The Thorn in the Heart (France, 2009)
D: Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) takes his Aunt Suzette on a trip through her past, from the death of her husband to the emotional conflicts with her gay son Jean-Yves, with Gondry’s characteristic playfulness and tenderness.  Suzette has been a teacher for decades, and Michel reunites her with some of her students and some of her old schools.  A documentary given more than a few eccentric spins, the film, with its intense intimacy, feels almost insular at times, but by the end of Thorn’s 86 minutes we’re family too.  Most memorable: Michel and Suzette fitting a classroom of kids with “invisibility suits” (uniforms of a solid color that can be digitally erased in the editing room), leading to a musical montage of half-invisible kids frolicking on a playground.  What might have been an irrelevant but whimsical digression instead beautifully illustrates the wonder of childhood, a wonder which Suzette has somehow managed to retain in her elder years.

The Exploding Girl (U.S., 2009)
D: Bradley Rust Gray

In NYC a girl named Ivy (Zoe Kazan), suffering from epilepsia, returns from a semester of college to spend some time with her mother, and drags along her longtime best friend Al (Mark Rendall), who is clearly not too upset that she’s going to be apart from her new college boyfriend for a little while.  Al’s smitten with Ivy, but this is a film about what goes unsaid, and the pregnant pauses, awkward stammers, and inadequate small talk that pass between young people desperately afraid of saying anything too revealing of their true feelings.  Once you come to realize that it’s this non-dialogue that tells The Exploding Girl’s story, the film begins to flutter to life, leading to an absolutely extraordinary climax on a rooftop at sunset.  In this moment, Ivy and Al may keep their feelings hidden, but the world about them explodes with emotion.  My favorite film of the festival so far.

The Bug Trainer (Lithuania, 2008)
D: Rasa Miskinyte, Donatas Ulvydas, Linas Augutis, Marek Skrobecki
Le Roman de Renard [The Tale of the Fox] (France, 1930)
D: Ladislas Starewitch

In the early days of cinema, one of the true pioneers was Ladislas Starewitch, now credited as one of the inventors of stop-motion animation.  In his early silent films he strung lifeless beetles, grasshoppers, and other insects with wire, and animated their movements to form silly (and sometimes slightly dirty) little playlets.  Later he expanded his art form, leading to the triumph Le Roman de Renard, a full-length animated film in which the Fox and his family outwit the resident Wolf, Bear, Cat, and just about all the other members of this literal animal kingdom.  The Bug Trainer, with one of its co-directors in attendance, is a recent documentary outlining Starewitch’s life, narrated by a computer-generated bug; but as illuminating as the documentary is, it can’t hold a candle to Starewitch’s vital and endlessly creative animation, full of mildly dirty jokes, elaborate gags, and hints of comical sadism.  For an eighty-year-old film, it’s aged very well.