Toast

Rating: Null/10 (24 June 2008)

Let me say at the onset that I would like to recommend this if only based on the passion. I have a special interest in filmmakers who feature their lovers. This man is so deeply in love with this woman that you cannot but be aroused by the depth, the urge, the engagement.
In that sense it is real, a love story that connects  and is as a result extremely powerful.
But as a film instead of a love experience, it fails. I hate to report this, because the man is so cinematic and adventuresome. But the problem is that he structures his projects in ways that are supposed to matter.
He built "Pi" in a way that was supposed to reflect mathematical hallucination of genius. He structured "Requiem" so that it was not only a story about the dissolution of a mind through addiction, but displayed in that manner. The problem is that "Pi's" structure had about as much to do with inspired insight as macaroni and cheese. "Requiem" was coherent, but the devolution in the vision had little to do with the way things really happen.
This is a love story, told with love, and permeated by love. So he has that right, but where the especially considered structure is concerned, he is as incompetent as before. Its too bad. I believe that narrative folding of the sort he tries here is the future. I believe so because it can greatly enhance the power of storytelling and in particular cinematic narrative.
I believe in a generation, everyone other than the nostalgic will be working this way intuitively. Its why it pains me to say that in terms of the folding here, its a failure. Oh, it has all the slices: reverse narrative: parallel narrative. One narrative writing (or dreaming or magically projecting) another. A life as planet, a love as religion. A death as life. A walk not walk. Expectations as beginnings. Mechanically, its all there.
But it isn't connected. The passion of the story which really, truly makes this film matter is not connected at all to the narrative devices employed. It the broom playing with the toaster in the foreground which in the background the couple makes love.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.