TIFF 2018 Day 7 round-up: Hold The Dark, What They Had premiere; Mia Hansen-Love films ode to Goa

After fans filled the cavernous Roy Thomson Hall in downtown Toronto to the rafters on Day 6 of TIFF 2018 for the Gala world premiere of Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan , Day 7 saw the premiere of more fascinating films from around the world.

Here’s a round-up of all the big news from Wednesday.

Premiere of Hold The Dark, What They Had and The Land of Steady Habits

Mia Hansen-Love’s ode to Goa

Filmed mostly in lush green Goa outback, director Mia Hansen-Love’s Maya is an ode to the coastal state and love.

Infusing an element of autobiography, the young French director of films such as Father of My Children and Things to Come, has woven a languid love story around French actor Roman Kolinka (Gabriel) and Indian actor Aarshi Banerjee in the Goan background.

The French film’s storyline meanders from Syria where French war correspondent Gabriel for The Daily Beast is just released to his homecoming in Paris where he gets post-traumatic stress disorder treatment and his recuperating trip to India.

A Million Little Pieces is now a movie

James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, once one of the most toxic properties in Hollywood, has been reborn on the big screen thanks to director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her actor husband, Aaron, whom she wrote it with.

In even a movie world where “based on a true story” often has elastic meaning, a film about A Million Little Pieces is a surprise. After Frey admitted to partially fabricating or embellishing parts of his 2003 memoir about drug addiction and rehabilitation, Oprah Winfrey, who had include Frey’s book in her book club, memorably chastised him on television. The book’s publisher, Doubleday, offered refunds to readers and in future editions included an author’s note acknowledging distortions.

But for Taylor-Johnson, who helmed the adaptation of another best seller (Fifty Shades of Grey), there was still truth in A Million Little Pieces.

“It was really storytelling,” the 51-year-old British director said in an interview. “It’s his journey, from where he is now however many years later, having been through the ringer in so many different ways. That’s the thing that I hold true: James’ sobriety from where he began to where he is now.”

A Million Little Pieces made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival where it’s seeking distribution. That it got this far is purely because of Taylor-Johnson’s dedication to it. She and Aaron wrote the script on spec (without financing or producers lined up) and Frey granted them the film rights. Warner Bros. initially won the rights in a bidding war, with Brad Pitt’s Plan B to produce. But following Frey’s disgrace, the movie rights were returned to the author.

In other news:

Nicole Kidman’s metamorphosis in Destroyer surprises even herself

It was as she forcefully stuffed actress Tatiana Maslany into the trunk of a car that the sheer out-of-body experience of her role in the brutal LA noir thriller Destroyer came into focus for Nicole Kidman.

“I was putting her in the trunk of that car going: ‘What the hell is this?’” Kidman recalled at the film’s Monday evening premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

As much as we’ve come to expect it, Kidman’s transformations can startle even herself. And just as has so often been the case, Kidman’s powers of metamorphosis again have a film festival buzzing and the 51-year-old actress back among the Oscar contenders.

In Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer, Kidman is almost unrecognizable as Erin Bell, a haunted and hardened police detective with little will left for police work or life, at all. Her voice is a husky whisper, her skin a gaunt, sun-dried mask, her eyes cold and empty. She drinks heavily.

The film, which Kusama characterised as in the spirit of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, places a female anti-hero in the heart of a hardboiled genre usually the domain of men. Maslany, who plays a strung-out criminal in the film, said of the film: “It felt so not masculine. It felt really feminine in this genre to really bend the rules with how we normally see these stories.”

Warner Bros. distances itself from A Star Is Born producer

Just as film festival audiences are swooning over Bradley Cooper’s celebrated romance A Star Is Born, the film’s studio is distancing itself from a producer of the project.

Jon Peters is a credited producer of the new A Star Is Born, the third remake of the Hollywood fable. Peters was instrumental in the making of the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, which starred his then-girlfriend Barbra Streisand.

But with the new film in the spotlight, Peters’ history has come under scrutiny. A report Tuesday by Jezebel took issue with Peters, in the #MeToo era, being a producer on one of the fall’s biggest releases.

In August 2011, a Los Angeles jury awarded one of Peters’ former employees, Shelly Morita, more than $3.3 million in a harassment case she filed against the producer. The jury determined Peters subjected Morita to “severe and pervasive” harassment and a “hostile or abusive” work environment.

Peters and Morita entered into a later agreement overturning the judgment in the case. The terms were not disclosed.

Warner Bros., which produced and will release A Star Is Born next month, said on Tuesday it was contractually bound to credit Peters.

“Jon Peters’ attachment to this property goes as far back as 1976,” said the studio in a statement. “Legally, we had to honor the contractual obligation in order to make this film.” The Producers Guild of America also confirmed on Tuesday that it has ruled that Peters did not work enough on the film to receive a “producers mark.” In the film’s credits, Peters’ name doesn’t include the “p.g.a.” label of a producers mark.

Audience faints during Revenge screening

One person in the audience had fainted during the Midnight Madness show on the first night of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) during the screening of the film Revenge , media reported.

“Suddenly there was screaming because the person next to them had fainted,” an attendee of the TIFF’s Midnight Madness opening night film has told the BBC. The fainting occurred at the screening in 2017 of Revenge, a brutal feminist thriller directed by Coralie Fargeat.

(With inputs from agencies)