Fall Film Festival Recap: The Best & Worst of TIFF, Telluride and Venice

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor
and Keith Kimbell, Metacritic Film Editor – September 17, 2017

The fall film season kicks off each year with a trio of prestigious festivals: the just-completed Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Venice Film Festival (now in its 74th year), and the smaller but no less interesting Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. It is at these festivals where many of the year's Oscar contenders typically make their debuts. (Last year, five best picture nominees—including eventual winner Moonlight—had their world premieres at one of these festivals.) And this year's crop includes promising upcoming releases from Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Sorkin, Joe Wright, and Armando Iannucci ... as well as more divisive films from the likes of Alexander Payne, George Clooney, and Louis CK.

Below, learn more about the critical response to these and other notable films (and TV shows) debuting at the three festivals in 2017.

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59 Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno

After winning the Palme d’Or for Blue Is the Warmest Color, director Abdellatif Kechiche has struggled to complete his new film, the first of two (possibly three) parts to make up his loose adaptation of La Blessure, La Vraie by François Bégaudeau. Focusing on the lives and loves of young men and women in 1994 Sete, a quiet Mediterranean coastal town, the film is an indulgent 3 hours, featuring a 30 minute club scene derided by almost every critic.

Lacking the narrative strength of his last film, “Kechiche’s intimate-maximalism can only go so far,” in the opinion of Indiewire’s Kate Erbland. That feeling is seconded by Jessica Kiang of The Playlist: “While studded with moments of power and often radiant with the shining, supple loveliness of its cast, this ostensibly energetic dip into the fountain of youth that is a Mediterranean beachside summer could make even the best-disposed viewer feel tired and creaky and ancient.”

Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno

Drama | France
Directed by Abdel Kechiche

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