Within film festivals, documentaries are often given very little attention. Yet they’re very important not only for the industry, but also for directing the audience’s attention to real people and situations. So, while I won’t be writing full reviews of the documentaries seen at TIFF, I would like to briefly comment on them.
Patrice: The Movie (EUA, 2024)
Original title: Patrice: The Movie
Director: Ted Passon
Writer/Screenplay: Lee Getty, Kyla Harris and Patrice Jetter
Main cast: Patrice Jetter, Ollie Robinson, Camilo Velasquez Escamilla, Dustin Sardella and Brooke Olivia Ginsberg
Runtime: 102 minutes (1°42’)
At the beginning of the film screening, the director took the stage to say a few words, and he couldn't have been more right in his statement: it's impossible to watch a film with more heart than this one. It tells a story that is absolutely American, since the country has practically no free healthcare system. Patrice is a disabled woman who already has an extraordinary story because of the challenges she has overcome in her life. More than that, she and Gary are a disabled couple who want to get married, but who know that they will lose their government benefits if they do so and will not be able to have the health care exemptions they have when they live alone.
The film follows part of the couple's daily lives as they begin to organize to protest against the legislation that doesn’t allow their marriage, and at the same time organize a party to formalize their commitment to each other. In addition to the couple's enormous amount of love and companionship, we also meet their friends and relatives.
What sets it apart from most standard documentaries is the use of Patrice’s artistic abilities as a painter, to create a unique aesthetic that works well with her playful personality. For the scenes in which she narrates her past, this same aesthetic was adopted to deal with her traumas and complex situations, with the use of child actresses to dramatize the situations in a lighter way. The result is a complete and vivid portrait of this inspiring woman and a sweet message of celebrating love, in any form.
Mistress Dispeller (EUA, 2024)
Original title: Mistress Dispeller
Director: Elizabeth Lo
Writer/Screenplay: Charlotte Munch Bengsten and Elizabeth Lo
Runtime: 94 minutes (1°34’)
In a completely different context from the previous film, the documentary Mistress Dispeller will deal with a very specific Chinese profession: a woman hired by a wife to end her husband's extramarital affair without any major complications. It’s also a very specific cultural situation and the first shock comes with the production of the film, which actually has access to all the people involved and follows the unfolding of the almost soap opera-like plot. We have a wife, husband and lover talking to this woman, who fakes situations simply to make the lovers separate in a more subtle way and the husband returns to his normal life with his wife.
If the drama of the real situation is gigantic, Elizabeth Lo had the difficult task of visually mitigating it, which she does brilliantly. With frames that show the wife's loneliness inside her own home and small visual rhymes, such as when she talks about the aging process and we have the image of a majestic tree in the scene, she manages to maintain the poetry of the situation in a way that provokes more reflections. The first shot of the film, of a drone image showing several night scenes of everyday family life, is already very impactful, making one think about the diversity of possible existences on the planet.
And thus, we get a glimpse of a culture that is not often portrayed in Western cinema from a very intimate point of view. It’s a work that could only be made in this way and with these people, which makes its production itself worthy of a film.
Elton John: Never Too Late (EUA, 2024)
Original title: Elton John: Never Too Late
Directors: R.J. Cutler and David Furnish
Main cast: Elton John
Runtime: 102 minutos (1°42’)
As a big Elton John fan, and a big supporter of his biographical musical film Rocketman (2019), it would be hard not to watch the film, directed by none other than his husband, about his last tour. Since Brazil was unfortunately not part of the circuit of this world tour, I wanted to have a little bit of that experience on the big screen.
The film follows a very traditional documentary format, covering various moments in the singer's life and always drawing parallels between his past and the moments he experienced in various cities on his last tour. Having a director with such direct access to the singer and his routine makes a big difference in this sense, with images and thoughts captured on camera that perhaps would not be accessible otherwise.
Still, it is somewhat square in terms of its format, feeling more like a simplified series than a movie. Some moments that seem important to fans end up being left out (like the composition of the soundtrack for The Lion King), others are only glimpsed (like his conversation with young LGBTQIA+ artists) and leave the feeling that something is still missing to have a more complete and complex portrait of the artist. It would be difficult to cover all of his years of career and major events from the past, but the cut that is made ends up not being clear. So, as much as we love seeing a very accessible view of the star, the film doesn’t work well as just a film.
Perhaps, since it’s a Disney+ film, it will have new developments and end up being split into a series. But for those who are anxious for more, all that’s left is to speculate.
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