TORONTO: 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.

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.”