and asking, “Seen anything good yet? For years, these encounters have lent me insight and offered instant community. Instead, we were a sea of masks. Indeed, TIFF 2021 in person was (mostly) muted; polite tea-time clapping instead of cheers and long-standing ovations. More than once, I wanted to scream at my fellow in-person risk-takers: YOU DO REALIZE WE ARE LUCKY AS HELL, RIGHT? TO HAVE CULTURE AT OUR DOORSTEP AGAIN? Directors repeatedly gush about the warmth of Toronto audiences; we are considered one of the friendliest markets in the world. Not this year. These 2021 filmgoers were mostly subdued, although being in a theatre full of people still registered. There was still laughter and still gasps, just less volume.

Has the pandemic masked our elation?

Also missing was the welcome chaos from all the international industry creatives filling our Toronto bars, hotels, restaurants and the downtown core. Even buyers stayed home. Walking the streets between theatres has never been duller, however thrilled we were to be out of the house. My head hurt trying to think of all the lost jobs filled to accommodate the thousands who usually travel here for this annual event.

TIFF: A FIELD GUIDE

WHY TIFF?

The movies would then have to stand for themselves this year.

We did see a few of the TIFF films at home. With total respect to the hardworking TIFF staff, most of it, this virtual part, was snooze-worthy. We can and have been watching films at home all year round. Streaming has never been easier or more accessible. Making the festival experience at home anything like a festival is a fool’s errand, even with unique TIFF socks…and yes, of course, I own a pair. I can bring hoopla without too much effort to our domestic den, but bringing that festival vibe? Even my party magic has limits.

Is it worth trying? That’s an answer for the industry number crunchers. Cannes, Venice, Telluride: all these festivals went for in-person only, preserving the integrity of a film festival. Should TIFF do this? This writer knows only this: Immersive communal experiences sit precariously on the edge of doom. We need to fight to keep them.

My list of favourites follows, but first, a word on families:

Filmmakers return to themes; many of them involve families. Families with secrets. Families with dysfunction. This year, I saw many heartwrenching family stories. Most of them rang authentic, escaping the storyteller’s enemy: cliché. Not Belfast, this year’s People’s Choice award winner. In recalling his youth, Director Kenneth Branagh dumped a magnum of syrup over a profoundly dark chapter in Northern Ireland. From the beginning of this black-and-white fairy tale, Belfast was all gauzy sentiment. I groaned through parts of a script full of Irish blarney, even as I knew it would win the hearts of many filmgoers, weary of bleak headlines. I share that fatigue but need truth more. It wasn’t here, not in a story about a terrifying chapter for real Irish families. Belfast is Roma-lite. Still, I’m not immune to charm, even if Writ Large. Memory projects are often infused with this heady nostalgic glaze. Any film with Judi Dench is worth seeing. She joins a heavyweight cast, including a dimpled boy right out of Hollywood Casting 101.

My Faves:

The Power of the Dog

A fabulous slow burn of solid performances and stunning direction, The Power of the Dog is a revisionist western set on a Montana cattle ranch featuring 2021’s most menacing macho dude: Benedict Cumberbatch. To give away any of the taut storylines is a spoiler. Do not bother to guess what’s coming. The film unwinds one brilliant frame after another as Jane Campion’s craft deftly demonstrates what Branagh’s doesn’t: subtlety. The 67-year-old New Zealand director (the first woman to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes back in 1993 for The Piano) remains at the top of my list as to how best to use the film medium: the colours, the pace, the edits, the use of sound and silence—all here in perfect cohesion. Like many TIFF gems, this one belongs on the big screen.

A Hero

From another master dramatist, Asghar Farhadi comes a film set in Shiraz, Iran, about a prisoner out on a two-day pass who comes across a bag of gold coins he hopes to use to pay off the debt that landed him behind bars. The first scenes cue us: our protagonist climbs a seemingly unending long series of stairs alongside scaffolding. What follows is a compelling moral dilemma. Farhadi’s spectacular grasp of the family and community had me in awe. This artist’s work has tremendous grace, universal connection, and humanity, which has been honoured with the industry’s highest awards over the years. I found much to love in this film. There are no real villains. It touches on honour: how one gains and loses in life’s many compromises. It manages to be urgent and complex, seemingly without effort. The family here is so well-sketched they made me cry.

Mothering Sunday

I badly wanted to interrupt French director Eva Husson to congratulate her as she ate breakfast across from me in a downtown hotel. Her film, Mothering Sunday, swept me away. I have thought of it often since seeing it early in the festival. For those who haven’t read the Graham Swift novel of the same name, Odessa Young plays a maid, Jane, who works for Colin Firth and Oliva Colman, or rather their characters, the quietly despairing Nivens, who lost their sons in the First World War. On Mothering Sunday, Jane has a secret rendevous on her day off with her lover, Paul, son of the Nivens’ neighbours. Mothering Sunday traditionally was a day for domestic servants to take the day off to visit their families. What happens on that day in this film sets the course for Jane’s future life as a writer. This story is about grief and its heavy toll over time, yet it also highlights triumph and resilience. The film skirts back and forth through different times of Jane’s life as the class system around her collapses, creating a new space of creativity out of servitude. I loved every moment, watching it all like a dream.

Dune

Going to the Cinesphere, as I’ve done for many years, was a kick. Ditto the chance to see a film in IMAX, a Canadian invention, and yes, I was happy to be a patriot on this occasion. Imagine the anticipation in the house from readers of the most famous science fiction book ever. If buzz was missing on the streets, it was pouring out of pores in the seats here. If I could bottle it, I’d be rich. Then hotshot Canadian director Denis Villeneuve popped out to introduce his film, pointing to the screen. “We dreamed together about making this movie,” he said, “we dreamed about THAT” (pointing to the big screen). “That is the future of cinema right there.” He followed that up with a fist bump and, “VIVE LE CINEMA!” Ok, now here we have it, folks—an actual festival moment. We all went nuts. You can feel it, can’t you?

Villeneuve for PM. Where’s the ballot?

(Read his Variety Op-ed here)

Dune is stuffed with thrills of massive scope, sound, and sandworms—giant ones. We saw Part 1, and the ending is a deliberate set-up for Part 2. Franchise films are usually a turn-off for me, yet there is always a grandeur to Villeneuve’s vision. Wild, weird, and visually commanding…here is movie magic. His cast? Not as sound. I was sure I caught out Timothée Chamalet the Thespian instead of the young royal Paul Atreides at times: death for any actor. We need them in character for every single moment. Pacing, too, is off here and there. I might have shaved off some minutes, but that this guy is an auteur worth applauding is certain. Do not see Dune on a tiny screen. You’ll miss the symphony entirely.

Yuni

Kudos to Indonesian director Kamila Andini for winning the TIFF Platform prize competition for her coming-of-age film, Yuni. Traditional expectations and freedom are explored here as our clever heroine evades multiple marriage proposals while trying to finish high school so she can go to college. I liked the film for avoiding Big Messaging, emphasizing intimacy and poetry to highlight the tragedy of robbed youth. In a year where actual headlines have provoked many fears about the fate of young girls and women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, this film resonates as a powerful portrait of a contemporary crisis. It never once felt dishonest. Lead actor Arawinda Kirana is wonderful.

Unclenching The Fists

Regular readers will know that what remains for me, post-TIFF, are stand-out scenes rather than whole films. This film has one of them: a trio of siblings clinging to one another on a dance floor. I cannot get it out of my head. Yet another prize winner (the Cannes film festival Un Certain Regard Award July 2021), yet another talented female filmmaker, Russian rising neorealism star Kira Kovalenko directs a heartbreaking story, again a teenage girl trying to escape her current situation. Ada is damaged, thanks to a horrific incident involving a school siege, hostages, and carnage of children. All of that happens before the film begins but haunts the characters throughout. The location, an industrial town in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, is central to the story as a bleak backdrop for this family in crisis. This is an intense film, but it’s on my list for going deep and raw: here is what oppression looks like. You can’t escape this one without caring deeply about all the characters.

I’m Your Man

Downton Abbey fans choked up when the creators killed off Dan Steven’s character way back when. Finally, they’ll get their fill (and then some) of the British actor, here playing a sexy cyborg created especially for a scientist charged with determining what rights these robots can and should have in society. The script comes from German director Maria Schrader, and it finally offered a film in our schedule with wit, romance, and surprise, including hearing Stevens speak German-who knew. Don’t believe me? Just watch the beginning of this trailer.

Spencer

Monarchists will want to skip this outing. Ditto curious Hello magazine readers looking for a juicy royal biopic. It’s not here. Instead, Chilean director Pablo Larraín chose to open his film with a message on screen: A fable about a real-life tragedy. A reimagining then, not factual but a fable…and we’re off, watching Kristen Stewart pull off the performance of her career. The film follows Diana over three days of the Christmas holidays at Sandringham as she teeters close to a breakdown. No one watching this will escape without feeling claustrophobic, and that’s purposeful. I mentioned stand-out scenes I won’t forget earlier, and one in this film made me weep. Diana drives with her boys in a car, singing, “All I need is a miracle.” It comes at you all at once, which is the filmmaker’s great skill. Larraín’s direction is as precise as a palace place setting.

Night Raiders

It’s always exciting to witness the debut of a significant talent at TIFF. From Cree-Metis director Danis Goulet in her first feature film, a tense thriller set in a postwar future that follows a Cree mother who joins a resistance movement to save her daughter—children in the year 2043 are now the property of the State. I was on the edge of my seat through this. There are connective plot points to real-life horrors on Canadian soil, as many of us learned this year especially. I also loved the serious star turns from the two leads: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as Niska, the mom, and Brooklyn Letexier-Hart as her daughter. The film was shot in the Toronto area two years ago with a delayed release due to the pandemic.

Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11

He may have done so before, but it was the first time I’ve heard TIFF head Cameron Bailey warn audiences that what they were about to see may be triggering for some. We were at the Canadian premiere of a riveting emotional documentary on the morning of September 11th. Directed by David Belton and Bjorn Johnson, Memory Box features self-recorded eyewitness testimonies, all recorded mere months after the attacks on September 11th, 2001, in a small booth made out of plywood by artist Ruth Sergel. Twenty years later, the same witnesses gathered again in the same cubicle to share insights and reveal what it means to have survived. I had thought I had heard all the stories, but how could that be? These “testimonials” were profound and sobering enough that we skipped the next film on our schedule.

Sometimes a film is just that impactful.

Flawed but worthy:

The Forgiven

Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain star as a bored wealthy couple heading to a lavish party in the middle of the desert in Morocco. En route, their car accidentally hits a local Morrocan teenager. What ensues splits off into two storylines that don’t connect tonally, but these two actors are both terrific to watch here, as are all the party guests, who are the kind you love to hate.

Are you Lonesome Tonight?

Another hit-and-run narrative, this time from Chinese director Wen Shipeo, here making his feature film debut. A repairman lives up against tragedy in this sultry thriller starring Taiwanese heartthrob Eddie Peng. He is tormented when he meets the man’s widow and considers telling her. I spent most of this film incredulous that this sophisticated, polished film was a debut.

All My Puny Sorrows

Beloved books adapted to films are often tricky as fans want faithful adherence, especially readers of Canadian author Miriam Toews. Her acclaimed 2014 bestseller deals with a family in severe crisis: the emotional core belongs to two sisters, damaged by their father’s suicide. I loved this book, as I do all of Toews’s work, and was hopeful Canadian director Michael McGowan’s adaptation would capture her brilliance. It does, and it doesn’t: the essence and heart of this story are certainly there, brought to life by a solid cast of Alison Pill, Sarah Gadon, Mare Winningham and Amybeth McNulty. Pill is powerful, and her performance was one of the highlights of TIFF 2021. She brought the magic of Miriam Toews’s funny-sad words back to me. (Gadon, however, was miscast to me, as fine an actor as she is). If the current zeitgeist is all about mental health, All My Puny Sorrows prefaced it years ago with the real thing: the book is fictional, but many elements come from Toews’s life. If you are not a reader, this film is a must. If you love to read, skip the movie and read the book instead. I’ll lend you my copy.

Dear Evan Hansen

The Tony Award-winning musical phenomenon is now adapted for the screen. One of the first productions to shoot during the pandemic, this adaptation suffers from overt staginess. There is also zero nuance. And, well, there’s the star, Ben Platt: is he too old now to play a teen? Who cares?! This guy can sing! At the premiere here in Toronto, a pair of young fans a few feet away from me, sporting Dear Evan Hansen ballcaps, sang along with every word. It makes my list because of that music. I was singing along too. You are not alone is a simple and compelling message to take away. We all need to hear it.

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To be or not to be cool

By May 12, 2021 Life

Note: I have kept journals off and on since tweendom but a daily habit was entrenched January 1st, 2020, as I began to address the loss of my dad and father-in-law who died within months of each other in the latter half of 2019. 2020 was to be the year of possibility and joy. Little did I know a global pandemic would follow. Some of my entries are illegible, even to me, their author. Some I share here, in this space.

May 12

Wake-up was at 4 am…again. I tried every trick to get back to sleep but gave up shortly after 6 and did the PJ sludge to take the garbage out to the curb. For once, why not beat their trucks that rumble down the street at a schedule only the raccoons have figured out? Then, back inside to get my phone to snap a few photos of the tulips in the front yard, at their best, thanks to a cool spring. They are even better at dawn; a secret discovery sending a sliver of pleasure through me, almost as good as that first hit of coffee. Outside, mug in hand, I begin to shake off brain fog and remember what the plan is today. 


It’s Wednesday. The day I visit Mom. Hump day, we used to call it in the Before Time. 

My phone is filled with thousands of flower pics like this #suckerforcolour


The cardinals are still at it, and I stall work a few minutes longer to watch their mad dance across the yard.  On some days, the red flash of their flight is the only certainty.

Later, brain fog still permeating, en route down to see Mom, I stopped to grab another coffee only to discover the Starbucks now boarded up. I crossed the street to Tim Hortons; already annoyed after forgetting Mom’s cookies at home; muttering madly to myself about leaving my mask in the car, going back to retrieve it; annoyed again when a woman ahead of me in line told me to step back and pointed to the six feet reminder arrows on the floor—she appeared drunk— annoyed again when a dishevelled dude asked me to buy him an iced Cap after seeing mine in hand. I mustered a rushed “sorry” and headed back to the car, ready for the nose swab and waiting that follows as assessing my health every week is now the only way I get to see Mom.

The staff at Mom’s long-term care home doing the rapid testing are cheery despite the monotony of tasks. I remind myself again to borrow a little of their grace.


Arriving up on her floor, I spot Mom easily. Wearing a sundress and matching cardigan, Mom stands out among the other stone-faced residents, if only in my mind. 

Let’s pretend we’re going to a picnic in the park, Mom.  You look the part. Maybe if we’re lucky, there will be pink champagne. 

Wheeling her outside to the courtyard garden, I tucked my wrap around her —she often feels cold in the shade— a little sad I have to cover up her garden get-up. Once in the sun, we settled ourselves in front of a show of colourful blooms, and I remember the Timbits bag in my purse. We’re both giggling about how many to have when a staff member strides over to tell us we were not allowed to be here, in this garden.

This area here is not for long-term care residents but the retirement folks on the other side of the building.

In other words, the able-bodied, able-minded folks get the floral extravaganza. Mom and her peers in the memory loss ward are permitted only in a gated shade area. A clumsy metaphor surely but perhaps it makes sense to someone.

Good news, though. Beginning next week, you can take your Mom around the paths.

The sky was too blue for anything but peace, so I dipped into my bag, pulled out Mary Margaret’s Tree to read to Mom, a favourite among many in the collection of picture books still on shelves at home.  We’re bad at giving up books in this family.

Mom commented on the artful illustrations, her eyes widening when I told her that, once upon a time, we hired an artist to copy some of the drawings on Kate’s wall. The result was a large tree with flowering branches hugging her green childhood bedroom walls and ceiling. You are never too young for tree worship, right, Mom?

When we moved, we took the girls back to say goodbye to the empty house. Kate threw her arms against the wall and kissed the tree mural. I cried a private tear too.

We are bad at goodbyes in this family.

Last Christmas, Kate gave me a photo album of tree photography from all the places she has travelled to and some from right in front of her UK flat. Inside the pages are quotes about trees from favourite books.

Mom smiled as I tell her stories she once knew well.  However diminished, she remains gracious. She tucked a hair behind her ear as the breeze picked up. Her old backcombed hairdo would have held fast in a hurricane. I imagine her childhood in the thirties. In the black and white photos, Mom has the same haircut she sports now, a cute new bob cut. 

Does she recognize herself in the mirror?

You’re doing a good job, Mom told me as I wheeled her out of the garden when it was time for me to go.
Good at navigating the chair, not life, on that we agree. Up the elevator, back to her floor, and now she appears anxious.

Where am I to go? she asks. Where’s Daddy? 

I wheeled her into her place int he small dining room, thinking how much Dad loved the ritual of the dinner meal, even in his last months. 

She’s okay, Dad, I whisper to no one; we’re watching over her

I remind her I will be back soon and give her a squeeze. Touch still feels delicious but illegal, despite our mutual vaccines.


Never once have I left these visits to my mother without thinking I should spring her. Throw her now more diminutive form up on my back, run out to a waiting getaway car, head to a patch of grass, put up a tent, stay up all night, drinking ginger ale, and singing camp songs as loud as we could. We would not run out of stories ever.

The more we get together, together, together,

The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.

For your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends

The more we get together,

The happier we’ll be.

I hit traffic on the way home and turned onto Redpath.

Bumper to bumper, and I don’t even have the energy to turn on the radio. It’s been a long time since I was a news junkie and knew all the headlines. 

Next to me, going the opposite way, a cop with a beautiful smile leaned over from his open window as our cars stood idling side by side. 

You look super cool, he says grinning, as his car moves slowly past the open roof on my freedom wheels, the first-non Mommy car I’ve driven in almost three decades.

He had kind eyes, that I remember.

I am, and always have been, decidedly uncool.  Thanks to the face shield and mask worn earlier, my hair is a mess and even sitting behind the wheel, anyone can see I’m hardly convertible-skinny. There’s a giant Caregiver sticker slapped on my chest, and my sweater is sprinkled with big white daisies. It’s baby blue. The last time I checked, baby blue does not belong in the pantheon of cool.

Before I can smile back, the traffic has moved. My shoulders are already looser. Arriving home, I stay for a while inside the car on the driveway, wishing I could have spotted the cop’s badge number. People who throw fairy dust need thanks.

Just how long was I brooding in that traffic line-up? Was my sad face a beacon?

Cool, I could have been, if, inside the coffee shop earlier in my day, instead of rushing like a halfwit, I had indeed stopped to buy an extra iced Cap for that guy who asked— one too for all his buddies loitering outside on the pavement.

Out of the car, my brain now clear, I take a long slow walk out to the backyard, past the tulips even taller now, without their dawn lustre. Statuesque show-offs in sassy colours, fighting for essential status. Aren’t we all?

Peter was making drinks, so I guess it is Hump Day, after all, Pandemic Style. I flopped on the patio cushion, closed my eyes halfway to see if I could catch one of the blooms opening on the ancient crabapple tree overhead. It blooms every other year. It’s late this year. Usually, it goes all couture on Mother’s Day. Usually, it deserves a party. I’ll have one anyway by myself. It’s just that damn special.

Emily joined us outside for feedback on an old summer skirt. As usual, she has no idea how beautiful she is, no matter what she wears. Peter was busy decoding his Greek playlist again, translating the lyrics. Lucy jumped up beside me for a tummy rub. I wish you could have come today, I tell her.

 Mom and Lucy are old pals. In the days before we moved her into long-term care, Mom would pet Lucy like a champ at every visit and ask, 

“Who owns this beautiful dog?”

Let’s order in, I murmur. Friday is the takeout day around here, but the older I get, the more some rules are fun to abandon. That lesson I got from Mom. What came before cool? Whatever it was, she wasn’t fussed either.

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TIFF 2020: Adapt or Die

By September 24, 2020 Film, Headlines

The fact that film festivals are continuing to happen; improving, adapting making it all happen; is very moving to me because in the press and in the popular culture what’s happening and becoming sadly common to see is that cinema is becoming marginalized, devalued, and categorized as some kind of comfort food. To celebrate its very existence then is all the more important and necessary. We can never remind people enough that this remarkable art form has always been and always will be much more than a diversion. Cinema at its best is a source of wonder and inspiration.

Martin Scorcese, opening introduction of 2020 TIFF Tribute Awards.

I’m with Scorcese: props are due for the team who brought us TIFF 2020. We were thankful for a slick digital package, but let’s call it what it was: a sustained binge. Signing up for TIFF, the pandemic version, meant letting go of the rush, the buzzy street chatter and the pulse of a few thousand new creatives crowding the corners and cafes. Let go of new nerds to nosh with in-between jammed screenings. Let go of sunlight on the scurry from one theatre to another. Let go of the tiniest moment when the theatre darkens; the shuffling ends; we are under a spell together, a collective hush.
Is there anything collective left anymore?

When it’s over, we might be sniffling wet tears in agreement at a devastating plot turn, outraged at a trippy ending to an otherwise wild ride, or jumping to our feet: TIFF audiences are notorious for their warmth—if they like you, you’ll hear it. This is again not the case in Life.

Let go of the cast and creative crew, barely containing their excitement, right there on the stage before you, listening to them unpack their process. Sharing in their wonder at this provocation, this thing of beauty and their particular collaboration created. Let go of the break from the banality of ordinary —my couch, my damn couch, is it not sick of me yet?—and embrace this new brave attempt at saving a spectacular Toronto event.

Some of this, you, who have been here before, know.
(Read Why TIFF?)

Adapt, we must. Adapt, we will. And say yes to a date with global storytellers. I can do that.

Come along with me for my favourite picks.

Top Picks

Nomadland

A date with Chloé Zhao is a welcome one.

I personally cannot think of a more deeply empathetic filmmaker than Chloé. She challenges me as a viewer by not allowing me any distance from her characters. Her work is so searingly honest that I can never objectify the lives that I am observing.

Colin Farrell, actor, introducing Ms. Zhao at the 2020 TIFF TRIBUTE AWARDS

I loved The Rider, an earlier work the 38-year-old Chinese-born filmmaker wrote and directed. Her latest, Nomadland, stars the familiar and fierce Frances McDormand as a mid-sixties widow negotiating entirely new terms of existence after the recession swallows up her company town. As she takes to the road through the American West, her new life living in a van is a hymn to self-sufficiency and solitude, even as it amplifies friendship, family and the holes they can and cannot fill. There are many reasons to cheer about this gem. Cheer I did, inside our car at a drive-in down at Toronto’s lakeshore, where honking was the (obnoxious) replacement for applause. Cheer for an unadorned middle-aged woman carrying a movie without the usual tropes. This, dear readers, is a rarity in the cinematic landscape, as uncreased faces threaten to erase any genuine concept of age on and offscreen. That Fern, our protagonist, is played by a two-time Oscar winner could have sunk the film with thespian weight…except that McDormand is too clever, too good at what she does. Her performance is layered and consistently engaging. Cheer for visual poetry without any treacle: sentiment is tightly monitored. Cheer for a character with life behind her—for once; coming-of-age fireworks are for someone else. Instead, her growth feels authentic and quiet, yet no less heroic. Cheer for Zhao’s use of real nomads playing themselves with all the charm and whimsy only real life can provide: each of their narratives offers insight and further commentary about the failure of the American dream. Ignore all the noise about awards. Nomadland won the annual TIFF People’s Choice award and is on track for many other accolades. Somehow, it transcends all that buzz and lands at something more profound. A global pandemic means everything familiar is gone. New rules, new roads. This movie was made for now. In a rare move, the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, TIFF, the New York Film Festival and a special edition of the Telluride Fest, all on the same day. Cheer for solidarity in unprecedented times.

The Father

Before the pandemic, for a spell, I ran a support group in my basement for peers challenged with a system that failed to meet the needs of the elderly, our elderly. We were small but mighty; solace and support were our only currency. Witnessing our parents’ diminishments alone was often unbearable. Grasping the reality is genuinely experiential: you don’t know it until you’re there. Then along comes a movie like The Father. I watched in disbelief, tears streaming, grateful that someone so capable was capturing this essential question with such accuracy: What do we do with the people we love when they lose their minds?

French playwright Florian Zeller picked up the Moliere award in 2014 for his play, Le Père, which played around the globe to great acclaim (including here in Toronto at the Coal Mine Theatre). It is now a film with two cinematic giants: Sir Anthony Hopkins, as a father struggling with dementia and Olivia Colman as his daughter entrusted with his care. Zeller adapted it himself (with help from co-writer Christopher Hampton) by using the set as a character in the film. That set, and how the filmmaker and crew tweaked it purposely daily, confused his cast and provided the necessary disorientation for viewers to understand the terrors of dementia. That it plays like a thriller is intentional: Zeller is after the very confusion of a diseased mind. He wants you to feel like Anthony does as he tries to place himself in his space. Is this my flat? Is it my daughter’s flat? Is it a room in long-term care? They all look the same. Or do they? Who are these people? Is this my son-in-law? Is this my daughter?

Tone and pacing are, like the film’s two spectacular lead actors, in fine form. The film may be sad but never tedious. Watching two of the industry’s finest actors giving their best work is a feast; this film includes one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the festival. Yet Hopkins says it may have been the most fun he’s had on any set, even a tiny studio in northwest London.

Working with brilliant actors makes it easy. I don’t play tennis, I’m not a sporty person but I guess it’s like playing tennis when you’re working with Olivia. Really easy.

Sir Anthony Hopkins

Expert, hardly, but I have a front-row seat with my mother, who has struggled with dementia for too long. A kind social worker told me my siblings and I are experiencing “ambiguous loss.” The Father is a superb iteration. I saw myself up there, Mom, too. Good cinema works as a mirror. One in four of us in Canada will develop dementia in our senior years. We are aging, yet our films and culture deliberately lean into youth. Only within a festival would this film get heavyweight traction.

Quo Vadis, Aida?

Serbian actor Jasna Đuričić won my vote for the best actor of TIFF 2020. Equal applause to her director, Jasmila Žbanić, as this was quickly the most impactful film screened among many hard hitters this year. Hard to watch, necessary to watch: these are the films festivals should herald; distributors heed. Based on actual events is often a worrying preface note when I see it scrawled across the screen in the opening credits of fictional films. Finding a way into complex historical chapters through personal stories is always tricky, as subtle grace notes and fully drawn characters are often lost. As Aida, a UN translator, Đuričić is ferocious. She carries the film with urgency in every frame as her character tries to save her family amidst bureaucratic chaos during the 1995 Bosnian genocide. I believed in her, was there with her in all her glorious dimensions, flashing her credentials in fury at the horrors unfolding. Urgent and harrowing, the history lesson is served beautifully through this intimate study of a woman straddling two worlds in wartime. Like Nomadland, here again is a rare glimpse of an older woman whose smarts and strength unfold without cliché, without cringe-worthy false notes. See it with the young adults in your life who are told repeatedly that they need to be resilient. Without context, resilience becomes meaningless. Aida is a way in, as all great art can be.

Another Round

This was a film I wanted to hate: a bunch of middle-aged white guys decide to experiment with booze under the guise of academic research. Except here is mesmerizing Mads Mikkelsen and his pal, director Thomas Vinterberg, reunited after their excellent Oscar-nominated film The Hunt. Here too, a sizzling cast and energetic direction and, dammit, you can’t help loving all of it. Humour is so rare at TIFF, and when it travels in the lane of pathos, it is even better. The insane experiments, the idea that you recognize yourself in all of these loveable idiots that you know already where it will go, doesn’t matter a hoot. It is all wound up with a memorable scene, one of the festival’s rare, uplifting and fabulous best. This is a winner for reasons beyond my household, where we enjoyed a daily cocktail..or three in the early months of the pandemic. This is tricky ground to play on with few easy answers, but in the prerecorded festival Q&A, Danish director Thomas Vinterbeg was clear about where he found inspiration: his own country.

We Danish drink a lot. But still, we talk about health and about a reasonable well-behaved life so there’s a gap between our behaviour and our wishful thinking of our behaviour.

Thomas Vinterberg, director, Another Round

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Blink of an Eye Day

By June 19, 2020 Life

You did it. We held you for a while, and then you flew, my gorgeous baby. Some of it we glimpsed from afar, and some up close. It’s yours for the taking now.

It’s the end of an era for us, too, your fellow proud McGill fan club. We loved to come and share a little of your light over these past four years! Refracted glory. We’ll take it.

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Poetry (and pears) before April fades

By April 30, 2020 Life, Recipes

April is poetry month. At least, so it was in The Before when we set these months aside, chained as we were to calendars before the old folks could no longer recall what unmasked people looked like. Before tents sprouted —people without housing have always been among us. Now they are making beds along storied boulevards, as are the foxes and groundhogs, now claiming their rightful place; before parents everywhere went squirrely.

My kids are grown up now. Still, I’m with you, parents with kids underfoot, online learning schedules, and messy houses. Over here at Wit’s End, we were once the Messy House Headquarters, and there was no pandemic to blame it on. This is the time of year I used to yank my kids out of school for picnics. Mostly to witness magic here for only a whisper. I was strict about some things… like bedtime (I am a bitch without sleep, so I insisted on it for my own sake more than theirs)…sibling scraps…road trip games…and poetry.

I made them wear silly hats.

Boys and girls come out to play
The moon does shine as bright as day
Leave your supper and leave your sleep
And join your playfellows in the street

Come with a whoop, and come with a call
Come with goodwill or not at all
Up the ladder and down the wall
A halfpenny roll will serve us all
You’ll find milk, and I’ll find flour
And we’ll have a pudding in half an hour

Years ago, a school librarian pal asked me to workshop a poetry manuscript in her elementary classes: call it a pint-sized focus group, all you marketing mavens. Poetry and kids are, after all, natural partners. Adult cynicism and facades have yet to seize hold. Kids default to belief about mystical wonders.

I’m with the great Romantic poet Shelley:

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a young poet making his Auntie proud:


If poetry fails to grab hold, there’s always the kitchen. Make them in charge of half of this delicious Pity-the-Pandemic-because-we-still-have-dessert-and-other-tools-so there– PEAR CRISP.

Make them do the crumble (the fun part). Kids can also peel the pears.

Note: I know pears are an autumn fruit. Readers of my food memoir know I like to bake in season. There is no such thing right now. I am using all my frozen berries, pears, and apples, even if they taste lacklustre.

There are no rules anymore.

Yes, baking is math. Science too. As a student, I received gold stars in neither.

See? No rules.

Pear Crisps with dried sour cherries (adapted from renowned pastry chef Claudia Fleming)

What you need:

  • Eight ripe pears, peeled, cored, and sliced (5 cups)
  • 1 cup dried sour cherries
  • fruity red wine like Zinfandel (use water if you have none)
  • ½ cup granulated sugar, divided
  • 1¼ cups all-purpose flour
  • ⅓ cups toasted almonds*, coarsely ground
  • ¼ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • I stick (½ cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

What you do:

Early on the day you plan to serve the crisps, put the cherries in a small pot and add enough wine (or water) to cover them by 2 inches. Bring mixture to a simmer over medium heat, then turn off the heat and let it cool, leaving it at room temperature for at least 8 hours. Or, do this the night before, and keep them in the fridge overnight.

Drain the cherries and reserve the juice. Resist the urge to drink it (if you have used wine).

Combine the sliced pears and drained cherries in a large bowl. Add half of the granulated sugar (¼ cup) and toss. Then mix in ½ cup of the reserved juices. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes while you make the crisp topping.

Preheat the oven to 375F. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining ¼ cup of granulated sugar, the flour, toasted almonds, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Slowly drizzle in the melted butter and stir with a fork until the mixture is crumbly. Break up any large crumbs with your fingers. The crumbs should be smaller than 1 inch or won’t cook all the way through.

Spoon the fruit into a large baking dish (2 quarts) or individual ramekins. I used a dozen 4-ounce ramekins. If you have leftover juice left from the soaking liquid, pour a little over each mound of fruit. Evenly sprinkle the crumbs on top of the fruit. Bake the crisps until the filling is bubbling and the topping is browned—45 to 50 minutes.

Serve hot or at room temperature. Add ice cream if you feel generous, but this crisp stands without dressing up.

*Spread whole almonds in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place in cold oven; toast at 350 degrees, 12-15 minutes (9-11 minutes for slivered and chopped almonds), until lightly toasted.

More poetry:

From April 2013, Try to Praise a mutilated world

Or, also from 2013, a little dirt in leaping greenly

from April 2016, The Profane & the Sublime

Keep the faith. Make stuff. Embrace jammies.

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Be the bloom

By April 4, 2020 Headlines, Life, Performance

Ways to resist panic:

For those non-essential workers now isolating at home:

Yes, we binge. We eat*. We read.

We create, but only if the instinct to do so calls. Ignore the rush demands of others. Age has taught me one lesson: to absorb change truly, most of us need time. Few of us have that time or take it. Now maybe you do.

Read Ignoring the Rush to Productivity

Do all of the above. Do nothing.

Or…

Help. Don’t know how? Start with your circles. One of mine dropped some tulips off for me on my doorstep, which made my whole week. Here are a few places that need your help. Please consider them all:

Check out a virtual celebration of one of Ontario’s most vibrant community theatres tonight. Wavestage is celebrating 25 years, and those who love and support this talented troupe of performers will be toasting their success at a special gala. Okay, we were meant to throw our wild applause with roses at the stage and hug these performers in person at the stage entrance. I’ve witnessed years of spectacular magic from Wavestage, some of which you, readers, have heard about here and here.

Instead, we can tune in at 7 pm to watch over a dozen revival performances and give them giant virtual hugs.

Here is the live Youtube link

Artists are bleeding now in every sector across every artistic discipline. Instead of being overwhelmed, pick one a week to lend a hand. Take a cue from some of this country’s most celebrated performers pitching in to do their part. Along with the Canadian Opera Company, Shaw Festival, Soulpepper, Young People’s Theatre, Canadian Stage, and Luminato, the National Ballet of Canada shop is donating personal protective equipment such as gloves and masks. At the same time, their wardrobe staff is sewing caps and masks from home for our front-line healthcare workers in hospitals to help keep them safe.

#TorontoTogether

Frantic parents need support too. Luckily, a Mary Poppin clone called Art Studio (Not Just) for Children is ready to rescue with online art classes and other spontaneous creative fun for the whole family beginning Monday, April 6th.

Got kids who love playing detective? Consider signing up for a customized narrative experience with a week’s short daily phone calls from The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries, presented by Outside the March Theatre Company. Designed for the whole family (kids under 12 can pair up with a parent for no charge), 100% of the funds collected will go directly to employ actors from the community who have recently lost income due to the COVID crisis. For more info, read here.

If you cannot help others, help yourself. Spend some time dreaming of your favourite places. Maybe this madness will result in all of us being experts at cherishing. Here’s one of my cherished spots in Algonquin Park, Ontario. Where are your favourites?

No virus can rob us of dreaming. Last time I checked, dreams come free of charge.

*Some of us bake. If you want fun, join my Bakers in Dangerous Times group. If you wish for recipes, or info about my book, with love and sugar: recipes and rituals for the sweet life, get in touch.

You can contact me here.

We are all #InThisTogether.

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Lessons in readiness

By March 31, 2020 Headlines, Life

Something has shifted. The earth has struck back. Exacting breathlessness, it has asserted its demand to breathe. From animal to human the virus jumps, as if to demonstrate the indivisibility of life and death on a small planet. The technology perfected for the rich to globalize their advantages has also created the perfect mechanism for globalizing the panic that sends portfolios into a free fall. Do things differently at the other end of this scourge, some mystic voice murmurs, do them more equitably, more ecologically, with greater respect for the environment, or you will be smitten again. Next time the internet will collapse. The passage from real world to virtual world to no world will then be complete. It is not easy to resist such thoughts, and perhaps they should not be resisted, for that would be to learn nothing.

Roger Cohen, A Silent Spring (New York Times)

Day 19: What have I learned?

I can live in the now.

So, perhaps we have lost anticipation in this pandemic. Maybe we have lost the everyday juice we drink to map out wants and desires. I’m ready, aren’t I?

Before any lockdowns, visiting my mother in long-term care in the past few months had given me some facility in grasping the moment at hand. There is nothing else there on offer. There is no tomorrow with dementia. There is only now. Mom and I share a peanut butter cup. I scooped up at the volunteer-run tuck shop downstairs and watched an old black and white film together. We agree there are few better combos than peanut butter and chocolate. I stroke her hair—still fine, now bone-straight grey— tucked back in a borrowed hairband instead of her signature blonde backcomb. She responds well to this touch and beams a silent thank-you to me. In the end, she doesn’t speak much. Smiles. Listens. Responds with one or two-word answers. Hugging is its own language; indeed, my first language, my most fluent language, even as I have learned over time to converse with those in lukewarm settings who do not share my mother tongue.
When the attendants come to manoeuvre her walker to dinner, I help her to stand and then wrap my arms around her. It is all. It has to be enough.

If there are no longer anticipatory pangs, I can cope. With Mom, there are no days of the week either. There is just now. I’m used to this. I am ready.

Except now, I cannot hold her.

All human touch is now governed (by necessity) by pandemic rules. Like all of us, Mom and all her peers in long-term care can no longer have visitors. The exhausted workers there have unimaginable limits on their time but have worked out a schedule where they will assist residents to come to the window. All we have is a ten-minute window to wave at Mom. Is this part of ambiguous loss? We have lost so much already.

Yes, I can walk with a friend. Our voices carry across the mandatory divides. Yes, I can organize neighbourhood driveway hangouts. We smile and offer solace— and try to discern if any neighbour needs help with anything—and while it is all a strange and new kind of togetherness, we find our usual jocularity. Yes, I can accept a series of invitations to see faces in boxes on my screen for work, fitness, or family meetings. I started a new Facebook group: Bakers in a Dangerous Time, and other new creative collaborations with neighbours and friends because Let’s-Make Up-a-Story is my password, and it’s better than the one we’re living with now.

I am grumpy about technology hugs even as I adapt as humans have done since we stood up. Who says I want to become facile at Zoom? I am not ready.

Being inside my home for hours and hours doesn’t scare me.

Extroverts can’t work alone. Really? Reductive boxes are lazy. I’ve been working alone for years since I left the newsroom. It’s me, my coffee cup, and the draft on the page. This is what writers do, give or take the odd collaborative lifeline. Putting up with my angsty writing gaps is Lucy’s job.

Housekeeping does not daunt me, either. Once, I ran a household and grew some kids up and out. Now I am tucking bedsheet corners in with my guy who, in a previous life, was undoubtedly a royal housekeeper if sarongs were allowed as a uniform. Or a jester. We are rich in quips if nothing else, and cookbooks I refused to throw out in House Purges 1 through 11. His setting is always set to Hug. High up there, alongside his laundry pile of neatly folded clothes, is a deep sense of reward in the work we’ve put into this life now threatened by an invisible enemy. This is the payoff. We get to stick this out together, and he is learning (finally) what I do all day, just as I am listening to his frequent work calls now on our walks together. Somedays, we are short with one another and long on many others. We are sad, and then we laugh. We know how to do this. There is never a wrong time to keep learning.

A year ago, it was how to bake a croissant. Will we ever leave the house again? Check back when Spring shows up—the real Spring. Canadians know the difference.

We are ready.

Our kids are away from us, one in another city, and the other, in another continent. Our plans to be together are no longer possible in the near future, in the imminent future, in the…what is the future?

I miss my dad even though I know he would have suffered in this terrible chaos. I miss my lucid mom, who would have laughed along with me at the two red cardinals dancing around my yard. I miss my father-in-law, who never ran out of soap. Our days fold into one another, and some days are this: Husband and Wife sitting on the couch and saying: we miss our people—every day. Sadness is a new houseguest… and now this? Dreams now are wild and fanciful, and I have lost sense of weekdays and weekends…they have just slipped into a March puddle. Stars on my calendar to mark spectacular achievements have been removed. My watch broke. The little latch fell off, although it is still running. I looked at the thing and screamed: you motherfucker, that is a poor joke.

I’m not ready. We are not prepared.

The playgrounds and dog parks have yellow tape around them: every day, small deaths.

I’m not ready.

It’s easy to reject some mindsets: my stress is the only stress. I have it worse than you.

Instead, it’s an easy yes to any initiatives to form communities of compassion (my film nerd heart bleeds for artists); to applaud the heroic essential workers who are keeping us alive, fed, and in our cocoons of civility. I marvel at the daily communication briefs delivered by government officials with a calm I can barely muster in my relative safety. In a previous chapter in a television newsroom, I learned how fast news cycles work. This Big Germ now is supersonic speed, yet they are, doing their jobs with persistent professionalism. Don’t listen to the news, say well-meaning friends. Who needs it? I’ve given up on it. It’s all bad news. I don’t listen to it; I can find it all on Twitter, SNL, and Colbert alone. Really? Journalism, like healthcare, has never been more crucial. Learn which ones to trust and never stop following their reasoned threads, even if it’s in smaller, tolerable doses.

While working as a producer in that newsroom, I was a longtime member of the company’s pay equity committee, where we examined each sector of our operation and how responsibility and stress were measured. That experience has never left me and afforded me precious insight into systems I never see from the quiet of my writing perch. There, primarily invisible from all the clamour, I try to make sense of it all, occasionally pacing, always pondering.

Like you, Anxiety sits at our breakfast table. Will our daughters be okay? Will they get sick? Parenting adult children is another setting on the dial.

Can we pay our bills? The echo rings around the world.

All of us are floating in the unknown. Some of us will fall off the edge, and others will get a hand up. There are millions of stories, most of which are worse than yours. We are all someone.

I know this means I’m ready.

That I love makes me unready.

You, dear readers, are more critical than ever. I feel you somewhere out there. Drop me a line.

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