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BEIJING
BICYCLE (Shiqi sui de dan che) Mainland
This
bleak 2001 release differs from most mainland films through its deep
pessimism - all the way to a downbeat open ending. Guo Liangui, an
introverted teen from the country, gets a job as a bicycle messenger.
Just as he is about to pay off his bike, it gets stolen. The bike is
now in the possession of Jian, a slightly younger schoolboy who hangs
out with some tough types. Jian has a difficult relationship with his
stepfather and is trying to impress a schoolgirl with his "new" bike.
Guo Liangui's boss promises him he will be
hired again as a messenger if he finds the bike, but things don't quite
turn out. Guo
Liangui gets beaten to a pulp on several occasions as he tries to
reclaim his bicycle. Jian is conscious that his theft is ruining both
young men's lives but he is too proud to give up.
Beijing Bicycle, a sober - almost austere film, takes place in a dusty
and lawless Hutong.
Both young actors are outstanding. Superficially, one
could question the series of tough breaks endured stoically by Guo
Liangui, but we must remember that there
is less recourse, less hope in China for the downtrodden. If anything,
this film
is reminiscent of Lao She's classic novel Rickshaw. Nominally the
female lead, Xun Shou (Suzhou River)
appears only for a few silent minutes.
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THE
BLUE KITE (Lan feng zheng) Mainland
Along
with To Live, this is
one of two masterpieces covering the lives of ordinary Chinese families
during the later Mao years, culminating with the madness of the
Cultural Revolution. The Blue Kite is less elaborate than To Live, and as such it may
be even more powerful. The film was completed in 1993, but it was
banned in mainland China. The magnificent Lu Liping plays the role of a
Chinese
woman who first gets married in 1953. She gives birth to a little boy
whom she calls Iron Horse, but soon her husband gets arrested and sent
to a labor camp where he dies. Through the years that follow, the
mother gets married twice more, both times with tragic outcomes. All
three husbands try to be good fathers to Iron Horse, but their efforts
are sabotaged by the politics of their times. The family, and by
extension the whole country, suffer through famine, arbitrary
injustice, and humiliating enforced communal life.
Although depressing,
The Blue Kite is essential viewing: China has come a long way
economically as of late, but we must not forget that the government
portrayed in the movie (and which banned its release) is essentially
the
same which puts on a benign face today in preparation of the 2008
Olympics.
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CENTER
STAGE (Ruan Lingyu) Hong Kong
You
have to be a hard core Maggie Cheung fan to stay awake through Center
Stage (1992) which is alas a wasted opportunity. Cheung is
unbelievably lovely as Ruang Lingyu, a real life movie star in 1930
Shanghai. But the studio politics and the society scandals which led
Ruang
Lingyu to take her own life are told confusingly - at a snail's
pace. A few oddly timed documentary sequences during which the actors
talk about
the script of the movie fall as flat as Mu Shu Pork pancakes. Carina
Lau (Intimates, 2046) is hardly noticeable in
a minor role as a fellow actress.
There are compensations, including a moment when Maggie Cheung changes
a light bulb by climbing gracefully on a table, a couple of sequences
in
an art-deco dance club, and a touching farewell scene. Also notable is
the intelligent use of a small budget, including the use of painted
backdrops in a scene or two. But the movie is fatally
hampered by its sluggish pace.
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CHUNGKING
EXPRESS (Chong qing sen lin) Hong Kong
Basically an arty stinker. This early (1994) Wong Kar Wai
film provides an unsavory glimpse of fin-de-siècle Hong Kong. It
starts intriguingly, with martial arts star Brigitte Lin as a noirish
moll with dark glasses. She briefly crosses paths with a cop who has an
obsession with expiration dates on cans (I kid you not). So far
so good, but soon we
lose sight of these two in favor of a truly annoying love story
featuring another cop, played by Tony Leung. He yearns for a stewardess
and buys a salad for her every day. As it happens, the salad girl at
the food stall falls for him and invades his life after the stewardess
dumps him.
I realize that for Hong Kong audiences, the spectacle of big star Faye
Wong (as the salad maker) lolling about the cop's apartment while
"California Dreaming" plays again and again on the soundtrack may be
evocative and multi layered. But to me, ambitious + boring =
pretentious. Optimists will see germs, within Chungking Express, of
later Wong Kar Wai masterpieces (In
the Mood For Love and 2046).
Skeptics will take Chungking Express as evidence that the emperor has
no
clothes - and never did.
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COMRADES,
ALMOST A LOVE STORY (Tian
mi mi) Hong Kong
The
English title is misleading: Tian mi mi means Honey Sweet. This 1996
movie is one of the most enjoyable romantic comedy-dramas ever. Imagine
a Hong Kong version of The Way We Were, but better paced and not so
self important. Leon Lai plays a sweet bumpkin from the mainland who
arrives in Hong Kong to stay with his aunt (Irene Tsu, in a strong
vignette). There, he
meets a more experienced girl (Maggie Cheung) who works at McDonald's.
At first she teaches him the ropes, and eventually their relationship
develops. He has a kind and attractive fiancée at home, which
complicates matters. The story spans several years, during which Maggie
Cheung becomes very successful and is involved with a sympathetic
gangster (Eric Tsang, in a magnificent performance).
From two-bit language schools to fancy cocktail parties, even onto the
streets of
Brooklyn, Tian mi mi casts a strong spell. The chemistry
between the leads is magical. Following an already satisfying
ending, the
last shot is one of the most pleasant surprises in my movie watching
experience. Tian mi mi is the perfect dating movie.
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CURSE
OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia) Mainland
This
eagerly anticipated 2006 release was the project which reunited
director Zhang Yimou and his muse Gong Li after an eleven year hiatus.
Curse is a historical family tragedy on an epic scale. A king with
three sons and a ruthless wife (who is the mother of the two younger
sons and the mistress of the elder) faces a rebellion during the
chrysanthemum festival. The rebellion is fomented by the queen, whom
the king has been poisoning slowly. As it happens, the scarred wife of
the royal pharmacist is none other than the older prince's birth
mother...
It could have been good-good,
or even good-trashy like Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharaohs. But Curse
is mostly a disappointment. The set design is lurid, exceeding in
vulgarity any Macau casino. The score is a horror of the school of The
Omen. The crowd and battle scenes, obviously computer enhanced, are
pointless after a while. Gong Li, upstaged by her preposterous
cleavage, is onscreen a lot - but with little to do but purse her lips
and glower. On the credit side the unknown Jin Chen, in the small role
of the pharmacist's wife, brings the movie to urgent life in a few
scenes.
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DAYS OF
BEING WILD (A Fei
zheng chuan) Hong Kong
This
Wong Kar Wai film was released in 1991. If you have seen In the Mood
for Love (2000) and 2046 (2004) previously, it is impossible to judge
Days of Being Wild as an independent work, since it was deliberately
braided into the narrative of the later movies.
All the elements that make the two more mature films memorable are
present in Days of Being Wild, from the ghostly Latin music to the
stylized costumes and art direction. But do not expect a free-standing
masterpiece:
what Ju-Dou is to Raise the Red Lantern, Days of Being Wild is to In
the Mood for Love, an artist's sketch, a promise...
Leslie Cheung (Farewell my Concubine) plays
a 1960 Hong Kong gangster with two girl friends: Maggie
Cheung is a bit pallid as the more serious Su Lizhen, and Carina Lau is
fantastic as the flashier Lulu. Leslie finds out that he is adopted.
Long time Hong Kong star Rebecca Pan (the landlady in In the Mood for
Love) is wonderful as his trampy adoptive mother. Tony Leung
appears in a disconnected epilogue rumored to be the embryo for a never
made sequel.
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DEVILS
ON THE DOORSTEP (Guizi lai le) Mainland
This gritty 2000 film has a completely different texture from that of
all other Chinese movies I have seen. Shot in high contrast black and
white, and filled to the rim with sarcasm and derision, it feels
Russian, Italian, or even Japanese. It is the only film on this list
with no sentimentality whatsoever.
During Japanese occupation, the inhabitants of a dirt-poor village near
a Japanese garrison need to hide a captured fanatical Japanese soldier
and his Chinese interpreter. Devils On The Doorstep is a virtuosic
piece of moviemaking: the film dares us to laugh at some developments
while steadily reminding us that the situation is bound to end
horrifically. Much of the humor derives from the fact that only the
interpreter understands both languages, and he mistranslates most of
what he is told to save his own skin. When the conclusion comes after
almost three hours of running time, it is in a sequence of surpassing
violence. This uncomfortable movie can be admired, but I'm not sure at
all whether I liked it.
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EAT
DRINK MAN WOMAN (Yin shi nan nu) Taiwan
Master
Chu, the widowed chef at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, lives with his
three daughters: an elegant but remote airline executive, a
Christian-convert school teacher with a short fuse, and a
student who works at a fast food place. The quiet father prepares
elaborate meals for his daughters, does their laundry, but cannot
communicate with them as he does with his old kitchen buddy or with the
divorcee next door. The divorcee's mother - an amusing chain-smoking
caricature - has her sights on Master Chu whose daughters consider him
a hopeless
traditionalist and have nothing to share with him besides food
talk.
During the course of this superb 1994 comedy-drama, events occur which
force the frozen-solid family to thaw. This movie is one of director
Ang
Lee's best. Intense scenes of mutual incomprehension are leavened with
hilarious revelations. Eat Drink Man Woman was remade here,
disastrously, as Tortilla Soup - as appetizing as a wonton dipped in
guacamole.
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ELECTRIC
SHADOWS (Meng
ying tong nian) Mainland
This 2004 release tries very hard to be a charmer. Too hard? A young
man on a bicycle is assaulted by a mute young woman. When she entrusts
him to feed her goldfish he discovers her past, in a feature-length
flashback. She was the daughter of a determined single mother in a
village during
the cultural revolution. Her mother was crazy about movies - shown
outside, on a sheet - and the little girl believed that her father was
a movie hero. When the mother married the local projectionist and the
two of them had a little boy to dote on, the little girl felt betrayed.
For some reason, the familiar ingredients refuse to blend into a
convincing whole. The years of deprivations are recalled with
syrup-sweet nostalgia, including the propaganda film excerpts shown by
the projectionist. The scenes with the children lead unconvincingly to
a life-altering accident. The final coincidence (the young woman lives
a few yards away from her old parents), feels like one too many.
Electric Shadows is interesting in some of its detail, but as a whole
it is a rather synthetic - or worse, cynical - effort.
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THE EYE
(Jian gui) Hong Kong
This enormous 2002 hit has already spawned 10 sequels (!) and countless
imitations. The Eye is itself derived from the Japanese school of
horror
movies, which has brought us Ringu and Juon along with their respective
remakes The Ring and The Grudge. Just like the aforementioned Japanese
"classics," The
Eye is elegantly creepy, with the occasional "disturbing image" as
noted next to the R rating.
Angelica Lee plays a sweet and timid girl, blind since early childhood,
who receives a double cornea transplant and starts seeing things in
more ways
than one. The newly sighted girl travels to Thailand to find out more
about the corneas' donor and discovers the meaning of her visions,
actually a warning - leading to a large-scale emergency.
The Eye is all style. The photography is brilliant: it recreates and
exaggerates ugly fluorescent-lit corridors and hallways, doomed buses
and oppressive hospitals in a way that heightens the suspense. The
shocks,
when they occur, are satisfactory while the gore level is low.
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FAREWELL
MY CONCUBINE (Ba wang bie ji) Mainland
As one
of the first mainland Chinese movies to be shown in the West back in
1993, Farewell My Concubine was a sentation. The movie covers more than
fifty years in the lives of two Beijing opera performers, from their
apprenticeship as boys to their reunion in extremis as old men. Zhang
Fengyi is excellent as the handsome half of the duet, but what makes
the movie so intriguing is that the other partner is a more feminine
man who plays female roles in the operas. This poignant character,
played by Leslie Cheung, is not a gay drag performer. It is a man who
has sublimated his sexuality for his art. Emotionally, he does rely on
his stronger partner, to the incomprehension, even the disgust, of the
latter's wife (Gong Li, in a mean-spirited, Red Lantern like role).
The movie covers all the crises of recent Chinese history: our
protagonists have to deal with perverted eunuchs, the Japanese, the
nationalists, and finally the communists. An epic, and a big budget
production, Farewell My Concubine introduces many of the elements
familiar to us from subsequent Chinese movies. And if it fails - by a
smidgen - to create a coalescent whole out of its parts, it definitely
is an early milestone of the industry.
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A FISHY
STORY (Bu tuo wa de ren) Hong
Kong
This 1989 romantic comedy can be warmly recommended for two groups:
admirers of Maggie Cheung, and Breakfast at Tiffany's devotees. The
movie plays like an unofficial remake of Blake Edwards' classic. There
is even a comic Indian neighbor (Gujjar SIngh) to match Mickey Rooney's
Japanese original. Maggie Cheung plays a self-centered party girl who
moves into
the same building as a cab driver (Kenny Bee) who is the kept boy of a
wealthy woman. Maggie and Kenny's business schemes are hampered by the
street unrest which shook Hong Kong in 1967.
The
theme of the movie - two casual prostitutes fall in love - is handled
more frankly than in Breakfast at Tiffany's which was made in less
permissive times.
Kenny Bee is endearingly flustered throughout, and Josephine
Koo makes
the rich patroness more sympathetic than Patricia Neal chose to. But
it's doll-like Maggie Cheung's movie all the way. Wearing an amusing
apocryphal
1960s wardrobe, she arguably matches Audrey Hepburn's charm.
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GOLDEN
CHICKEN (Jin ji) Hong Kong
Now
this one is not an uplifting DVD for the whole family. Golden Chicken
was a mega-hit in 2002, and it describes the career of a Hong Kong
hooker and how it parallels the recent history of Hong Kong itself.
Sandra Ng is extraordinarily likable as Kam, a plain, aging prostie who
gets locked with a mugger (Eric Tsang) inside an ATM booth during a
nighttime power outage. Sheherazade-like, she distracts her assailant
with
recollections from her sleazy past, including highs (giving a massage
to real-life star Andy Lau) and lows (giving a baby up for adoption).
By the time morning comes and power is restored, Kam is ready to face
another day with her newfound friend.
Eric Tsang is great as always as a soft-hearted neanderthal, and Irene
Tsu has her moments as a madam. Golden Chicken is often raunchy and
vulgar; some
of the allusions are unfathomable to us, but thanks to Sandra Ng it
is definitely worth watching.
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GOOD
MEN GOOD WOMEN (Hao nan hao nu) Taiwan
This
1995 movie was directed by the renowned Taiwanese Hou Hsiao-hsien.
Good Men Good Women alternates between scenes set in the present time,
centered
around an unbalanced actress, and scenes from Taiwan's repressive past
under Japanese occupation and Kuomintang martial law. The modern-day
actress is offered a movie role as a freedom fighter from the 1940s,
then starts receiving faxes that threaten her already fragile mental
state.
Although one is in the presence of impressive movie-making, this is a
painful slog. The leading lady is deliberately uncharismatic and the
scenes that
introduce her past as a drug addict are repulsive. This movie appears
to have a lot to say about art and artifice, history and truth, and the
anesthetic effect of modern - i.e. Americanized - society. To
be truthful, however, it is hard to sit through.
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HAPPY
TIMES (Xing fu shi guang) Mainland
Happy
times, a comedy-with-tears released in 2000, was Zhang Yimou's last
intimate movie before
he devoted himself to spectaculars such as Hero. It is also Zhang's
weirdest and most morally
disorienting movie. Zhao, a well-meaning middle-age loser, is involved
with an obese shrew
who has a blind stepdaughter. In order to impress his horrid
girlfriend, he claims to be a hotel owner. (He actually did own a
stationary bus, which he rented by the hour to young couples, the Happy
Times Hotel of the original title.) With his out-of-work friends, Zhao
develops an elaborate charade, pretending to hire the blind girl as a
masseuse in his fancy hotel. The young girl is very happy to work, and
to collect (pretend) money. She hopes to be reunited with her own
father and have her sight restored through an expensive surgery.
It all sounds like Charlie Chaplin at his most sentimental, but it
works superlatively well. Happy Times is a very daring movie,
especially coming
right after the almost dimwitted The Road Home. The final
scene is absolutely devastating.
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HEALING
HEARTS (Xia gu ren xin) Hong
Kong
This
complete mess of a movie, vaguely reminiscent of Dark Victory, was
released in 2001. Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love, 2046) as
handsome and soulful as ever, plays a young surgeon, Dr. Ching. Kenny
Bee (A Fishy Story) looking
puffy and dissipated here, is Dr. Fong, whose fiancée, Jackie,
is in a coma. When Jackie miraculously awakens, she is understandably
drawn to Dr. Ching. (Dr. Fong doesn't mind all that much.) Jackie moves
into Dr. Ching's apartment and starts growing on him although she is
irritating (she buys him Hello Kitty toothpaste when he asks for
Sensodyne!) As the romance is about to blossom, Jackie develops a brain
tumor. Dr. Ching tries to operate, but without success. Jackie leaves,
her future uncertain.
Weird subplots weave in and out of the central love story, but not as
neatly as they would in an American scalpel and brain tumor soap. A
thrilling bank
robbery sequence lets you hope that the movie is going to switch gear -
in vain. The English subtitles read like they were written in a fortune
cookie factory. But basically, the fatal flaw of the film is Michelle
Reis as Jackie. As a character, and as an actress, she is so annoying
that one doesn't care whether Dr. Ching saves her or not.
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HERO
(Ying xiong) Mainland
Hero is
a gorgeous 2002 film with a fantastic cast. During
legendary times, the King
of China is threatened by three powerful assassins: Sky, Broken
Sword, and Flying Snow. A simple soldier arrives at the palace and
relates to the king how he has dispatched all three of his enemies. But
the king finds inconsistencies in the story: could the nameless soldier
be the most dangerous assassin of all?
Hero consists of elaborate color-coded production numbers - everything
in Flying Snow's world is red, for example. The art direction and the
photography are beyond belief: be it a single drop of water or
thousands of arrows, all visual aspects are under near-magical control.
The martial-arts scenes are stylized wonders. Jet Li has a great
presence as the protagonist, and Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and Zhang
Ziyi bring as much conviction to their roles as humanly possible. It is
remarkable how these serious actors can hold their own during action
scenes: just try to imagine Val Kilmer, Naomi Watts and Sandra Bullock
performing such hijinks.
All this being said, Hero was to me a somewhat dispiriting
experience. How could the director of Happy Times and Not One Less spend so much
energy on this soulless pageant? It is as if Ingmar Bergman had
gone on to direct Lord of The Rings.
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IN THE
MOOD FOR LOVE (Hua yang nian hua) Hong Kong
This is
a magnificent film, which brought its director Wong Kar Wai the highest
acclaim in 2000. Hong Kong in the 1960s was so crowded that people in
apartments took in tenants. On the very same day, in the same building,
two young couples move in: Maggie Cheung and her (unseen) husband, and
Tony Leung and his (unseen) wife. Maggie and Tony bump into each other
now and then, and exchange courtesies until they realize that their
spouses are carrying on an affair together. (Maggie's husband has given
Maggie and Tony's wife the same purse - Tony's wife has given Tony and
Maggie's husband the same necktie). Left on their own, Maggie and Tony
talk a lot, think a lot, eat a lot, hide from the neighbors, and
possibly have a
small fling too. Years later, they almost find each other again, but
not quite.
The movie has an addictive, exaggerated texture: like clippings from an
old issue of some women's magazine reinterpreted with a divine use of
color, art direction, and background detail. The soundtrack adds a
whole dimension, with odd choices that are just right (Nat King Cole
singing in Spanish). Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung give deservedly
legendary performances within a colorful supporting cast. Ultimately,
the art is at the service of an intense and heartbreaking plot. In The
Mood For Love is a triumph - and a unique experience.
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INFERNAL
AFFAIRS (Wu jian dao) Hong Kong
By now
everyone knows what this 2002 hit is about, since it was the object of
a starry American remake, The Departed. A triad gang has infiltrated
the police department with a mole, and the police have successfully
infiltrated the gang with an undercover agent. Years pass. Each side
realizes there is a traitor in its midst. The undercover cop (Tony
Leung) and the undercover gangster (Andy Lau) are under increasing
stress after the police commissioner is slain.
This movie was showered with awards, and hailed as the renaissance of
Hong Kong action moviemaking. Indeed it is less foolish than routine
Jackie Chan flicks and such. It is also more solemn and self-important.
Tony Leung and Andy Lau, huge personalities, lend credibility and
guarantee
audience identification. Eric Tsang is his priceless self. Infernal
Affairs did not strike me as anything special, but there again, if it
weren't Chinese, you'd have to pay me to watch a movie of this genre.
Even though poor Nicolas Cage is in no way involved, to me this is a
Nicolas Cage film, overblown and overwrought. I'd rather watch Rush
Hour!
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INTIMATES (Zi shu)
Hong Kong
This is
a touching and unusual film from 1997. A modern day career girl with
boyfriend trouble
accompanies her old Aunt Foon to the village of her youth. There, a
long flashback reveals that after a painful affair and an abortion,
Foon had started a friendship with the seventh wife of a rich silk mill
owner. The two rebellious women had become more than friends before
being separated by the chaos of civil war. At the end of the movie, in
an awkward epilogue, the two old women are reunited.
Intimates shows signs of re-editing; rumor is that a much
longer version exists. This would explain the clumsy ending during
which you can't quite tell which of the young women from the flashback
is the old one in the wheelchair. Still, there is much to enjoy. Carina
Lau and Charlie Yeung are excellent as the leads and they handle their
love scene in a tender, non-exploitative way. The way the story
alternates between old silk-weaving China and modern cell-phone China
is smooth and convincing, as is the contrast between the shallow love
plot in the present-day scenes and the deeper love in the flashbacks.
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JU DOU Mainland
This 1990 film is like a blueprint for greater things to
come form director Zhang Yimou and his favorite actress Gong Li. She
plays the role of Ju Dou, a young girl sold as a wife to a dyer in a
1920s village. The relationship between the older man and his bride is
predictably abusive as she fails to provide him with an heir. Soon, the
dyer's handsome nephew moves to the compound, and the tables are
turned. Ju Dou finally gives birth to a son after a torrid affair with
her husband's nephew. Now an abused invalid himself, the husband
befriends the little boy he knows is not his. Later on, the boy - grown
up - will turn against his parents.
It is all a bit over the top, with sweaty love scenes, physical
torture, bubbly vats of dye, and long swaths of bright yellow and red
fabric drying overhead. None of the characters is sympathetic, and the
last third of the story is disturbing. The progress in narrative
discipline between this and Raise
the Red Lantern, which
was made one year later, is striking.
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JULY
RHAPSODY (Nan ren si shi) Hong Kong
Singing heartthrobs Jacky Cheung and Anita Mui give
masterful and restrained performances in this probing 2002 drama. Jacky
plays a high school teacher and Anita his wife. Years ago, they had
both been in the thrall of a college professor with whom Anita then
carried a brief affair. When she found herself pregnant, she and Jacky
married. Today, their marriage is near bankrupt, although outwardly
civil. When the (unseen) professor becomes terminally ill, Anita goes
to care for him - with perhaps other than altruistic motives. Left
alone with two aloof sons, Jacky is pursued by a determined nymphet in
his class (Karena Lam, in her first movie role).
The original title of July Rhapsody means The Forty Year Old Man, and
Jacky Cheung's character is torn between his uncompromising literary
standards, envy toward his more affluent friends, frustration with his
school's administration, and fascination for the young girl. Karena Lam
is sensational as the student with the crush, delivering a multi
faceted performance of great depth. And Anita Mui - who died soon
thereafter - is just marvelous as the wife; a brave, emotionally naked
performance far away from Anita's flashy stage persona.
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THE
KING OF MASKS (Bian Lian) Mainland
To me,
this 1996 film is more successful than Farewell My Concubine which
covers much of the same ground. The magnificant actor Xu Zhu (the
father in Shower)
plays
Wang Bianlian, one of the few surviving specialist of Sichuan mask art:
he
tells stories while changing masks so fast you can't see him actually
do it. In failing health, he needs to find an apprentice to carry the
tradition of this ancient art. At a slave auction, he buys what he
believes to be a
little boy, but turns out to be a little girl. The pitiful child is
eager to learn, and happy to share the old master's life and his tiny
houseboat. On more than occasion, the old master and his ward are
rescued by a revered transgender opera star.
The adventures of the King of Masks along with his well meaning but
clumsy little apprentice and their faithful monkey are reminiscent of
Charles Dickens - but
with a background of 1930s Chinese
upheavals. Like Together,
The King of Masks is basically a male weepie - and a wonderful one too.
Definitely recommended for family viewing, The King of Maks is a
welcome
purge from mainline commercial movies. |
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LOST IN
TIME (Wang bu liao) Hong
Kong
This
intimately scaled 2003 chick-flick is an unexpected pleasure. Sweet
Cecila Cheung plays the role of Siu Wai, a young woman who is engaged
to a bus driver (Louis Koo, in a cameo role) with the custody of his
little son. When the fiancé dies in an accident, Siu Wai is
determined to become a bus driver herself, and to raise the boy on her
own (his estranged mother doesn't want him). At first, her efforts
misfire (you find out a lot about bus regulations in Hong Kong by
watching this movie) and soon she is broke. Dai Fai, another bus
driver, teaches her how to deal with aggressive taxi drivers, the
police, and the triads. Dai Fai also becomes a father figure for the
little boy. During a downright peculiar scene, Dai Fai prevents Siu Wai
from dropping the child off at an orphanage. Soon, a romance blossoms
between the two.
Lost in Time is exquisitely photographed on well chosen Hong Kong
locations. The bus driver milieu is original and quite interesting.
Ching Wan Lau as Dai Fai is pleasantly scruffy, and carries his own
secret until the end of the movie. Cecilia Cheung is likable and
believable as the stubborn girl who hangs on to the memory of her dead
fiancé: she has the prettiest and most expressive pair of
eyebrows in movies since Joan Fontaine.
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LOVE ON
THE ROCKS (Luen ching go yup) Hong
Kong
This
2004 romantic comedy starts very well, with a disastrous Valentine's
Day
dinner at a cheap hot pot restaurant. Thereafter, the movie skids all
over
the place. Pointy nosed Louis Koo is clueless as to why Gigi Leung
dumped him
following the awful date, so he hires a "love consultant" played by the
terminally cute Charlene Choi. So far so good, but some episodes border
on the idiotic. For instance, the consultant and the suitor sneak at
night into a home decor store where she teaches him the art of an
elegant date. There, the jilted fiancé falls asleep wearing
stolen
pajamas in a display bed, and is awakened when the employees open the
store the following day. Some scenes are almost surreal, as when Louis
Koo
recalls the apparent suicides of his previous girlfriends and a bizarre
romance with a girl with a leg brace.
While this is no Comrades,
Almost a Love Story, Love on The Rocks is definitely
entertaining, and it can be studied for examples of what is considered
funny - or not - on opposite sides of the Pacific.
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NOT ONE
LESS (Yi ge dou bu neng shao) Mainland
This
experimental 1999 movie is the second part of Zhang
Zimou's trilogy about country women (see also The Story of Qiu Ju and The Road Home). Not One Less
tells a true story, quite similar to Qiu Ju's: Minzhi Wei, a 13 year
old substitute teacher in an impoverished village, will not get paid if
one single pupil should drop out. When a likable little devil of a boy
departs
for the city, she
collects the money for a bus ticket with the other kids' imaginative
help, then she
goes looking for him. In the city, the boy is nowhere to be found.
MInzhi Wei tries to post bulletins, and finally ends up on the local
television news. Fat teardrops on her windburnt cheeks are the only
expression on her face as she makes an appeal for her lost pupil.
What makes this movie unique is that it is a blend of cinéma
vérité - cast with the actual people to whom this story
happened - and of magical fable. When Minzhi Wei falls asleep in
the street and her bulletins get swept away by night sweepers, you
experience a true miraculous moment of art in the movies. To be
reminded that the director of Not One Less went on to film Hero baffles the mind.
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PERHAPS
LOVE (Ru guo ai) Mainland
This
eagerly awaited 2005 release is a disaster. Imagine a high budget
television
commercial for an upscale fragrance, shot on expensive gloomy sets
under snowy skies, then stretch the god-awful thing to feature
length and you'll have an idea of what Perhaps Love feels like. Oh, I
almost forgot, it's also a musical with mandopop ballads and dance
numbers in the fashionable Chicago and Moulin Rouge style. Watch
out for crass product placement too, as the leads emote in front of
eBay billboards.
If you must know, it's about a love triangle behind the camera,
reflecting another love triangle in the movie-within-the-movie. But
this makes it sound better than it actually is. Jackie Cheung (July Rhapsody)
is completely wasted here, although he sings very well. The younger
romantic
leads are wooden and uninvolving. Sandra Ng and Eric Tsang (Golden Chicken) have
insignificant cameos. This is the sort of film which will turn you off
movies for weeks.
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RAISE
THE RED LANTERN (Da hong deng long gao gao gua) Mainland
This
striking 1991 film is the earliest masterpiece from China's greatest
director, Zhang Yimou. Songlian, a beautiful but poor young woman,
becomes the fourth wife of a rich merchant during the 1920s. Once she
moves into the merchant's large but oppressive compound, she is
assigned
a jealous maid, and uncovers unwholesome dynamics between the other
wives. The first wife is old and depressed. The second appears to be
friendly. The third is a high strung opera singer.
Songlian tries to manipulate the other inhabitants of the residence to
her advantage,
with unexpected and tragic results.
This film is visually superb and dramatically riveting. The twilight
shots of the compound, with the red lanterns being moved according to
the master's choice of wife for the night, are unforgettable. The
atmosphere is so tense that a haircut and a foot massage become
suspense sequences. As the
seething Songlian, Gong Li gives the
performance of a lifetime. Like Bette Davis in The Letter, Gong Li is
most impressive while doing very little. The supporting cast is also
excellent. In a touch of genius the master - whose whims are everyone's
vital concern - is never clearly shown.
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RIDING
ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES (Qian li zou dan qi) Mainland
Between
two historical extravaganzas, Zhang Yimou returned to his more
congenial métier in 2005 with this small scale release. Like
the
earlier Happy Times, Riding Alone for
Thousands of Miles is about an older man going through a humanizing
experience. This is a wonderful, and supremely confident movie.
A Japanese widower (the stone faced Ken Takakura) is shocked when his
terminally ill son refuses to see him. Before falling ill, the son had
been working in China on
a documentary about a village opera singer. Instead
of communicating further with his son, the father travels to China to
gather additional material for the documentary. There, he discovers
that the opera
singer (Li Jiamin) is incarcerated and can't perform for the camera
because he misses his son so
much. Consequently, the
father of the dying documentary filmmaker goes in search of the jailed
opera singer's litle boy. While on his mission, the Japanese father encounters variously helpful Chinese
citizens. Things don't quite work out when the little boy is located,
but the extravagantly emotional final scene, in which prisoners in
their uniforms perform a
classical opera, packs the familiar Zhang Yimou punch.
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THE
ROAD HOME (Wo de fu qin mu qin) Mainland
This
1999 crowd pleaser is the third part of what I see as Zhang Yimou's
plucky women trilogy, after The
Story of Qiu Ju and Not
One Less. At
the death of his father - a beloved school teacher - a
modern businessman returns to his village and helps his devastated
elderly mother with the funeral arrangements. The early scenes, shot
in black and white, soon make way for a long, idyllic flashback
recounting the parents' courtship in enchanting colors. The father had
been a handsome young man, and the spunky mother had used all her
energy on
pleasing him and making him notice her, almost dying of grief when he
was away.
Unlike Qiu Ju and Minzhi Wei, Zhao Di (Zhang Ziyi) never leaves her
village, and her pursuit is simpler than that of her predecessors. The
film is simple too, deliberately so (it is rated G), with none of Zhang
Yimou's customary moral ambiguities. The Road Home would almost be
simple-minded without the luminous presence of Zhang Ziyi. The
epilogue, again in black and white, in which the businessman agrees to
teach school for one day as an homage to his father, packs an emotional
wallop.
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ROOTS
AND BRANCHES (Wo de xiong di jie mei) Mainland
It is
tempting to think of Chinese family weepies as a foolproof genre.
Reminiscent of Riding Alone
for Thousands of Miles, and of
Intimates, this tame 2001 release fails to reach the expected
three-hanky level - not for lack of trying. Gigi Leung (Love on the Rocks)
is a world-class conductor, raised and educated abroad. She comes back
to China for the first time to give concerts... and to locate her
sister and two brothers. Flashbacks (shot in a different tone palette)
reveal that the four children were tragically separated during the
Cultural Revolution. Gigi's boyfriend has no trouble finding the three
lost siblings, a destitute cab driver, an aimless party girl, and a
student with broken lens in his glasses.
The flashbacks have a certain poignant quality, although we've seen all
this before - and better - elsewhere. The modern scenes are more
ambitious, as they show how past events have compromised the mental
health of the grown children. But the movie is clumsy: finding families
to adopt the kids, and locating the grown kids 20 years later, is way
too easy. Lackluster acting, an ugly synthetized score, and poor
attention to detail (Gigi, star of the podium, returns to her home
country in an Air China
Cargo plane) do not help.
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SHANGHAI
TRIAD (Yao a yao yao dao waipo qiao) Mainland
A
lesser effort from director Zhang Yimou and his muse Gong Li - their
last project together before an eleven year hiatus. Shanghai Triad
(1995)
tells the story of an orphaned teenage boy in the 1930s who becomes the
servant of a gangster's mistress. The elegant woman is spoiled and
selfish, yet the boy idolizes her and tries to protect her secrets.
Following a dull and lengthy Shanghai sequence, the gangster and his
entourage need to hide out in the country. There, the movie comes to
life - but it is late in the game. The mistress shows a warmer side
when dealing with simple country people, and you realize she wasn't
always so self-centered. Not unexpectedly when bad girls turn good, the
consequences are dire.
The movie is a visual marvel, with the art-deco Shanghai interiors
giving way to huts among reeds by a canal. Yet, as a whole, Shanghai
Triad is not very compelling, and rather unoriginal too: we've seen
this before in countless Warner Brothers gangster movies.
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SHOWER
(Xi zao) Mainland
This 1999 movie was cynically marketed as a nude romp, but
it is a moving study of a family in flux within a society in flux.
Quanxin Pu plays the role of Ta Ming, a quiet businessman who comes to
Beijing to visit his widowed father and his retarded brother who
operate a traditional bathhouse. The dilapidated bathhouse is itself
part of a hutong
neighborhood slated for demolition.
Magnificently written, photographed, and acted, Shower deals with the
subjects of filial love and duty, societal change, and how an adult
child with mental retardation can affect siblings. Still, Shower is not
a bitter pill. It is a comedy, but a comédie tendre: of a kind
you would expect from Italy or France. Shower is more grown up and more
probing than most U.S. movies. Xu Zhu, as the father, delivers as
strong a performance as he did in The King of Masks. The nudity
is not offensive, and I recommend Shower as family viewing.
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THE
SOONG SISTERS (Song jia huang chao) Mainland
One loved money, one
loved power, and one loved her country. As you may know, I'm crazy
about the Soong sisters,
and this almost-perfect 1997 movie is definitely better than nothing on
this captivating subject. The beautiful daughters of a rich Bible
peddler in China all ended up in positions of great power, but all over
the political spectrum. Michelle Yeoh plays the money sister, Vivian Wu
the power sister (Madame Chiang Kai shek) and Maggie Cheung the country
sister (Madame Sun Yat sen). The film is a big production, with great
acting, convincing detail and magnificent set pieces. Where it
sometimes flags is in the narrative flow: the various parts do not add
up to a well-shaped whole.
Through many scenes, the two Madames discuss politics while their elder
sister tries to smooth down the opposing ideologies. These scenes are
madly entertaining. Imagine Hannah and Her Sisters with the sisters
married to a tycoon, a commie and a dictator. You get the idea. Add a
theme tune you won't get out of your head for days, and you will
conclude that The Soong Sisters are not to be missed.
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STOLEN
LIFE (Sheng si jie) Mainland
This
small-scale 2005 film, shot on video, preserves a magnificent
performance by Zhou Xun (who was so unconvincing in Perhaps Love and Suzhou River). She
plays the role of Yan'ni, a withdrawn teen from a poor, broken family.
Yan'ni gets a scholarship to study at the university and befriends a
delivery boy, Muyu. Muyu seduces her with his kind attentions and his
inferiority complex toward the learned classes. Alas, once pregnant and
penniless, Yan'ni realizes that Muyu is a serial womanizer and also
part of a baby-for-sale ring. Zhou Xun portrays Yan'ni evolution from
near-autistic child to ice-cold salesgirl most convincingly.
This movie makes the mind reel: part of it is reminiscent of old
Chinese tales, like something out of Pearl S. Buck. Yet it takes place
in the lower depths of contemporary Beijing: clammy underground
passages and cave-like apartments near constantly churning machinery.
This is probably a Chinese TV-movie, of the "awful warning" genre. But
the complex political message, the fascinating setting and a strong
central performance lift it far above the ordinary.
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THE
STORY OF QIU JU (Qiu ju da guan si) Mainland
This
riveting 1992 movie is the first part of a trilogy from director Zhang
Yimou about stubborn, plucky country women from the North (see also Not One Less and The Road Home). When her
husband (Liu Peiqi, the father in Together) gets kicked in the
groin by the village chief, pregnant Qiu Ju is determined to fight for
justice. She is not after money: all she wants is an apology. With the
help of her young sister-in-law, Qiu Ju searches further and further,
higher and higher, for redress. When they finally arrive in the big
city, the two women are completely out of place and at the mercy of
crooks and bureaucrats. Director Zhang Zimou doesn't fully approve of
Qiu Ju's obsession: there is something upsetting
about this little woman's quest, and the movie's surprising conclusion
justifies our increasing dread.
Completely deglamorized, Gong Li looks like a sack of potatoes in this
film, and gives one of her strongest performances. The detail of
country folks' and city folks' lives is fascinating. One could see this
film as a summit of realism if Zhang Zimou hadn't set the bar even
higher in 1999 with Not One
Less.
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SUZHOU
RIVER (Suzhou He) Mainland
Grungy.
A motorcycle messenger develops a frienship with a smuggler's daughter.
He also becomes involved in a plot to kidnap her for ransom - although
he loves her. When she discovers this, she understandably questions his
love and, distraught, she jumps off a bridge. After a stint in prison,
the messenger stumbles on another girl who looks just like the
kidnapped girl.
This 2000 release garnered much praise, and it was compared with
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Indeed Suzhou River borrows and quotes from
Vertigo - and from Brian De Palma's Obsession - to the extent that the
film feels like a student project. Camerawork and editing are
hyperactive and mannered: as the lovers guzzle down Buffalo
Grass brand vodka, the
photography becomes ever woozier. Zhou
Xun has a certain personality in the dual female role, but
it is the wrong personality (she would later sink Perhaps Love singlehandedly). One
understand how, after 25 years of red lanterns, concubines and
foundlings, younger Chinese directors might be looking for
different directions. But this is plain awful, with one single
redeeming feature being gritty Shanghai riverfront locations.
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TO LIVE (Huo
zhe) Mainland
To Live (1994) is a vast family saga, reminiscent of George
Stevens' Giant. Chinese or otherwise, movies don't come any better than
this. Life as new parents doesn't start too well for 1940s Xu Fugui (Ge
You) and Xu Jiazhen (Gong Li). He is addicted to gambling and she
leaves him as he loses their house to another gambler, Long Er. Xu
Fugui becomes a puppeteer and entertains first the nationalists then
the communists. The family is reunited shortly before Long Er (the
gambler
who had won their house in a game) is executed by the communists. Later
on, the family suffers deprivations during the Great Leap Forward.
Foolish and abusive policies result in the death of both of Xu
Fugui and Xu Jiazhen's children in particularly heartbreaking
circumstances. At the end of the movie, the old parents - along with
their lame son in law and their grandson - visit their children's
graves.
Ge You and Gong Li are magnificent throughout the movie. Although To
Live is the story of one particular family, it would be a perfect way
to introduce teenagers to the story of mainland China during the second
half of the last century. This movie is one of Zhang Yimou's best, but
must not be shown to pregnant
women, due to an extremely frightening labor scene.
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TOGETHER
(He ni zai yi qi) Mainland
Together
(2002) is a marvelous old-fashioned movie, a pleasure from beginning to
end, and a many-tissue weepie. A country bumpkin brings his gifted son
to Beijing to study the violin. The boy studies first with an
iconoclastic and eccentric teacher, then with a more traditional
teacher who has coached previous competition winners. Father and son
also befriend a big-hearted party girl who lives nearby. As the boy
becomes more motivated and more competitive, he rejects his
embarrassing father and his sloppy first teacher. During a moment of
discouragement, he even sells his violin to buy a fancy coat for the
flashy girl. Finally, the father's big secret comes out, leading to an
emotional climax set in the Beijing train station.
Liu Peiqi (he was the husband in The Story of Qiu Ju) is
outstanding as the father, and Tang Yun is admirable as the conflicted
teenager. Together is director Chen Kaige's best movie, one that can be
viewed again and again with the greatest pleasure. Kaige, who directed Farewell My Concubine, also
plays the role of the second teacher. Of considerable interest is the
glimpse inside the Beijing Hutong where
the first teacher lives.
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2046 Hong Kong
2046,
which was released in 2004 after lengthy post-production work, is
an elegant mess which you will enjoy more if you know what not to
expect: it is not really a sequel to In The Mood For Love, and
Maggie Cheung only appears for a few silent seconds. Like a 1960s Hong
Kong E.T.A. Hoffmann, Tony Leung has many loves: Lulu (Carina Lau),
Wang Jin Wen (Faye Wong), Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi), and Su Lizhen (Gong
Li). The story of the loves is of little interest, but the first two
also appear in sci-fi sequences purporting to be from a novel which
Tony Leung is writing.
It is all absolutely ravishing to the eye and the ear (with Bellini,
Xavier Cugat and Connie Francis on the soundtrack). The actresses are
photographed in the most loving way possible. Zhang Ziyi is inhumanly
beautiful and Gong Li almost unrecognizable as a glam gambler. The
sci-fi sequences are gorgeous and contrast with the 1960s Hong Kong of
the other scenes. As much as this 2004 release is a feast, it must also
be said
that it has no pace and no balance at all. Viewers who consider it a
masterpiece are doing much of the work themselves.
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YI YI Taiwan
Perfection:
one of the greatest movies ever made. A family in modern day Taipei
goes through changes after the grandmother suffers a stroke. This
acclaimed drama released in 2000 is extraordinary in the way it probes
deeply into each character in the household. We understand them
clearly, yet we also grasp why they cannot communicate with each other.
The mother (Elaine Jin, also mother of The Soong Sisters) joins a
cult; the father (Nien Jien wu) rekindles an old flame following
disappointment at home and at work; the daughter learns about betrayal,
and the little boy takes enigmatic photos. While Yi Yi is a very
serious movie, it is not heavy or pretentious. Some of the secondary
characters are almost amusing, but just as you are about to chuckle you
recognize them too, and yourself within them.
Industrialization had gone so fast in Taiwan and so slowly on the
mainland that you are able, through comparing contemporary movies like
The Story of Qiu Ju and Yi Yi, to watch a civilization at different
stages of progress. That is, if you can call Taiwanese melancholy
progress.
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WEB OF
DECEPTION (Jing hun ji) Hong Kong
Imagine
a hoary Lifetime Original Movie of the nineties, possibly with Jaclyn
Smith or Ann Jillian, but directed by Dario Argento or William Castle,
and you'll have a good idea of what Web of Deception feels like.
Imperious Brigitte Lin (Chungking
Express) plays a powerful Hong Kong
attorney who is being blackmailed. (Infuriatingly, the subtitles do not
translate the anonymous letter.) Brigitte asks her assistant for help,
not realizing that the assistant is the blackmailer. In turn, the
assistant enlists her goody-two-shoes roommate in her schemes, not
realizing that the goody-two-shoes roommate has a tough cookie
identical twin sister fresh out of the klink and wanted by the mob. To
the almost completely female cast, you can also add a ditzy stockbroker
- as comic relief.
Most of the action takes place in a sumptuous Hong Kong mansion during
a thunderstorm. Brigitte Lin remains unflappable as the lights go out,
the phone lines are cut, and dead bodies start piling up. One can't
tell whether this very dated 1989 release was meant to be taken
seriously, but it is as entertaining as it is campy and ridiculous. The
disembodied voices on the Mandarin soundtrack add yet another dimension
to the experience.
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ZHOU
YU'S TRAIN (Zhou Yu de huo che) Mainland
In this 2002 romance (with shades of a ghost story), Gong Li
plays the role of a painter on porcelain named Zhou Yu, who makes
a weekly roundtrip on a train and has a regular liaison with a gentle
poet. Soon, another man - a veterinarian - also becomes a regular on
the train and starts a heated affair with Zhou Yu. During some
sequences Gong Li (with short hair) plays another role, a woman who
happens to read a novel titled Zhou Yu's Train. Exquisitely
photographed, this is inconsequential arty piffle: a nothing story
deliberately scrambled to disguise its thinness.
Although
she is a magnetic screen presence, a great actress, and a beauty,
Gong Li was never sexy by temperament. When she plays sexy, she has to
work too hard. The
spectacle of a 37 year old playing an ingenue, i.e. an actress at an
impasse, is more compelling - in an unhealthy way - than anything in
the screenplay of Zhou Yu's Train.
Fortunately for Gong Li, she was subsequently offered the plummy
character role of
Hatsumomo in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), and she is now Hollywood's #1
dragon lady of a certain age. I may not ever watch Miami Vice or
Hannibal Rising, but I am happy to know that Gong Li will be busy for
years to come.
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