Calgary is a city often characterized by its utter blandness. Fashion almost always arrives a few months too late, pink in the face and out of breath. Most cultural events that we host have happened somewhere else first, likely in much grander form. The astronomical parking rates are nearly the only noteworthy thing we can claim as ours and ours alone, but, alas, even there we're third to Toronto and Montreal. Many would jump up and down, flailing their arms at the world-class Calgary International Film Festival as proof of our blossoming culture, but, if this year is proof, it's not so much world-class as it really, really, really wants to be world-class.

And — here comes the caveat — it's getting there. The problem with this year's CIFF wasn't that it was too small or too amateurish for the size of the city. It's that it was weighed down by all the sponsorships, galas and prize packs the organizers were determined to staple to every exposed bit of flesh. This ostentation led to problems like pass holders being pre-empted by anyone who happened to be carrying an American Express card, and stressed-out volunteers barely paying attention to who was walking past them, let alone scanning their tickets. Those who spent nearly $200 on a ticket book and didn't get to see all the films they had planned on are probably just starting to feel the bitterness settle in now, but, well, caveat emptor.

The signs were there, and they were early. Though anyone who wants to see CIFF stand a fighting chance against Toronto won't fault the organizers for going after corporate sponsorship, preferred seating for American Express cardholders is going a bit too far. The last thing a young film buff who scraped together her last $200 for a 20-pack wants to see is someone walk past her in the line she'd already been waiting in for 45 minutes. All the policy does is create ill will with the festival's primary audience and set a dangerous precedent for the future.

The rest of the problems are small — though, like many rats glued together to form a much larger, fiercer rat, they’re not insubstantial. Every film I attended started 10 to 15 minutes late and a number of them were shown in the incorrect aspect ratio. Amateurish mistakes to be sure, but forgivable given the scope of the festival. A bigger little flaw, though, was how the organizers handled the screening of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Or how they handled not screening it, more accurately. To be very blunt: If a relatively small film festival is able to secure a film with a massive star that was shot almost entirely in the surrounding area, it should be screened more than three times. If it is only screened three times, more than one of those shows should be open to the general pass-holding public, and that show should be in the largest venue available, not the smallest.

Organizing this linchpin film as they did gives the impression that CIFF’s organizers were posturing, acting like their festival was bigger than it really was — intentionally or not. It's simple misjudgments like this that sometimes gave CIFF an atmosphere of under-preparation at best and an inferiority complex at worst.

Now, the CIFF isn't an awful festival by any means. Using the sheer number of films screened and the high quality of many of them as a barometer, it's really quite good. It's just new compared to those that it's trying to compete with, and the organizers might do well to cut themselves some slack in this regard. While Faustian deals with major corporations might be a way for the CIFF to grow more quickly, it'll need some time to adjust to the spurt. If indeed Volkswagen and American Express will be returning as sponsors next year, then what we witnessed this year was likely just an awkward adolescence.