Tom Hiddleston, Tom Hardy, and Johnny Depp faltered. Brie Larson, Alicia Vikander, and Matt Damon jumped to the front of the awards season pack. And everyone seemed to love movies about journalism.
Winner: Room
Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson in Room
Caitlin Cronenberg / Courtesy of TIFF
There are so many ways this story about a young woman (Brie Larson) held captive in a backyard shed for seven years with her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) could have gone sour. Emma Donoghue's novel, on which the film is based, is presented from Jack's first-person point of view; his perception of the universe is confined to the tiny room he shares with his Ma. It's a conceit beloved by the book's readers, and pretty well impossible for a feature film to maintain. And even if you know nothing of the book, the logline for this movie — a kidnapped mother risks everything to save her son — risks teetering into melodramatic Lifetime territory.
But Donoghue wrote the screenplay herself, and she and director Lenny Abrahamson (Frank) found a way to keep the film rooted in Jack's world even when it's not exclusively seen through his eyes. More importantly, Larson and Tremblay bring such immediacy and honesty to their performances that you never really catch them acting. Instead of a mess, this was my personal favorite film not just of the Toronto International Film Festival, but of the year so far. Room made such a lasting impression at TIFF, in fact, that it won the festival's central prize: the audience award. With TIFF's 40th anniversary suffering from a surprisingly lackluster array of big ticket premieres, this delicate, subtle, human-scaled film emerged from the festival as one of the major awards season contenders this fall. (Room opens Oct. 16.) —Adam B. Vary
Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight
Kerry Hayes / Courtesy of TIFF
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