MONDO EXTRAS

Sorry. I'll stop.

Patrik does not have many recommending qualities as the new son of a gay couple. First of all, he hates gay people, so WHY DON'T WE JUST MAKE HIM OUR VICE PRESIDENT AND GET IT OVER WITH? Also, he has a history of unspecified violence, particularly in the area of knives. Things don't look good.

And for a while, they aren't. Goren and Sven find themselves on opposite sides of the debate, and Sven finally takes off, leaving Goren and Patrik to form an unlikely friendship. In the end, people who didn't think they had anything in common learn that they are, in fact, the same. Welcome to movies.

But wait! That sounds lame and pat, and it wasn't at all. And it didn't make me cry because it was sad... it made me cry because it was touching. Is that better? It might not be. Crying is for girls.

The Frenchiest film in the history of Frenchville is The Girl from Monaco, directed by Sally Frenchington (also known as Anne Fontaine) and starring Louise Bourgoin, the poutiest French actress at the festival. Even though we were repeatedly informed that this was her first feature role, she sulked through the post-film Q&A like a seasoned diva, sitting on stage and rolling her eyes after posing for photographs. It was the type of performance that suggests she is either a budding superstar or a starlet-turned-diva-turned-burnout of the not-too-distant future. Buck up, superstar... we stayed out until 3 a.m. the night before your movie and somehow made it to a 12:15 screening across town, but we did it like professionals: get up, eat popcorn for breakfast, and don't complain. Unfortunately for my hopes to review this movie, this was TIFF '08's Film That Made Me Sleep.

Eric will try and argue that I slept through the entire film, but in fact I only lost about five minutes somewhere between a French girl running around Monaco in a sun hat and the same girl getting nailed on a scooter and being turned into... fine, I'll say it, French toast. The middle of the film looked like the parts of my eyelids that I only get to see when the line at the AMC doesn't let us in to the theater until five minutes before the screening starts, so that I don't have time to buy coffee before the film.