TIFF 2011: Damsels in Distress, Butter and Sleeping Beauty

I took another day off yesterday (why isn't the three day work week sustainable?) and saw three movies.
This morning's movie was Damsels in Distress, a return to directing after a thirteen year absence for Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona, Last Days of Disco).

The movie stars Greta Gerwig, Megalyn Echikunwoke and Carrie MacLemore as Violet, Rose and Heather respectively. The three schoolmates at a fictional east coast university take transfer student Lily (Analeigh Tipton) under their wing, introducing her to their attempts to revolutionize the student body through good hygiene, suicide prevention and dance numbers. The story is divided into chapters and they kind of seemed that way to me, almost presented like little vignettes instead of one plotline. The girls major issues of course come from the men in their lives, the exotic older man Xavier (Hugo Becker), the frat boys they are trying to 'improve' Frank and Thor (Ryan Metcalf and Billy Magnussen) and Charlie (Adam Brody) the lying charmer who threatens to come between them.

I think this one will end up solidly in the middle of the pack for me. It was entertaining, amusing, and very whimsical but didn't really grab my attention.

Stillman popped in after the film to do a Q&A, and I don't know if it was unplanned but the programmer hadn't announced that there would be one so a good chunk of the theater had filed out during the credits which is too bad. He discussed the development and casting process, working with a young cast and didn't really give a solid answer as to why he hadn't directed anything in 13 years and why this was the story he decided to start with.

After a lovely lunch with a friend including several glasses of prosecco it was back in line for the next round.


Butter is a story about the competitive world of butter carving. It's also a story about racism, infidelity, politics and prostitution. The movie was directed by Jim Field Smith (She's Out of My League) and stars a whole bunch of well known actors.

Jennifer Garner plays Laura Pickler, a conservative wife of 15 time butter carving champion Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell). When he is encouraged to hang up his tools to give an opportunity for someone else to win, Laura (with the intensity of a grown up Tracy Flick) decides she is not having it and enters the competition herself. Her chief competition is Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a young, black orphan recently taken in by yuppie couple the Emmets (Alicia Silverstone and Rob Corddry) who shows an unlikely talent in the butter carving arts. She's also up against a superfan of Bob's (Kristin Schaal) and a stripper/prostitute named Brooke (Olivia Wilde...in like her 5th movie of the year) who's out for revenge on Laura due to an unfortunate incident in a parking lot. Her backup includes a former boyfriend Boyd (Hugh Jackman) who will do pretty much anything to help Laura get what she wants.

It's possible the prosecco at lunch had me in a good mood to start off but I really liked the movie. It's very funny and the performances were good all around (particulary Wilde for me who stole every scene she was in). The film doesn't have a release date yet but was acquired by The Weinstein company and Harvey is already doing his best to drum up publicity for it, so I'd expect you'll see it in theatres fairly soon.

Last up for the day was Sleeping Beauty, the directorial debut of Julia Leigh which premiered at Cannes earlier this year and is being 'presented' by Jane Campion.

Emily Browning stars as Lucy, a student who seems to be working about 4 part time jobs, one of them as an amateur prostitute of sorts. She answers an ad and takes a job as a 'sleeping beauty', a prostitute who is drugged unconscious and left in a room with a man to be used as he wishes (short of actual penetration). We of course see what happens to her while she's unconscious but she starts to have a hard time not knowing and tries to figure out a way to see for herself. She's also got a job in some sort of medical trial, works as a waitress and has a relationship with a man she calls Birdman that isn't really explained. There are lots of fade outs from one scene to another and a rather abrupt ending.

Maybe it was the fact that the movie started more than half an hour late and it had been a rather long day but I didn't really get it. It was a bit too disturbing, arty and disjointed for my taste. The director attended and held a Q&A after the film and many of the questions and comments from the audience were very complimentary so it may be just me.