Jennifer Connelly hits the Rosewater Supper Club, where no one cares about the movies
Lesson learned on festival Day One: stop trying to make film discussion happen. It’s not going to happen! Shut up and down your sauvignon, you silly thing.
At the Rosewater Supper Club’s annual TIFF-off—a welcome cocktail for stars and suits (5 per cent former, 95 per cent latter)—the chatter is about how tiny, twiggy even, Jennifer Connelly looks in real life. Really? We haven’t learned this about actresses by now?
After Connelly’s in-and-out, we’re drawn to the next most photogenic face in the room. It happens to be possessed by a soap starlet, one Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, or Steffy Fraser on The Bold and the Beautiful. We’ve never seen the show, but her type of preternatural, pouty symmetry is snap-recognizable. Jacquie tells us she’s here to “enjoy everything the festival has going on, and maybe see some movies, too.” Like? “Well, I wanted to see this one”—this one being the night’s gala premiere, Creation—“but then...” She trails off, lifting a glass of wine.
A producer type tells us that while he’s had films in the past, he’s “a nobody this year, just kind of hanging around.” There’s no shame in his laughter. We ask what he’s most looking forward to seeing. There is a thoughtful pause. “You know,” he says finally, “you could be the new-millennium Kim Novak.”
If anyone should be excited about the films, it’s the esteemed co-founders of TIFF. Bill Marshall and Henk Van der Kolk are both in attendance. Marshall says he has about 20 screenings on his slate. Asked to name one, he too says Creation, then appears to be stuck.
“They’re all good,” offers his slender, kind-eyed companion. She’s radiant in a blood-orange satin dress from Pho Pa on Queen.
“Well, they’re not,” Marshall laughs, “but we can’t tell the press that! Most of them are good.”
Soon, van der Kolk—also, incidentally, most excited for Creation—realizes it’s nearly time for the premiere.
“What time is it?” he asks. “We should really go soon.”
But his drink’s nearly full, and nobody here is rushing.
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