The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is still going strong, with stars like Amy Adams, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi landing in the city for their respective film premieres. From dramas to comedies and emotional biopics, there was a lot to see on Day 3 of the festival.
Nightbitch has been intriguing movie fans long before its premiere in Toronto on Saturday night, where the audience finally got to see Adams transform into a dog for the film. Moreover, unexpected things can always come up at festivals, like a medical emergency that temporary halted the premiere of Ron Howard’s film Eden, with the cast including Sweeney, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Jude Law and Daniel Bruehl.
‘Nightbitch’
Amy Adams was in Toronto for the highly anticipated world premiere of her film Nightbitch from filmmaker Marielle Heller, based on the book by Rachel Yoder.
Adams plays a stay-at-home mother to her two-year-old son, exhausted from parenting her child while her husband, played by Scoot McNairy, is regularly away from home for work. Amid the stress, she begins experiencing odd sensations, like a heightened sense of smell and hair growing on the small of her back, and she believes she’s turning into a dog.
While the premise will seem odd on paper, Adams guides us through a thought-provoking examination of motherhood, the way women are valued as mothers and how women change after having a child. It’s all shown in a way that’s uncompromising in its comedy, as well as its honesty.
Following the screening, Adams talked about the brilliant way Nightbitch looks at the “isolation” a woman can feel after having a child in a society that hasn’t normalized having real conversations about that transition in a woman’s life.
“The transformation of motherhood and parenthood, it’s something that is a shared experience, and yet it isn’t shared,” she said.
“I also think just in general, we’re not very comfortable talking about female rage,” Heller added. “It’s not something that we tend to share with each other or talk about, and that we’re sort of afraid of women at this phase of our lives.
“So it felt really good to take this invisible experience that a lot of us have gone through and make it more visible.”
While the film also required Adams to work with a group of real dogs, she maybe took the transformation a bit too seriously, scaring one of the dogs on set.
“Amy’s looking at the dogs … and the dogs freaked out,” Heller recalled. “And started lunging at her.
“It almost ruined the whole shoot and the trainers were like, ‘Oh, they thought she was stalking them.’ It was like her behaviour was too odd and it flipped them.”
‘Eden’
Ron Howard premiered his film Eden at TIFF, with a star-studded cast including Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Jude Law and Daniel Bruehl.
But the screening faced some complications where there was a medical emergency in the crowd at Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday night, with someone being carried out of the theatre. The movie continued shortly after.
Set in 1929, Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Law) and Dora Strauch (Kirby) flee to the isle of Floreana, where Friedrich works to write his manifesto amid Dora trying to heal her multiple sclerosis with meditation. They are joined by Margaret (Sweeney) and Heinz Wittmer (Bruehl), followed by Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (de Armas), as tensions begin to rise as the group tries to coexist.
“I couldn’t believe how crazy it is and how relatable it is too,” de Armas told the crowd after the screening. “I read the script and I told Ron right before going to a wedding, and I think I never saw those people getting married because I was on the phone with Ron.
“We talked about the Baroness and I told him how I felt and all these things that I was already imagining. From day one, there was great communication back and forth. And I was like, ‘This might be the end of my career, but it looks like fun so I’m going to go for it.'”
“We all had to be audacious,” Law said. “The opportunity to work with Ron, we knew we were in safe hands and it was this extraordinary script, these incredible characters, and there was something really enticing about being in an ensemble. They don’t come along very often.
“It’s a game of chance and trust, in a way, for the actors. … You’re watching each other and reading how the others are attacking the tones and the … barometer of the piece.”
‘On Swift Horses’
Jacob Elordi, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Will Poulter and Diego Calva were present for the world premiere of On Swift Horses, directed by Daniel Minahan and based on Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel.
Set in the 1950s, newlyweds Muriel (Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Poulter)Â are moving from Kansas City to San Diego when Lee’s brother Julius (Elordi) returns from the Korean War, ending up in Las Vegas. Muriel starts secretly gambling on racehorses, and finds love she didn’t think was possible.
“It’s not hard to make chemistry with Jacob because he’s just so charismatic,” Edgar-Jones said.
“I think what I love about this script is it felt almost like reading poetry.”
Elordi also shared kind words about Edgar-Jones, opening up about their connection on set.
“When you work with someone like Daisy, it is kind of immediately there because she gives herself to the work, kind of entirely,” he added. “I had to audition for the film with Daisy and it was more like a workshop. … It was pretty clear immediately in that moment that we were going to be able to find that connection.”
‘Ick’
One thing we know about TIFF is that the Midnight Madness programming is the most fun, and well worth staying up late for.
That was very much the case for Joseph Kahn’s Ick, with the film being finished just the day before the premiere.
Starring Brandon Routh, Malina Weissman, Harrison Cone, Taia Sophia, Zeke Donovan Jones, Debra Wilson, Mena Suvari and Jeff Fahey, the film is set in a small American town called Eastbrook. In it, a vine-like creature referred to as the “Ick” is spreading. Hank Wallace (Routh), in particular, is concerned about the Ick’s impact on the town.
The soundtrack of Kahn’s film is impressive 2000s nostalgia that feels like it was ripped right out of our old iPods. It really leans into the comedy with his maximalist approach to filmmaking, creating a movie that’s just a total blast to experience.
‘The Fire Inside’
Famed cinematographer turned director, Rachel Morrison, tells the incredibly compelling story of Olympic U.S. boxer Claressa Shields.
Actor Ryan Destiny embodies the athlete, from her time as a teen in Flint, Michigan, training with coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry), to her international successes and moments of disappointment.
While boxing movies have certainly be done before, Morrison constructed the boxing scenes in a way that’s never been so narratively driven in similar movies. It’s a masterclass in making a sports film that’s really led by story. Paired by Destiny’s impressive commitment to playing Shields and her sometimes complicated personal life, it’s beautiful film that leans into a woman’s need to be resilient in a male-dominated world.