Toronto day 6, 5:57 p.m.

With the wondrous cinematic onslaught that is an average film festival, you have good days and you have bad days. So far this has been shaping up to be one of the not-so-hot ones. My morning started with -- or was supposed to start with -- Woody Allen's latest, "Cassandra's Dream," but technical difficulties in the projection booth kept the 8:45 a.m. audience cooling its heels until a bunch of us made a bolt for the door. (The film eventually started 45 minutes late; I'll catch it tomorrow.)

Instead I wandered into "Blood Brothers," a swoony, shallow crime melodrama set in 1930s Shangai. Produced by John Woo and directed by newcomer Alexi Tan, it's the sort of Hong Kong movie that doesn't make it to U.S. theaters for a reason.

Then I ducked over to "Weirdsville," directed by Allan Moyle, who once upon a time (1990) made a great teen movie called "Pump Up the Volume." His latest is a goofy stoner farce set in the wilds of smalltown Ontario nowhere; it features Scott Speedman, Wes Bentley, and Taryn Manning as lowlifes who come up against a local Satanic cult, a Russian mobster, a New Age magnate with an icicle stuck in his temporal lobe, and a crew of dwarf medieval re-enactors. Strained, to say the least, but unexpectedly amusing in places, and very Canadian.

Still seeking that movie high myself, I went to "Nothing is Private," the first film directed by screenwriter Alan Ball ("American Beauty," "Six Feet Under"). And once again I rolled snake-eyes. The film's an adaptation of Alicia Erian's novel "Towelhead," about a Lebanese-American teenage girl confronting racism, sexuality, hypocrisy, and horny old men next door. The onscreen results somewhat resemble "American Beauty" as told from the point of the view of the Mena Suvari character, but newcomer Summer Bishil brings an added grace note of hormonal curiosity.

Still: Oy. "Nothing is Private" is nothing if not controversial, but in ways that become increasingly smug as the film unspools. Ball piles on the shockers: consensual adolescent sex, semi-consensual adult/teenage sex, abusive parents, naked women in golf carts, frozen kittens in the fridge. I'm sure plenty of people will be upset for exactly the reasons he wants them to be, but the movie's as hypocritical as the suburban cul-de-sac Texans it pokes merciless, too-easy fun at. Ball wants to have it both ways, indulging the 13-year-old heroine's erotic explorations, then telling us we're sick for watching. He's prurient about being prurient, and the clincher is a let's-all-get-along ending that sells out the characters he just spent two hours building up. The cast is fine -- Bishil, Aaron Eckhart, Toni Collette, Maria Bello, Peter Macdissi as the girl's horrible father -- but the filmmaker's moral posturing is insufferable. There are good movies about teenage girls and sex, but this isn't one of them.

Finally, onto "La Fille Coupee en Deux," by the 77-year-old French master Claude Chabrol. Ahhhh, at last. If "Nothing is Private" was a sludgy cocktail, "Fille" (English translation: "A Girl Cut in Two") is like a martini so cold it stings. In 115 calm, non-judgmental minutes, Chabrol tells the story of a TV weathergirl (Ludivine Sagnier) whose affair with an aging, celebrated writer (Francois Berleand) somehow leads her into the arms of a young, possibly psychotic rich boy (Benoit Magimel). There are no moral messages here -- when has Chabrol ever hit us over the head with a stick? -- but only human animals elegantly chewing off their own legs. I've seen better work by the director and the movie does seem a chilly amble up to its haunting final image. Today, though, I'll take what I can get.

Next, the new Francois Ozon and after that, multiple Dylans. Oh, and I also got a chance to talk with Keira Knightley, who's appearing here in two films, "Atonement" and "Silk". Nice kid; I think she's got a future, but more on that later.