Film Orgy

Lest it be thought that I created my own Asian film festival within Toronto, I was also unpredictably knocked out by the charming contemporary fairy tale Penelope, produced by the plucky Reese Witherspoon and starring Christina Ricci and new Scottish heartthrob James McAvoy (also seen in The Last King of Scotland); the extraordinary presentation of Guy Maddin's new silent, Brand on the Brain (complete with live orchestra, foley artists, falsetto singer, and narrator); Macky Alston's chilling documentary The Killer Within; and the multiple-director Paris Je T'Aime, five-minute films set in Paris' 20 arrondissements, which qualifies as a guilty pleasure. Occasional dips into mainstream films yielded another delight, Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction, clearly influenced by Charlie Kaufman, in which Will Ferrell senses that he's a character in writer Emma Thompson's novel (a similar tack to the disappointing Dutch movie Waiter; it's in the air). Anthony Minghella's starry Breaking and Entering (Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn) was more guilty than pleasure.

But it did help me recognize the blond head glimpsed as I passed a red carpet outside the Chanel store on Bloor late one night, as the photographers shouted, "Here, Robin! Over here!" I barely paused to check her out. Tomorrow I had five more movies — including a 2 1/2-hour black-and-white documentary covering both sides of the abortion debate by maverick director Tony Kaye — to see. I needed my rest.