Hey folks, Harry here with another review from Buttercup, the first to report in from Toronto this year! This time she's got a Peter Greenaway film and Richard Linklater flick! How ya like dem apples? Here ya go...

Hey Harry,  

Buttercup, back again.  I brought a friend to the Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part I: The Moab Story (directed by Peter Greenaway) earlier today.  This is a really odd film, and I'm not really sure what to say about it.  This film is actually made up of the first three episodes of the Tulse Luper saga - Wales (ep. 1), Moab (ep. 2), and Antwerp (ep. 3) (although it looks like Antwerp has been expanded into it's own full-length feature).  There are supposed to be 16 episodes, and this is actually a big multimedia project.  Tulse Luper is the main character in the saga, and in each episode we saw he winds up in a prison at some point.  In "Wales", Luper is a young boy and we see him playing with his best friend, Martino Knockavelli, and talking about their future adventures.  We also get a glimpse at Luper's relationship with his father.  "Wales" is pretty short - the next episode places Luper and Martino are in the Moab desert in Utah, searching for lost Mormon cities.  While there, Luper gets mixed up with the Hockmeister family, mainly due to the family vixen, Passion Hockmeister.  More adventures follow, then Episode III begins in Antwerp.  Martino and Luper are in Antwerp, both writing for newspapers, but Luper gets arrested as a spy, and more adventures follow.  

"Tulse Luper" has a pretty interesting basic plotline as we follow Luper on his adventures.  The episodes are somehow tied into uranium; there are 92 suitcases which are opened throughout the episodes (92 is the atomic number of uranium and pops up again in various places in the film).  There's a whole hell of a lot more going on than the basic plotline though.  There's so much that I don't know where to start.  

At the beginning and throughout the film, we get scenes from the auditions for various roles, so we see various actors all saying the same lines, almost overlapping one another.  This technique recurs with various talking heads in the film.  There's also a bunch of in-jokes and cameos which I totally missed until after the film.  Apparently, Franka Potente and Debbie Harry were both in the film, there were references to some of Peter Greenaway's earlier films, and I think there may have been even more cameos that totally slipped past me.  It felt a bit like sensory overload for both my friend and I, but we both enjoyed it.  My friend thought the sound in the film was excellent too.  But, it was too long - separating out Episode III would've been great.  

I wasn't really sure I'd enjoy this film.  From the description I'd read, it almost sounded Indiana Jones-ish - you know, an adventure film.  Then I heard more about the movie and how experiemental and intellectually challenging it was, and began to wonder if this wasn't going to be one of those vaguely pretentious, boring films.  I wound up being confused, but did enjoy it.  Too bad the festival screened the full-length Episode III already; God knows when I'll have a chance to see it again!  If you have time and are looking for another movie to see at the TIFF, check out Tulse Luper - it's enjoyably confusing.  

******  

SCHOOL OF ROCK