Courtesy Houston Chronicle
By Louis B. Parks

TORONTO -- Like some huge, benevolent sea creature that has lain dormant for a year, the Toronto International Film Festival unreeled its celluloid tentacles in theaters here all weekend, then enfolded thousands of eager film fans and critics who wanted nothing more than to be smothered in movies.

Officially opening the festival at a gala event -- marred somewhat by a brigade of picketing protesters who championed the homeless -- was the traditional Canadian first-night film. But Felicia's Journey, from Canada's favorite-son director, Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), is worthy of opening any festival, though it may be too unsettling for some tastes.

Starring Bob Hoskins (Mona Lisa, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), it is a dark tale of a pregnant Irish teen (played with vulnerability by Elaine Cassidy) who travels to England to find her missing lover. She is aided by a quietly dignified catering chef, Hilditch (Hoskins). But her new friend is a deeply disturbed man with a troubled past that intrudes into his present, leading him to a frightening secret life and "rescuing" girls in trouble.

"You have this central character who seems to be something very accessible, very immediate, very emotionally giving," Egoyan said. "But we gradually realize he is completely outside himself. And that is very alarming."

In Ride With the Devil, Taiwan-born but American-based director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm) takes a gritty yet romantic look at the Civil War, using young Hollywood actors as Confederate irregulars fighting a bloody, doomed guerrilla war against Union troops in Kansas. It features Tobey Maguire (Pleasantville) and Skeet Ulrich (Scream) as teen boys who have killed a dozen men before they reach adulthood. Singer Jewel plays a war widow who finds romance with both.

Jeffrey Wright (Basquiat), in a movie-stealing role, plays Holt, a secretly freed slave who rides with these Southerners. He does so out of loyalty to a boyhood white friend, though he is increasingly aware of the danger and irony of his position.

"It's fiction but it's based in actual possibility," said Wright, who studied cases of blacks who fought for the South before stepping into this role. "There weren't broad, generalized rules of relation between blacks and whites."

In an interview after the screening, Jewel admitted she was frightened at making her film debut in a major film with a top director and experienced actors; she expects to get criticism.

"As I got famous, I realized, of course, this is going to be an issue to people, the same as my book," Jewel said. "People just don't like you doing (more than one thing). But I was raised in a family that did everything. So for me not to do that is like cutting a limb and saying, `I must only sing.' I'd rather take the risk than not take the risk."

Few films at the festival created as much interest as Dogma, the new comedy from Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy), starring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock and Smith. In the director's usual foul-mouthed dialogue, the film initially seems to mock religion in general and Catholicism specifically. It had trouble finding a distributor in the United States (Miramax dropped it on orders from parent company Disney), until Lions Gate Films took it on.

Though the film will offend some viewers, it proved to be not so much antireligion as just rude and disappointingly silly. Affleck and Damon play fallen angels attempting to return to heaven, though their return would prove God (Alanis Morissette) fallible and mean the end of existence.

Some controversy could also ensue from John Irving's script of his best seller The Cider House Rules. Set in an orphanage during World War II, the film deals -- though only in part -- with a doctor (Michael Caine) who performs abortions and his young apprentice (Tobey Maguire).

"I'm definitely aware people have very strong feelings about this issue," Maguire said. "I appreciate how the movie represents the issue. I don't think it's too one-sided. It makes it a gray issue, rather than black and white."