All You Can Eat Buddha

Welcome to the most peculiar resort in the world. The Caribbean Hotel Palacio offers not only attentive service, tables that buckle under the weight of food and a variety of attractions headlined by a real miracle worker. For those who value unusual experiences, especially in film, this is a must-see. Ian Lagarde's debut-a blend of surrealist comedy and satire on consumer tourism and capitalist forms of leisure-puts him among a respectable group of eccentric Canadian filmmakers that includes Guy Maddin, Stéphane Lafleur and Denis Côté. And this isn't the first time that Lagarde has been linked to Côté, as he was the cinematographer for Côté's Vic + Flo Saw a Bear, a film that festival audiences will certainly be familiar with. All You Can Eat Buddha begins when Mike-a typical tourist in a Hawaiian shirt-arrives at the hotel. What begins as a lazy holiday, however, takes off in an unexpected direction. The heat is stifling, reality and dreaming blend together, and the specter of revolution is on the horizon. This is one of those films that you should know as little about as possible before seeing it, so as to allow yourself to be carried away by the director's imagination.