Jake Gyllenhaal takes a bulldozer to his own life as a man unhinged by grief in "Demolition," which opened North America's largest film festival in Toronto on Thursday.

In the drama by Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallee, Gyllenhaal plays a New York investment banker, Davis Mitchell, who starts to unravel after his wife is killed in a car crash.

Pressed by his father-in-law to pull it together, Mitchell instead launches into an obsessive campaign against a vending machine company, penning letters of complaint that take on an increasingly confessional tone.

At the same time, he commits random acts of destruction -- dismantling household appliances as if trying to pry apart his world.

Amid the ruins, Mitchell strikes up a strange bond with a vending machine company employee (played by Naomi Watts) after she finds herself on the receiving end of his letters.

The film brings director Vallee to Toronto a third year in a row, on the heels of "Wild" with the Oscar-nominated Reese Witherspoon, and "Dallas Buyers Club," which earned Matthew McConaughey an Oscar for his portrayal of a hustler who works around the system to buy medication for AIDS patients.

- 'Actors' director' -

These past few years Vallee has established himself as a "leading actors' director," said festival boss Cameron Bailey.

"The world discovered what he could do in 'Dallas Buyers Club' and 'Wild.'"

"In 'Demolition,' you'll see the next step. He was able to, with the actor, work to completely immerse that actor in the character."

Gyllenhaal himself has also become a fixture in Toronto, appearing in last year's well-received "Nightcrawler," as well as "Prisoners," "Rendition" and previously in Ang Lee's acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain."

"Jake is fully engaged in this performance," said Bailey. "And Jean-Marc was able to build a world around this character where you feel you're with that person."

On the red carpet at the film's gala premiere, Gyllenhaal said he appreciated the film's take on grieving, which he said was "very different from the way that movies tend to tell you that you're supposed to (grieve)."

Vallee described Gyllenhaal during the film shoot as "very spontaneous."

"He's right on and gives you what the script is asking on the first take," he told AFP. "And then the second take he'll go somewhere else, and then the third take he'll go somewhere else. And it's always interesting."

Nearly 400 feature and short films from 71 countries will be screened at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 10 to 20.

The event has traditionally been key for Oscar-conscious studios and distributors, attracting hundreds of filmmakers and actors to the red carpet in Canada's largest city.

- Drone strikes, migrant dreams -

In past years, Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave," "The King's Speech," "Slumdog Millionaire," "American Beauty" and "Chariots of Fire" won the festival's audience prize for best picture before going on to win Best Picture Oscars.

This year's lineup includes films on transgender people, quirky family dynamics, drone strikes, military coups and rigged elections, organized crime, and the music of Janis Joplin, Keith Richards, Yo-Yo Ma and other luminaries.

Footage of Aretha Franklin's 1972 concert in a Los Angeles church was also scheduled to be screened in Toronto, but was blocked by the singer.

Julianne Moore, "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner, Salma Hayek, and comedian Sarah Silverman, meanwhile, will chat with audiences about their film careers.

Jonas Cuaron ("Gravity") is back with a story about migrants seeking a better life in America being stalked in the desert by a deranged vigilante, in "Desierto."

Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad" fame returns in "Trumbo," starring alongside Helen Mirren and John Goodman in the movie about the screenwriter and Hollywood blacklist victim Dalton Trumbo.

Ridley Scott's new interplanetary epic "The Martian," starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on the red planet, has been hotly anticipated.

And six years after his last film, Michael Moore returns with a new documentary, "Where to Invade Next."
Source: AFP