"Lust" in the afternoon

It's hot and sticky here in Toronto, and the daily papers are full of festival news — so much so, you wonder if there'll be anything left to report once the festival is actually in full swing,. A National Post writer noted that TIFF-goers waiting in the festival box-office line are already Just So Over doing interviews about what it's like to stand in the TIFF box-office line. "You know it's Film Fest," she wrote, "when even the patrons are tired and weary of the media." For the record, I walked right past a (very long) box-office line and didn't try to interview a soul in it. I hope they appreciated it.

Inside the Varsity, the main festival venue (a big but surprisingly elegant downtown multiplex, where the snack-counter staff were all abuzz today about having met director Michael Moore), there's a new twist this year: hand-held scanners. In past years, members of the press would sign in, on a clipboarded list, upon arriving at a press screening. That, apparently, is so 2006. Now a volunteer wielding an impressively techie device signs us in electronically and hurries us on our way; it's certainly efficient, even if it does make moviegoing feel a tad like going to the grocery store. Particularly when I heard a venue manager, trying to keep his volunteers informed, pointing at the group in which I stood. "THESE PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY BEEN SCANNED!" he announced, in authoritative tones. Welcome to the future, fellow press members.

Duly scanned, I took my seat and was promptly thrilled. Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution" is a world away from his last film, "Brokeback Mountain": It's a Chinese-language film, set in 1940s Shanghai and based on Eileen Chang's haunting novella of a young actress/revolutionary who disguises herself in order to seduce and destroy a government official. Newcomer Tang Wei captures, in few words, the performer's thrill of learning how to dissolve oneself into a role; early in the film, after her stage debut, she's so dazzled she can't sit still; the very blood in her veins seems changed.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai, as her lover, shows only the faintest trace of that unforgettably gentle sadness he showed in "In the Mood For Love"; here, he's a cold man interested in possession rather than love. The movie's fairly graphic sex scenes (making much more explicit what was only hinted at in Chang's novella) have earned the movie an NC-17 rating, which is likely to keep its U.S. audience small when it opens in theaters later this fall. But the film is a beautiful showcase for Lee's trademark elegance, intelligence and attention to detail; here, a tiny lipstick smudge on a cup speaks volumes.

If "Lust, Caution" is far from Hollywood, "Michael Clayton" is right there on Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Tony Gilroy (screenwriter of the "Bourne" movies, among others), it's a legal thriller as slick as a wet Seattle sidewalk — and it's great fun to watch. George Clooney, as a disillusioned "fixer" for a high-powered New York law firm, does that movie-star thing he does so well; Tom Wilkinson is wonderfully unhinged as a lawyer gone off the rails; Tilda Swinton, pale as paper, seems to go the entire movie without taking a deep breath, as befits her tightly wound character. Not great art, but a good smart movie, and here in Toronto there's room for both.

Tomorrow: Jodie Foster, "Rendition," and "Reservation Road."