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Despite my emphasis thus far on sneak previews of commercial studio releases, I am conscious of the fact that TIFF stand for the Toronto International Film Festival. My Tuesday, through a fluke of scheduling more than a conscious choice, had a heavy international flavor. Clare Denis returned to Africa with White Material, Amos Gitai frets about war in Israel in Carmel, and Jessica Hausner follows believers on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

The day began, however, with Alain Renais's Les Herbes folles (Wild Grass).

There is a communal aspect to film going that is present in the culture at large and highly concentrated around major festivals. People talk about films and the way they shape our lives in a way I seldom hear them talk about books anymore. For good or for ill, films matter to people, and as a result the relationship between cinephiles and an auteur is often something quite different from that of their relationship to authors, actors, and other celebrities.

Two years ago, the eighty-seven year old Eric Rohmer sent what could well be his final film to the festival (Romance of Astree and Celadon) and the fact that the much beloved director could not himself make the trip to present the film in no way diminished the joy of his fans at having another film. Life gets mighty precious, Bonnie Raitt sings, when there is less of it to waste.

Alain Resnais is eighty-seven this year, and Les Herbes folles could well be his last film. That he was not able to be in the Scotiabank theater to present the film did little to diminish my pleasure in having two more hours in the dark with an international treasure of whom we are not yet ready (are we ever?) to let go.

When wiser, more knowledgeable men than I write histories, I would venture to guess that Resnais will be remembered more for Night and Fog, Hiroshima mon Amour, or Last Year at Marienbad. Film, though, like the music in a Nick Hornby novel, is autobiographical. The experience of it is so intimately connected to space and ...

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