Montreal: Most diverse and unique city

Montreal remains to be Canada’s most diverse and unique city, an extraordinary blend of rich European tradition and North American modernity. It is so unlike Vancouver because it has become so Asian, so Pacific Rim.

Montreal is the second largest city in Canada and the only French-speaking one in the Americas. It is proud of its reputation for "joie de vivre". It simply means giving priority to pleasure before business or enjoying the last glass of wine at an outdoor bistro with Fiaf, Aznavour, Brel and Becaud songs in the background, just like those sequences in romantic Claude Lelouch movies.

Montreal is also known as the city of festivals and is known for a lot of other things from fine fine cuisine, winter sports, grand jazz festivals and of late the prestigious and quite independent Montreal World Film Festival (Festival Des Films Du Monde). It is now a premium and classy film event that competes with the prominence of the Venice and high-profile Toronto international film festival. Montreal does not want to be like Toronto, now described as the most bacchanalian film event in the world after Cannes.

Montreal is a perfect site for an international cine event because the organizers and the audience are accepting of new cinematic ideas, just like the Sundance Film Festival. The cinemagoers here are more attuned to sub-titled movies, not controlled by Hollywood types and generally not celebrity seekers.

There are now three major film festivals in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) and several minor ones in Victoria, Winnipeg, Calgary and Halifax). My personal favorite is the World Film Festival. Here I can meet French actor/director Richard Berry, not Nicole Kidman and her entourage. I find the Toronto event too-American and the Vancouver fest too parochial and too ethnic.

Montreal’s playdates unfortunately overlaps with that of Venice and is completely overshadowed by the publicity machine of Toronto. Overall, the MWFF had a total of 224 feature length films (115) world premieres) and 19 films in competition. The films will definitely appeal to true cineastes but also the moviegoing public.

Hannah Fisher, one of the MWFF Asian programmers found two Tagalog movies for this year’s edition. For a change, the two films are not about doomed female prostitutes, macho dancers, transvestites, crazies, drug addicts, rape victims and the sub-human poverty in the Philippines. Both films have excellent merits and show the inherent goodness of Filipinos in their quest for a better life, identity and self-worth.

Magnifico and Dekada are gems of Philippine cinema today that can be refined and edited for the international art-house market. Here’s an outsider’s look at the two films. Magnifico (Director - Maryo J. Delos Reyes)

A buoyant, genuinely heartwarming and inspiring movie that gives feel-good films a new meaning. Magnifico can be enjoyed in many levels and breaks cultural barriers with the universal themes of perseverance, determination and humanity. The leads and supporting roles are appealing but the film belongs to captivating child star Jiro Manio. Albert Martinez shines with his controlled acting but many may question what such a good-looking man is doing in the slums. Equally engaging is the presence of Gloria Romero.

Magnifico is reminiscent of Iran’s simplistic "Children of Paradise". The shortcomings? The film is in need of polished editing. The storyline suffers from dramatic overload and repetitive crying sequences. Overall, this memorable film excels in portraying human nature at its worst and best.

Dekada ’70 (Director - Chito S. Roño)

An ambitious project that will be of interest to Filipinos familiar with Philippine history and to familial shenanigans of a typical Pinoy upper-middle-class family unit. It’s well-intentioned but it will struggle to find a wide audience acceptance.

The direction is heavy-handed while the script is preachy and stagey. I could see it as a mini-series or as a theatrical material with the characters delivering memorized lines. Vilma Santos and Christopher de Leon look like they are in a propaganda film. It’s an exhaustive and exhausting cinematic 135-minute experience.