TIFF: Beautiful Boy and Easy A

Friday afternoon got my final TIFF weekend off to a fairly dark start with Beautiful Boy, starring Maria Bello and Michael Sheen as a couple on the verge of separation dealing with the aftermath of the actions of their son Sam who has gone on a murderous shooting spree at his college before taking his own life.


While dealing with their own loss, the media frenzy and the curiousity and derision of strangers the two try to come to grips with their own feelings of guilt and responsibility and figure out where to go from there. They first escape to the home of her brother and sister-in-law (Alan Tudyk and Moon Bloodgood) before wearing out their welcome and holing up at a low rent motel in a kind of stasis...unable to face what's outside their door. It's very well done, and incredibly well acted by both leads (I was mildly distracted trying to remember if I'd ever heard Sheen do an American accent) and was picked up for distribution at the festival so is likely to hit movie screens at some point in the coming months. I particularly liked the fact that the movie didn't seem to offer easy answers to the question 'why did this happen' and made both parents flawed but sympathetic characters.




Then it was straight back into line for my least 'festival' movie of the fest, Easy A, which premiered at TIFF last weekend before opening in wide release on the same day I saw it here. I should admit up front, as anyone who knows me knows, I have a huge soft spot for teen movies in general so I was quite predisposed to love this movie. And even though parts of it strained my suspension of disbelief - most notably that there's no way that Emma Stone can play a convincing wallflower and the idea that the news that a high school student had sex would feed the rumour mill at all - I really did.

The movie tries to do for The Scarlett Letter what Clueless did for Emma and stars Emma Stone, who shines as Olive Pendergast, a girl caught up in a spiral of lies beginning with the fictitious loss of virginity to an imaginary boy and ending with a reputation as the school trollop selling sexual favours. Though in reality she remains virginal and pining for the boy she's loved since middle school, she decides not to take the abuse lying down and defiantly sews 'A's on all of her new provocative wardrobe. I'm sure it's not a spoiler to tell you that in the end everyone gets what they deserve and Olive goes off into the sunset with the boy of her dreams and the movie has a good time getting there. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson seem to be having a great time playing Olive's wise, cool and pop culture savvy parents (almost too cool, their interactions were another believability strain) . Thomas Hayden Church and Lisa Kudrow show up as teacher and guidance counselor at the school who get pulled into the mess. And Amanda Bynes is funny (though a bit one-note) as the fervent christian leader of the school who shoots daggers at Olive with her eyes and leads the mob to destroy her reputation. If I were a betting woman, I would bet on the fact that I will rewatch this movie on my couch a time or two.