Until 2019, the Toronto International Film Festival had a section called Masters. As you might assume, it was a space for major filmmakers with significant track records: Godard, Breillat, Jia, Ceylan, and the like. During the 2020 Covid pause, the festival dropped the section, seemingly because the name of the section, Masters, felt impolitic. In addition to its presumption of a coherent cinematic canon, the word has unavoidable connections to the history of slavery. (If you watch TV shows about real estate or home design, you’ll notice that what was the master bedroom is now called the main bedroom.) Starting last year, TIFF adopted a new term, Luminaries, which is not so much a section as a designation. Certain directors’ films presented in sections like Centrepiece or Special Presentations are also labeled Luminaries: Wang Bing, Hong Sang-soo, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa this year, but oddly not Paul Schrader, David Cronenberg, or indeed, Jia Zhangke.
The other designated Luminary this year is Algerian director Merzak Allouache. As the program guide notes, Front Row is Allouache’s 19th feature film, making him one of the most prolific filmmakers currently working in the Arab world. But longevity, while noteworthy, isn’t everything, and although this writer has seen only one other Allouache film (2018’s suicide bomber drama Divine Wind), it’s hard to fathom why any major film festival would screen Front Row, much less award it a special designation. This film is a wacky family comedy so broad it makes Paul Blart look like Maurice Pialat. It’s the sort of film one can only really engage with by checking off the cliches. If there’s a beloved pet parakeet in a cage, it will escape and fly away. If there’s a vain man in a toupee, it will fall off at a particularly embarrassing moment. And so on.
Front Row is really just a compendium of slapstick antics and petty grudges played out over a single day at the beach. The “front row” of the title refers to the coveted spot on the sand closest to the ocean. Zohra (Fatiha Ouared) is the loud, somewhat tacky matriarch of one family, and she and her five children happen to take a trip to the beach on the same day as her snooty neighbor Safia (Bouchra Roy). Adding to the complications, Zohra thought her husband (Kadar Affak) was staying home, but he shows up later. This disrupts Zohra’s planned canoodling with her brother-in-law (Idhir Benaïbouche), with whom she’s carrying on a poorly concealed affair. Also, Zohra’s son Rayan (Medhi Sadi) and Safia’s daughter Souhila (Hanaa Mansour) are in love, adding a touch of Romeo and Juliet to this heady mix.
Every culture and every nation is entitled to its dumb, unsophisticated comedies. When it comes to national cinemas for which there is a large North American demographic, a lot of these films open commercially: India, China, the Philippines, and others. But they don’t debut at film festivals, because regardless of who directed them — gray eminence or tyro helmer — showcasing such films in this manner is little more than a category error. In a few months, Front Row will find its proper place amid the content slurry of Netflix offerings, and you may wonder why the title sounds familiar. Thanks, TIFF.
Published as part of TIFF 2024 — Dispatch 4.
Comments are closed.