Still Walking (film review)

We are now in the midst of the 32nd annual Toronto International Film Festival. Believe it or not it's already Day 3. Before I speak about the film I enjoyed this evening I'm going to provide a bit of a logistical backdrop. Bear with me, I promise it'll be brief. Where should I begin? In the summer. That's it. Okay, because I wasn't quite together enough to order tickets in advance during the summer (what's new?) I'm going to make use of the main box offices this year. Well, to be more precise I should say I'm going to use the main box office located in the Manulife Centre. While tickets are a tad pricer if you buy them individually, the good news is that this whole purchasing process has become much easier. Now, instead of going to the venues themselves to strictly buy day of tickets, film goers can go to a main box office and buy tickets for any day of the festival (as long as the film isn't sold out). That's enough of my logistical chit chat.

In the late afternoon yesterday I sent out an email to see if anyone was interested in checking out a film this evening. Here's how my email read:

I'm trying to set up another film festival outing & here's how it could unfold. There are a number of very interesting films showing at the festival tomorrow. Because I have to put a shelving unit together for a closet I can't get out of the house until this task (which hopefully won't be more taxing than the sort labours Hercules had to complete) is done. So, I've examined the festival schedule and found some fillms showing at the Varsity in the evening. There's:

• Cold Lunch (a Norwegian film, not to be confused with the John Lennon song, Norwegian Wood);
• My Mother, My Bride, and I (a German film); &
• Still Walking (a Japanese film).Cold Lunch starts at 8:15, My Mother, My Bride, and I starts at 8:45, and Still Walking starts at 9:30.

Now, and here's the complicated part. I'm happy to see any of these three films. My 1st pick is Still Walking, but the time is pretty late. So, if you want to go to a film as a group, tell me, and I'll grab tickets for everyone, and then we could perhaps meet up for dinner before the show & possibly have a coffee (I'm pretty much only drinking Americanos these days) afterwards. I know this is short notice, but the film festival always creeps up on me. I'm going to try to organize another outing for next Friday or Saturday as well.

I ended up going to see Still Walking with C, C, & H (it was a 3-1 landslide). The film was languid. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, the story focused on a 24-hour period in the life of a family. Kore-eda wrote a moving story that explores the theme of loss with food, family traditions, and regret/disappointment in the backdrop. Following the film, Hirokazu fielded questions from the audience (and, in case you were wondering, he does in fact enjoy corn tempora). I was going to ask Kore-eda to speak a bit about the soundtrack and how it was put together, as I found that the music punctuated the plot and images quite well. Unfortunately though, before could actually formulate my question in a somewhat concise way the Q&A finished. Oh well.

Still Walking is a film I could watch numerous times, and so it qualifies for a DVD purchase. I'll probably get my hands on a copy of the soundtrack as well. To learn more about the film check out this link: http://tiff08.ca/filmsandschedules/films/stillwalking.