Get the Party Started

Ordinarily I am not, to put it mildly, a film festival party animal — too much blond beauty, air kissing, horrid background music, and “Hello, congratulations, oh sorry, I thought you were the mother of...“ But I do haul out the basic black and minimalist jewelry for the annual Sony Pictures Classics dinner at Toronto. It’s loose, it’s fun, you don’t have to yell, there’s steak and lobster where normally only rubber chicken rules, and given the company’s film slate you stand a more than even chance of being seated next to someone interesting who’s unwinding and relaxed.

Last year, I ate with the cast and crew of the Israeli film The Band’s Visit, whose star, Ronit Elkabetz, proved to be both a sparkling kibbitzer and genuinely interested in whomever she’s sitting next to. This year I lucked out again and found myself seated between director Wong Kar Wai, who’s promoting the new and improved version of his 1994 period action drama Ashes of Time, and his producer Norman Wang, formerly a New York publicist beloved of egg-headed film critics, now happily relocated in Hong Kong, where he works with Wong and buys lots of lovely jewelry, most of which he was wearing. Contrary to the inscrutably cool image created by his omnipresent sunglasses, Wong is open, friendly, drily funny and serenely accepting of the adulation that came his way within and between courses, much of it from Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker, a gifted raconteur of great and silly movie moments who also read from his Blackberry the list of the books Sarah Palin allegedly tried to ban, among which is My Friend Flicka. (Horse porn?)

A radiant Jonathan Demme (there with Rachel Getting Married, of which more in these pages very soon), who rushed up in an Indian shirt, pumped the director’s hand and generally came on like a film student who couldn’t believe his luck at pressing the flesh of a master. The serene Wong actually removed his shades to inspect the menu, and chose the seafood risotto. At the next table one of the enchantingly uncool Dardenne brothers (Lorna’s Silence) chomped improbably on a cigar, and Atom Egoyan (Adoration) showed me a phone pic of his handsome teenaged son Arshile going cross-eyed. That’s all the gossip you get from me — I’m interested, but clueless.