TIFF 2025 / Diary no. 1

On Maddie’s Secret, The Love That Remains, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and more.

According to the polls, many of you want diary-style coverage of my viewings at the Toronto Film Festival. Writing in diary-entry style did not come to me as easily as i’d imagined. I moved through my days with a quiet, insistent internal directive: keep it personal! Which apparently means noting every little moment and asking myself, What does this remind me of? So I wandered the city and mined the frame for nostalgia, turning passing impressions into anchors for memory, and for whatever sense of coherence I could claim.

TBD whether this format continues. If you like numbers, you can see my ratings on moiree where the cool critics are, and my letterboxd for up to date viewings, though you won’t see commentary there.

September 3

2:00PM After touching down in Toronto, I head directly to my friend Nick’s studio to play model for the day. He recently installed a plush maroon carpet wall and wanted to staged a John Singer Sargent–esque shoot. I worry that my face is still puffy from the flight and try to remind myself cherub cheeks were probably more alluring in the late 19th century anyway.

6:00 PM I haul my suitcase to my “four-star” hotel, which feels more like a college room or ship compartment. At least I don’t have roommates. But at least those rooms probably have a microwave. I remain mystified how this spare white box can be considered “four stars” without an on-site concierge or minibar, or one of those little branded notepads that I, and no one else, likes to scribble on.

But the shelf is stocked with nespresso and the shower with Davines. The shower gel is empty. When I ask for a refill (the “hotel” charges, and I refuse to pay) someone eventually delivers a different brand of body wash (Frama), cementing my suspicion that hotel ratings are mostly about the products they offer. (Update: I am somewhat correct; the U.S. doesn’t have an official hotel rating system.)

7:00PM Posing for the camera it turns out can be exhausting and I run to dinner at Chantecler, recommended by sofia, a native Torontonian. Service is warm and unflappable. Quail stuffed with its own meat—farce, I believe it’s called?—and chanterelles and pooled in summer corn. Patty pan squash, which I never quite know what to do with, are tossed with sourdough crumbs and a hint of broth, made ito something compelling for once. Obligatory side of fries, since they do it right here, served rightfully with mayo. Dessert I could have skipped: peach crème pâté, a touch too thick even for me, veering into yogurt territory. Pickled plums bruléed on top.

8:00PM Walk it off a bit and discover a busy Koreatown before heading to Shoppers Drug Market, which puts Duane Reade and every suburban CVS I've been to shame owing to the Canadian chain’s large beauty inventory and the fact that nothing is bound by lock and key. I don't think I've seen so much Mario Badescu in one place, never mind that no one uses it anymore.

September 4

8:00AM Pouring rain. Good thing I bought an umbrella at Shoppers. Still, I arrive at Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You soaked through my toes, an extremely appropriate way to watch the movie given the film’s inciting incident is the ceiling leak in Rose Byrne’s apartment that immediately transforms into gaping hole, open to the sky, open to metaphor, water rushing everywhere. And then, as though to insist on it, the Scotiabank starts to drip down on Marya E. Gates who’s seated next to me.

The film delivered exactly as I’d imagined: Bronstein is assured, executing her on a larger, more polished canvas. Rose Byrne was fabulous. The film far from perfect, but still a compelling addition to the growing canon of ambivalent-mother narratives.

Every year there’s an older audience member who somehow misses the point entirely. As if he hadn’t seen it, one man politely asks what happened in the movie, as if he hadn’t sat through it all. So earnest, so lost. (He also wanted to confirm whether the young daughter had anorexia, because of the feeding tube. as if anorexia was the only condition that requires one.) His colleague, less forgiving, cuts in: it’s a movie about men doing nothing—and in doing nothing, driving women insane.

Because I am a creature of comfort (or as someone else put it to me, a Taurus), I flee back to my hotel to solve the unendurable problem of my wet socks. And because I only packed three pairs of shoes, the other two of which were less suited for inclement weather, I deploy a hairdryer as long as I could to my Vans and put on a fresh pair of socks. Squish mildly, temporarily alleviated.

1:00 PM Hylnurr Pálmason The Love That Remains is the muscle relaxant I need after the muddy tumult of Bronstein’s feature. The Icelandic director’s previous movie Godland was in my top ten of 2023 on account of his knack for capturing his native landscape in its austere magnificence without resorting to sentimental cliches. In this new film the inarguably beautiful, hygge and pastoral images (sheets of ice; fat mushrooms ripped open by hand; chickens circling their coops; close ups of worn craggy faces) are stitched together with an elegance so exacting it stands in deliberate contrast to the looseness of the film’s uncomplicated narrative; it is a soft portrait of a family in or post divorce, told through vignettes that cascade into each other like waves, more cohesive than jagged.

The wife is an artist; the husband, a fisherman. Each is shown in their work—her process of laser cutting patterns of steel, hauling them to the field and leaving them to weather and imprint rust onto large canvases, while he works aboard a ship, hauling herring on the open water, and engaging in other shiply duties. But the more important thing, the true center of the film is family life and the invisible moments that bind a household. Children speculating whether their parents still have sex. The casual curses traded over dinner. Laughing when you remove the blender top when your sister is pulping berries into jam. The film asserts that such ordinary moments are only ones worth cherishing in this bloated world.

Two other takeaways: I learned Icelandic slang for female genitals, and I discovered what may be the loveliest sound on earth—the soft, rushing patter of blueberries poured against themselves.

4:30 PM I rush to Chefs Hall for the Rotten Tomatoes mixer. Say what you will about RT, but for a freelance critic they’ve been surprisingly useful—useful enough to get me and many others here, anyway.

I chat too long with Barry and Natalia, while swiping at meat-based h’ors d’evours, the only real thing I’d eaten all day, before booking it to my next screening. On the way, I get into a dispute with a Toronto crossing guard who angrily insists I can’t cross, even though the walk signal was only at five seconds.

5:25 PM I find myself five feet Cole Escola, Kate Berlant, and other cast members and friends of Maddie’s Secret, the first feature directed by comedian John Early. I text Natalia, who says we might see them at the party, which I mistakenly thought was tonight. I am grateful since I am already shit tired.

Maddie (played by Early) is an earnest, non-cussing figure with long blonde locks, so it was a mild shock when Early appeared on stage with a freshly shaved head. He wears it very well. Same skull shape as Ryan Gosling as it turns out.

Maddie is dishwasher at a content-creation company—essentially BA Test Kitchen in disguise—who rises to become one of its stars while relapsing into an eating disorder under the pressurized circumstances. (Given the film’s focus on Maddie’s struggles and interior psychologizing, fellow critic Adam and I note afterward that this makes for a great double feature with If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.) Berlant is his lesbian best friend. Claudia O'Doherty is the reigning Alison Roman-esque culinary doyenne. Connor O’Malley is their exploitative boss who wears a large peacoat for no reason other than to show authority.

Amidst the profusion of jokes (giggle too long and you’ll miss the next one) the film is riddled with moments where you’re not sure if something is meant to be funny or tragic or both, whether you’re laughing at someone/something or with it. That thin membrane between mockery and empathy runs through Early’s work in general and is just pronounced in Maddie’s Secret, which ebulliently parodies a certain kind of TV movie from the 80s and 90s. They would show you them in health class, cautionary tales about bulimia, sex predators, or whatever the case of the week happened to be. They were filled with grim warnings, yet delivered with a strange, almost lascivious energy, sexualizing the very teens they were supposedly protecting. Instead of unintentional eroticism and absurd panic, Early’s film elicits genuine laughter and tears, the culmination of Early’s usual wit and an impressive cinematic sensibility. Most of the dialogue is soliloquized and delivered with the dated, declarative force of Sirkian melodrama—but the content of said dialogue is hilariously of our moment with references to Fly By Jing, Filipino-ish pancakes, and “breakfasty hangover vibes,” making for yet another tension.

Like one of the actors said after the screening, There’s Ben Stiller, Orson Welles, and, now John Early.

8:30 PM I take the obligatory lap around the block and return to the theater, for Mile End Kicks, already crowded with Montrealers who seem to have arrived hours early. The stairs to the balcony are endless; I climb so high I feel pressed against the ceiling,

Mile End Kicks, Chandler Levack’s sweet, charming, semi-autobiographical tale starring Barbie Ferreira as a young twenty something music critic transports me to American Apparel and pinging gchat windows and an era where the dreamy date meant walking along the train tracks. I suddenly remember my own stint writing things online for a music magazine and having my bylines and articles disappeared without ceremony—though, unlike Barbie’s character, I never got to sleep with my bosses in their leather jackets and skinny jeans who started the whole thing to throw concerts and meet girls. Mine I learned years later would have children go on to work at the same startup producing content. Like Barbie’s character though I did have my share of run-ins with skinny boys with oral herpes.

Overall I expected a little more music, and a lot more sleaze. But I know somewhere a nineteen-year-old Canadian is gaining strength and quietly weeping.

September 5

9:30 AM I mistakenly think today is going to be mostly Korean films because I’m unfamiliar with Pete Ohs and, for some reason, assumed he was Korean, misreading the “s” at the end of his name as an anglicization. Erupcja, featuring Charli XCX and the involvement of Jeremy O. Harris, is underwhelming—remarkable only for the sheer confidence with which it embraces its own mediocrity. (Full review below.)

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TIFF 2025 | Erupcja and Sacrifice

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10:40 AM While everyone around me offers polite praise, I run into my friend Danny and we agree: this movie does not need to exist. Neither of us are particularly familiar with Charli, and the film does nothing to bring us closer to her. We walk and discuss until we reach a Japanese coffee shop where I grab my flat white and run, hoping not to encounter more traffic cops; Danny lingers for a pourover.

11:15 AM I watch Good News, one of those large scale, box office (or I guess, ather a Netflix, action comedies that pulls out all the stops and compiles the best things about Korean movies—convoluted plots; over the top humor; and a not so embedded dislike of the Japanese.

2:00 PM I watch The Ugly which is about the tragedy that arises when you’re insecure in yourself and thus your partner when you fail to marry-up (and maybe even marry down).

5:00 PM I eat souvlaki at a Greek restaurant (another Sofia-rec) where everything is meant to be shared and on this evening the place to be for a bachelorette party. I am but one person and spread out my notebook amongst the single plate of dip and try and write.

6:40 PM More people are seated for the new Nicolas Pereda movie, Copper, than anticipated. A third of them leave halfway through. It is not my favorite of his. Vadim later confirms the previous film which is about to play on Metrograph is A+.

9:00 PM I chose to watch Sirat at this hour because I knew I’d be able to stay awake. I did not know I would be in the second row. It is immersive and epic with shadings of Clouzot’s Wages of Fear, but more straightforwardly metaphorical than I expected. I expect this to be my stock answer when people ask me this fall what they shoud watch.

11:30 PM I get to the party for Maddie's Secret to find it in full swing, a niche crowd of alt-comedians and elite nyc film critic/programmers, plus creative Toronto doyennes. The drink menu is extensive and tiki-inflected but the font is too small for me to read so I order a tequila soda instead. And then again.

Marija and I get Natalia to dance to Troy Sivan and Mariah Carey alongside Early and Berlant, by which I mean they are in the same room as me. Before walking home I stuff four spring rolls in quick succession.

September 6

8:00 AM Reaping the consequences of too many movies and not enough water, I wake up still drunk and miss my morning screenings and submit to sleep in utter darkness. My zero-sunlight room in my four-star hotel makes this quite easy.

2:00 PM I manage to crawl to the screening of Park Chan-wook’s new film, which is imho, mostly excellent.

The only proper thing to do now is eat Korean food so I find a mediocre spot on nearby Dundas where I order ttukbaegi bulgogi, because the silky beef stew easier on my stomach than the spicy yukaejang that I really want. Same goes for the vegetable pajeon instead of kimchi.

What’s next: Hedda, Hamnet, Roofman, The Smashing Machine, and so much, perhaps too much more.