“Without people who are appalling, there would be no drama,” said “12 Years a Slave” director Steve McQueen on Saturday afternoon at the Toronto Film Festival – and a day after McQueen’s movie premiered, plenty of TIFF offerings had abundant drama (plus a few laughs) courtesy of appalling people and bad behavior.
Take the female protagonists in Jason Reitman‘s “Labor Day” and Catherine Breillat’s “Abuse of Weakness,” two films where you could feel the audience spend much of the movie thinking, “Why the hell is she doing that?”
In the case of “Labor Day,” the thoughts were prompted by the eagerness with which Kate Winslet‘s character goes from being terrified of the convicted murderer who escapes from prison and hides out with her and her seventh-grade son to to being ready to a run off with him to Canada.