A few stray thoughts from the end of the festival, hopefully of general interest. I still have one more review in the pipeline, which should come tomorrow afternoon.

- I am even more gung-ho about Slumdog Millionaire than Kim. It sort of ruined the last day and a half of the festival, because I've been unable to think about much else. I want to see it at least a dozen more times, immediately.

- I need to say something about With a Little Help from Myself, François Dupeyron's follow-up to the arthouse hit Monsieur Ibrahim. It's a respectable, low-key drama set in a French housing project, featuring a justly-acclaimed performance by Félicité Wouassi as a woman working to keep her head above water and her family together despite a seemingly infinite number of obstacles. It gets a bit too cute at points -- there's a subplot regarding the protagonist's sex-starved neighbor that is the epitome of "neither here nor there" -- but it's mostly the sort of solid, unpretentious film I greet with open arms at festivals. There's enough buzz about Wouassi that if you live in a city, you'll surely see it at a theater near you sooner rather than later.
- The festival ended for me with Kisses, a lovely Irish film that I would have liked even more had I been able to understand more than half of the dialogue. Seriously: subtitle the damn thing. It's about two preteens from a rough part of Dublin who ditch their abusive homes and run off to the streets of Dublin for 24 hours. While the girl is understandable much of the time, the boy IS NOT. This made me appreciate Ken Loach, who generously transcribes some of his actors' tougher Scottish brogues for us, all the more.

- Best film I saw here: Slumdog Millionaire (with Flame & Citron a close second).

- Worst film I saw here: astonishingly, Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected.

- Probability of my returning next year: virtually certain.