Toronto film fest offers sex, love and hype

When you encounter a movie as captivating and strange as My Summer of Love -- which I did in a packed multiplex screening room on Saturday night -- you forget about all the movies you aren't seeing.

Toronto is hardly immune to the media hype and film-industry politicking that dominates the international film festival scene. Its placement on the map and on the calendar has made it the starting line in the Oscar race, a place where ambitious English-language art-house films come to generate early buzz.

Important as this festival is, it also has the distinction of being one of the least self-important. It does not take over the city so much as nestle into the rhythms of its everyday life, offering Torontonians and visitors a cinematic menu as diverse, democratic and unpretentious as that metropolis itself.

Sure, there are movie stars around, parties cordoned off by velvet ropes and autograph seekers patiently waiting outside restaurants for Annette Bening or Zhang Ziyi (章子怡). But for a first-timer whose impression of film festivals has been formed by the glamour and swagger and hauteur of Cannes, the easygoing atmosphere of Toronto is refreshing and a little startling. It seems to be organized around the radical idea that a film festival should be a place where people can see as many movies as possible with a minimum of hassle.