No ferrets at the festival

"Ang Lee is a little under the weather today," a publicist on the phone explained, as reason why my interview with the "Lust, Caution" director was being bumped from Saturday to Sunday. Turns out the flack was fibbing, but for happy reasons: Lee's new film, an elegant, achingly sad drama of sex and deception in 1940s Shanghai, won the prestigious Golden Lion — the top award at the Venice Film Festival. Before the prize was publicly announced, Lee was whisked off to Venice on Saturday to accept the award, which was his second in three years: "Brokeback Mountain" took the Golden Lion in 2005.

Back in Toronto by late Sunday afternoon, Lee looked exhausted even by Toronto International Film Festival standards. (Yes, the festival technically goes through next Saturday, but the wildly front-loaded opening weekend tends to wear everybody out — and most of us didn't have to fly to and from Venice in a day.) In a soft voice, he spoke to me of how he was inspired to make the film — whose main character is a young actress — by the remembered thrill of his own first experience on stage, as an 18-year-old.

In other TIFF industry news, Helen Hunt's "Then She Found Me" was the festival's first big sale, picked up for distribution by ThinkFilm for a reported $3 million. I didn't much like the film — it's much less funny and nuanced than the Elinor Lipman novel on which it's based — but apparently Think thinks (hey, that was fun) that it'll draw an audience, presumably of the chick-lit persuasion.

The business side is yet another angle of TIFF, far from the movie stars and the press, in which independent films are bought and sold by an army of sales agents from around the world. Industry types can usually be distinguished from press (we attend the same screenings) in that they tend to be better dressed, roam in packs, kiss each other on both cheeks a lot, have mysterious conversations about, say, distribution rights in New Guinea, and frequently leave screenings long before the movie's over. They also, apparently, like to haul their pets around. A sign on the door of the festival's industry office instructed that "dogs, chinchillas, ferrets, or cats," even if they were contained in a purse or bag, could not be brought into the office. I tried to imagine my cat attending the Toronto Film Festival. It was not a pretty picture.

More reviews to come tomorrow (including my festival favorite so far, "Atonement"), but one final note: TIFF has long had a reputation of being the nicest and most smoothly run of film festivals, and yesterday I realized one reason why. Arriving at the Varsity for a screening, I counted 23 festival volunteers — all in their trademark burnt-orange TIFF volunteer shirts — in one hallway of the theater. A few of them had assigned tasks (checking passes, roping off lines), but most of them seemed to just be standing around, smiling pleasantly. Now, you just try to feel curmudgeonly when 23 people are smiling pleasantly at you. It can't be done. This is, indeed, a very nice festival.