Northwest Asian Weekly: A trip to the movies

nwasianweekly.com May 17, 2008
“Vexille”
SIFF week 1: A trip to the movies By Ann-Marie Stillion Northwest Asian Weekly Look for a smaller list of Asian films than we have seen in a long time when the Seattle International Film Festival opens May 22. When the schedule was first published, I immediately began getting e-mails from the community. Where did the Asian films go? Disappointment began morphing into curiosity, however, as we looked at the list. Gone were the excessively bloody films whose primary interest is martial arts. Instead the films from Asia this year are more thoughtful and give us a view of the ever more complex world of international film. On the other hand, Asian American filmmakers either are on holiday, forgot to submit their films or have been overlooked in this year’s crop. You be the judge. Be sure to visit our Web site and peek in the Northwest Asian Weekly over the next three weeks for our reviewers’ thoughts on the Asian films in the fest. Expect a few films on our review list this year without specific Asian content like “Heavy Metal in Bagdad” or “Frozen River.” A few of these films have attracted our attention, inspiring a broadening of our criteria. “Still Life” China May 23 at 9:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema; May 26 at 4:15 p.m., Uptown Arriving on the heels of his masterpiece “The World,” Jia Zhang-ke’s new film registers as something of a disappointment. But even if “Still Life” fails, it’s an honorable failure, one nonetheless worthy of consideration. Jia interweaves two unrelated searches in the town of Fengjie: A laborer, Sanming, who smashes bricks for a living, longs to reunite with his ex-wife, if he can locate her against the shifting backdrop of the Three Gorges project; at the same time, a nurse struggles to find her missing husband, a businessman who proves unusually elusive. “You’re a nostalgic?” a young worker quizzes Sanming, who replies, “We can’t forget who we are.” Throughout “Still Life,” there are visual puns on Jia’s concern for what’s lost as the new eradicates the old. Even when the metaphors are a trifle obvious, Jia’s images are stunning. Strung on a wire across a bare white wall, several wristwatches dangle alongside a gold pocket-watch and a small alarm clock — it’s time suspended, literally. If in “The World,” Jia’s direction sometimes suggested Ozu crossed with Altman, here he consciously evokes the European masters of the 1960s, perhaps especially in the realism with which he depicts the boredom and wistfulness that accompany solitary journeys. — N.P. Thompson “Vexille” Japan May 23 at 4 p.m., Egyptian; May 25 at 9:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema Not available for preview at press time, director Fumihiko Sori’s futuristic cartoon envisions a new era of isolationism in Japan (circa 2077), brought on by a United Nations ban on robot genetics. Violent shoot-outs and heavy metal music ensue, if one can believe what one sees and hears in the movie’s trailer. Unlike last year’s major anime productions, the brightly colored “Paprika” and “Tekkonkinkreet,” “Vexille” looks to have a grayer palette to match its grim storyline. With any luck, director Fumihiko Sori won’t entirely sacrifice his sense of fun. Praising his previous film, the manga-based live action “Ping Pong,” in the Northwest Asian Weekly one year ago, I wrote: “The director loves unusual textures; nowhere is this more apparent than in a fantasy of a figure buried alive under ping-pong balls. You see just a face and then a hand poking up out of an entire frame’s worth of what might as well be eyeballs.” — N.P. Thompson “The Fall” USA/UK/India May 23 at 4:30 p.m. and May 25 at 6:30 p.m., Uptown In a southern California hospital, somewhere in the Golden Age of Hollywood, a stunt man (Lee Pace) lies injured, possibly crippled, after a fall from a railroad bridge before the cameras. A little girl, Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), injured in a fruit-picking mishap, comes to spend time with him. The stuntman spins a fantastic tale incorporating everyone from Charles Darwin to Alexander the Great … but his grand spinning hides darker motives. Indian director Tarsem’s epic epic-ness should blow out your eyeballs, but the stuntman proves opportunistic, amoral and sickeningly self-pitying as the real-world/fantasia contrasts grind on. Zhang Yamou’s “Hero,” by virtue of more solid and more sympathetic construction, remains the definitive Asian epic grounded in unreliable narration. Watch for young Ms. Untaru, though — or at least, should she never lens another film, remember and cherish her. Like all small children — though magnified, this time, by the frame and the screen — she stumbles over her words to describe the miracle world in her eyes. —Andrew Hamlin “The Home Song Stories” Australia/Singapore May 24 at 4 p.m. and May 28 at 9:15 p.m., Uptown Joan Chen, who was marvelous in her bit role as Tony Leung’s mahjongg-playing spouse in “Lust, Caution,” comes a cropper as the leading lady of this soap-sudsy melodrama about a lounge singer in dire financial straits. Much of the action takes place in 1971 (“the year our lives changed forever,” someone opines in voice-over), when Chen and her son and daughter are uprooted from Hong Kong to the Land Down Under. Initially reliant on “uncles” to foot the bills, Chen eventually has to get a job washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant. The movie, with its bad, bad script by Tony Ayres that requires its star to speak in pidgin dialect (“We make house beautiful”), never considers this question: If she’s supposed to be a singer, why doesn’t she sing? Mostly Chen screams. And you will, too — all the way out of the theatre to demand your money back. — N.P. Thompson “Slingshot” Philippines May 24 at 4 p.m., and May 28 at 9:30 p.m., Harvard Exit Not available for a preview screening, this picture was shot entirely with hidden cameras during the Feast of San Nazareno, the better to give a surreptitious, slightly dirty feel to the spiraling whirlpools of corruption it depicts. -–Andrew Hamlin “Epitaph” South Korea May 24 at 11:55 p.m., Egyptian Theatre From SIFF’s Web site: “A young Korean doctor falls in love with a corpse that refuses to decay; a little girl, near catatonic after a car crash, sees horrific visions of her dead mother; and two married doctors perform autopsy on dead Japanese soldiers — all victims of a mysterious serial killer.” I wasn’t able to procure a screener, but this sounds an awful lot like other K-horror flicks where the images are gory and the plot doesn’t make an ounce of sense. I’ve heard that first-time directors the Jung brothers are trying for a sort of art house horror film, with mixed results. Still, it’s a horror film from Korea, and it’s playing at midnight! I expect to see you all there. —Eleanor Lee “Heavy Metal in Baghdad” USA May 24 at 9:30 p.m. and May 25 at 11:00 a.m., SIFF Cinema Dedication to the performing art of rock music is put to the test by Iraq’s only heavy-metal band Acrassicauda (named after a venomous black scorpion) in this documentary. Directors Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi meet up with the band under circumstances no ordinary groupies would even consider during the Iraq War in the summer of 2005. All four members – Firas, Faisal, Marwan and Tony – of the band face unexpected bursts of bullets and bombs as they travel to perform live in front of their equally susceptible fans. They must deal with roadblocks before rehearsing in a basement once targeted and destroyed by a Scud missile. Taken together, their experiences make for a good insight of how music can unite Iraqi citizens as their country falls apart through war. The music, itself, reflects the constant fear and death that occurred at that time. —James Tabafunda “The Children of Huang Shi” Australia May 24 at 6:30 p.m., Egyptian Theatre; May 26 at 1:30 p.m., Uptown Cinema This epic story is one about perseverance and helping others who are in need. With courage and determination, journalist George Hogg helped lead 60 Chinese orphans away from an advancing Japanese army. Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), nurse Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell) and rebel leader “Jack” Chen (Chow Yun Fat) lead a good ensemble cast. Hogg’s true story is an inspirational tale of human compassion. The story element of romance does not fit well and is soon overtaken in importance by the grand adventure involving a majority of the film’s other characters. Writers James MacManus and Jane Hawksley combine to create a good narrative without sufficient drama, based on the real events in the Nanking genocide in the 1930s. Director Roger Spottiswoode’s contribution supports the film’s strong visuals of China’s countryside more than his all-star list of actors. —James Tabafunda “Foster Child” Philippines May 24 at 1:30 p.m. and May 28 at 7:00 p.m., Harvard Exit Each foster child has their own story of separation and undying hope for a new family. Director Brillante Mendoza creates a location-rich story of one Filipino boy’s transition from his foster family to his adoptive American family. Thelma (Cherry Pie Picache) is the busy mother of two sons, Yuri (Jiro Manio) and Gerald (Alwyn Uytingco). Living in poverty and doing her best to take care of her sons and husband Dado (Dan Alvaro) in a slum neighborhood, she’s able to also take care of her 3-year-old foster child John-John (Kier Segundo). Mendoza and writers Ralston and Joel Jover create a sentimental drama with social commentary about foster care in the Philippines. Their story looks at the strong emotional toll on adults and children involved in what is understood by all as a temporary situation. The separation of children, family-related or not, forms the heart of this good story. —James Tabafunda "SITA SINGS THE BLUES" USA May 25, 1:30 p.m.; May 26, 6:45 p.m., Uptown Writer/director/cartoonist Nina Paley thrillingly re-imagines Valmiki’s epic poem “The Ramayana” as a Jazz Age feminist parable. Paley crosscuts two contrasting approaches to the story of the goddess Sita’s marriage to, abduction from, and eventual banishment by her Lord Rama. In the more traditional one, Paley uses the voices of Indian actors with an animation style based on colored chalk etchings; in the other, the demure Sita becomes a busty, Bengali Betty Boop, with exaggerated round curves, who “lip-synchs” and shimmies to the 1929 recordings of white blues vocalist Annette Hanshaw. Setting Depression-era ditties to a 14th-century Hindu saga initially seems amusing, yet it becomes haunting, too, particularly when Sita, to the shock of spectators running after her, enters the belly of Mother Earth. Paley’s decision to score this sequence to Fats Waller’s “I’ve Got a Feelin’ I’m Fallin’” fuses sound and image into an emotionally charged statement on the history of heartbreak across the ages and continents. In this context, Irving Berlin’s lyric, “The song is ended, but the melody lingers on,” heard over the final credits, may never have sounded as devastating as it does in this visually inventive, unassumingly great film. — N.P. Thompson “Fantastic Parasuicides” South Korea May 25 at 9 p.m. and May 26 at 11 a.m., Harvard Exit Suicide becomes the main theme among three separate stories involving failure, isolation and loneliness. The three short films are “Hanging Tough” directed by Park Soo-Young, “Fly Away, Chicken!” directed by Cho Chang-Ho and “Happy Birthday” directed by Kim Sung-Ho. The movie’s title includes the word “fantastic” as each person sees something unusual just before they make the attempt to end their lives. Each moment of hesitation gives this film a sidetrack to explore valid issues and thus, makes the film interesting and not too dark. “Happy Birthday” is the strongest of the three stories since loneliness during the last years of life affects many who lose friends due to old age. While the other stories have merit, the “fantastic” moment in this one is full of life-affirming energy and detail. —James Tabafunda “Mongol” Kazakhstan/Germany/Russia May 27 at 6:30 p.m., Egyptian; May 29 at 4 p.m., Uptown Director Sergi Bodrov’s conceptual masterstroke: Show Genghis Khan before, not after, he became Genghis Khan. This novelty, aside from paving the way for an easy sequel, works up to a point: The future Khan (ace Japanese actor Asano Tadanobu), after being cast into slavery not once, not twice, but three times, naturally proves impossible to beat the fourth time out. Sweeping photography slows down and moves in close enough to pick up odd moments of relaxation and erotic longing across Asano’s visage; he spends most of the movie looking gruff and aloof, though. Bits of Khan altruism (marrying for love and gut feelings, sharing the plunder even with families of the deceased), which may or may not be true to known history, surface prominently. The battle scenes suffer from that insidious “Gladiator” syndrome, sacrificing the big picture for the down-low stick-and-spurt. —Andrew Hamlin “The Song Of Sparrows” Iran May 27 at 7 p.m., and June 3 at 4:30 p.m., Uptown An uneven, if always enjoyable, director, Iran’s Majid Majidi, generally works more effectively with the surprising complexities of pre-teens (“Children of Heaven”) than the more-predictable complexities of adults (“The Willow Tree”). This latest outing from him wasn’t available for preview, but entails a struggling man and his outstanding failure to capture a runaway ostrich. Yes, that probably comes thick with inlaid symbolism, but ostriches brighten the frame, and Majidi should faithfully render the human male’s sweat and agony. -–Andrew Hamlin “Rewind” India May 30 at 9:30 p.m. (as part of “Strange Days” program) at SIFF Cinema at McCaw Hall This nine-minute short wasn’t available for viewing as of press time, but promises a blind man running back and forth over the events that left him very rich. Unfortunately, those same events left somebody else very poor, and possibly bloodied into the bargain. Life often seems like a zero-sum game. Worth going to see how they construct a blind man’s point of view out of a visual medium. Screens as part of the “Strange Days” shorts package. -–Andrew Hamlin

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