TORONTO - One generally doesn't go to an international film festival expecting to find joy on the menu, but that is what they've been serving here this year. Where the tenor of previous festivals has been high art, gritty realism, and political confrontation, the Toronto International Film Festival '08 offers visions of bliss fighting to reclaim the spotlight in dark, uncertain times. It's enough to make a jaded moviegoer dare to hope - or to snarl and seek out a depressive Estonian drama instead.

"Slumdog Millionaire," which arrived in town on a wave of good vibes from its reception at the recent Telluride Film Festival, is far from mindlessly upbeat. On the contrary, Danny Boyle's film - his best and most confident work since "Trainspotting" - acknowledges the crushing brutality of growing up poor in India and still manages to rouse audiences to cheers in the final scenes.

The title refers to the film's hero, a young, uneducated coffee-boy (Dev Patel) from the slums of Mumbai who is somehow poised to win the top prize on the country's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Is he a genius? Is he a cheat? Will he win? Despite the film's rocketing pace and visual razzle-dazzle, "Slumdog" is an unabashedly old-school epic - a broad, Dickensian fable built on classic Hollywood bones. It gets a release in the United States on Nov. 28 and deserves to bust out of the art house in search of the biggest word-of-mouth audience it can find.

Another Toronto film leaving screens and audiences glowing is "Rachel Getting Married," a serenely humanist return to form for director Jonathan Demme. Anne Hathaway has the flashiest role as the one dysfunctional member of a Connecticut family - arriving at her sister's nuptials straight out of rehab with a dark cloud over her head - but the film is grounded by ensemble work from Debra Winger, Bill Irwin, Rosemarie DeWitt, and others.

Despite the sound-alike title and concept, this is a more forgiving, less acerbic work than last year's "Margot at the Wedding." Demme films with handheld cameras and music that only wells up when one of the wedding musicians is playing: It's his version of a Dogme movie. After years of playing Hollywood (from "Silence of the Lambs" to his "Manchurian Candidate" remake), the director has rediscovered how much he simply likes people, especially when they're united by rhythm and ritual.

Those at Toronto who haven't been impressed with "Rachel" fault the long musical and dancing sequences during the reception, but that's the point: The bile of the early scenes is healed not by forced dialogue or psychological closure but by ecstatic communal boogie. It's the most open-hearted movie of its kind since "Monsoon Wedding.
A third film shooting out good vibes and fretting about where they land is the aptly titled "Happy-Go-Lucky," a minor work from England's Mike Leigh ("Topsy-Turvy") but an intriguing one. Sally Hawkins plays London schoolteacher Poppy, one of those naturally optimistic goofballs who can either put a smile on your face or have you contemplating homicide in less than a minute.

Leigh's social didacticism pokes through in a few too many spots (Poppy has a middle-class sister who's a grasping pill), but at its comic best - any of the scenes involving Eddie Marsan as Poppy's driving instructor, a black hole of self-loathing cynicism - "Happy-Go-Lucky" wonders if the Poppys of the world aren't in fact its backbone.

There are smaller good times to be had at this year's festival, too. The unexpectedly excellent documentary "Every Little Step" celebrates the original Broadway production of "A Chorus Line" and the casting of the recent revival in a way that honors every struggling hoofer who ever lived. The gritty but pat Irish drama "Kisses," about two pre-teens who discover a darkly magical after-hours Dublin after they run away from their abusive families, has won a number of hearts here. You have to be willing to overlook the heavy hand of director Lance Daly to truly buy into it.

There's even an aura of warmth surrounding "The Wrestler," the festival's sudden must-see movie after it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival last Saturday. On the surface, this seems absurd: The movie is a grimly realistic character study about the waning days of a professional wrestler named Randy "The Ram" Robinson, played by a bulky, battered Mickey Rourke who bears no resemblance to the skinny devil of his 1980s movies.

Yet the actor makes this palooka a genuinely touching figure, funny and lost and self-aware in equal measure. The film echoes classics like "Rocky," "On the Waterfront," and 1931's "The Champ" while still managing to stand on its own wobbly feet. If "The Wrestler" is the most conventional movie directed by Darren Aronofsky ("Pi," "Requiem for a Dream"), it's also his most emotionally direct.

Elsewhere, established formulas are showing their age. "Management," a woebegone romantic comedy from writer-director Stephen Belber, feels like a premature Sundance escapee; it stars Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn in a "quirky" tale of obsessive love and personal growth, and it feels like the death of indie cinema.

Denmark's "Flame & Citron" imbues the ever-popular World War II resistance genre with existential despair, but it makes its points awkwardly and repeatedly, stranding strong actors like Mads Mikkelsen ("Casino Royale") along the way. "Genova," the latest from director Michael Winterbottom ("A Mighty Heart"), works up a psychologically sinister head of steam with its story of a widower (Colin Firth) and his two daughters on sabbatical in Italy, but for all the references to 1973's art house suspense classic "Don't Look Now," the film has no idea where to go.

It's the movies trying approaches both unfashionable and new that stick in the mind here - most notably "JCVD." Possibly the first ever meta-action flick - think Chuck Norris remixed by Charlie Kaufman - the film stars over-the-hill action star Jean-Claude Van Damme as an over-the-hill action-movie star named Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Wait, it gets better: Weary from a prolonged child custody battle and burned out from too many straight-to-video sequels, the Muscles from Brussels returns to his native Belgium, walks into a bank, and is immediately taken hostage during an in-progress robbery. The police think the movie star is the robber, the robbers want his autograph, Jean-Claude's aged parents show up to talk him down, and in one astonishing scene, the actor ascends to the heavens to address the audience in a long, teary monologue about the metaphysical perils of fame.

Directed with a Godardian spin by Mabrouk el Mechri, "JCVD" is didactic kickboxing farce, and it forces you to consider the star, who plays along brilliantly, in a whole new light. When Mickey Rourke and Jean-Claude van Damme give two of the best performances at the festival, you know the ground is shifting. Boston.com