La La Land gets Oscars boost with Toronto film fest audience prize win
Joyful, quirky musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone earned accolades after opening Venice Film Festival, cut Toronto event is more of a bellwether for film studios and distributors
The bewitching musical La La Land starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone won the coveted Toronto International Film Festival audience prize on Sunday, giving it a leg up on the competition as the Oscars race takes shape.
The joyful, quirky film by Damien Chazelle about a struggling jazz pianist and his actress girlfriend in Los Angeles pays tribute to the golden age of American musicals, honouring classics from Top Hat to Singin’ in the Rain to Grease.
It also reunites Gosling and Stone, who starred together in the 2011 romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love – but with oodles of singing this time.
Stone plays Mia, a wide-eyed romantic who goes from audition to audition – often failed – in her quest to make it big, while Gosling is Sebastian, a jazz pianist with a mission to save the medium, but who struggles to pay his bills.
“Now more than ever we need hope and romance on the big screen,” said Chazelle, 31, a former jazz musician whose film Whiplash (2014) took home three Oscars out of five nominations. “There’s something about musicals. They are movies as a dreamland, expressing a world in which you break into song, in which you can violate the rules of reality.”
La La Land opened the Venice film festival in late August, earning accolades from critics and moviegoers, before screening in Toronto – a bellwether for Oscar-conscious studios and distributors.