The
21st Singapore International Film Festival runs
from 4 – 14 April and free programmes
begins 28 March – 3 April.
More information can be found here.
Call Sistic at 6348-5555 for tickets, or log
on here
for online bookings. Citigold clients and Citibank
Ultima Credit Cardmembers will receive $2 off
every purchase of one festival ticket. Citibank
Clear and Platinum Credit Cardmembers will receive
$1 off every purchase
of one festival ticket.
Look out for movieXclusive.com’s
capsule reviews and exclusive interviews with
filmmakers.
The
Coming of Age Event
Remember
your 21st birthday? The friends and family members
who attended your party? The larger-than-life
birthday cake? The happy and joyful celebration
that took place? Come April, the Singapore International
Film Festival (SIFF) celebrates its 21st edition,
and you can be sure there will be highlights as
memorable as your 21st birthday.
Expect an exciting lineup of award-winning films,
workshops and other related activities –
right here in Singapore from 4 to 14 April. Film
buffs can look forward to over 200 films from
40 countries over the festival’s 11 days.
USA’s The Princess of Nabraska directed
by Wayne Wang will open the festival on while
China’s Road to Dawn directed by Derek Chiu
will close the annual event. These two films are
part of are "Citibank's Choice”
selection.
Other than the opening and closing films, another
film included in the abovementioned selection
is Singapore’s very own “Dreams From
The Third World” directed by Kan Lume, who
helmed the controversial “Solos” last
year. This local production is also part of the
“Singapore Panorama” segment which
celebrates local talent. It is joined by other
films like the much-anticipated “Lucky 7”
by seven different filmmakers headed by Sun Koh,
the football documentary “Homeless FC”
by James Leong and Lynn Lee, the haunting drama
“To Speak” by Craig Ower and the innovative
love drama “18 Grams of Love” by Han
Yew Kwang.
Look out for generous servings of Asian and world
cinema, which include critically-acclaimed works
from Vietnam (“55 Years of Vietnam Film”)
and Australia (“Australia Film Focus”),
as well as an exhilarating helping of films focusing
on music (“Seeing Music, Hearing Film”).
There is also a tribute to Indonesian filmmaker
Bung Sjumandjaya and a platter of Middle Eastern
films in the segment “Secret Life of Arabia”.
So mark your calendars and get ready for the coming
of age event that is the SIFF.
Coherence
and consistency are intentionally sacrificed, in
exchange for a challenging and crazy ride. To appreciate
this film, one has to be aware that it is a film
made by 7 Singapore directors, with each knowing
only what has happened in the last 1 minute of the
previous segment. Because the 7 directors were intentionally
chosen for their vastly diversified style and taste,
it is not difficult to identify when each segment
starts and stops. Finding a common theme is trickier,
though not impossible. My vote goes to the 2nd segment.
It simply sizzles in style and surrealism! The 4th
segment perturbs with its perversion and plot, but
amuses with its animated additions. The 5th segment
sticks, not because of its satirical scorn at censorship,
but rather its bloody and gory scenes. In sum, I
would have preferred them to separate as shorts.
3 Stars out of 5 –
Heng C S
Despite
a car crash, the protagonist survived miraculously.
It could be a blessing in disguise, as he seemed
to suffer from visions of the dead. Aptly titled
as "Shadows", the film is not just about
the supernatural, but also about living in the shadows
of the others and the past. Unless one is well versed
with the history of Macedonia, one may overlook
the parabolic plot and symbolic signs, dismissing
it simply as a horror film. The first half thrills
and chills indeed, but the dead keeps dying repeatedly
and reappearing unscathed, such that the scares
soon sedate. In essence, the revelation comes too
late, but it is an important one. At this stage,
audience would have to reconcile their prior assumption
of simply a horror film with the important message
about humanity and history. In depicting devastation
of the dead, the film celebrates life. An ambitious
film that may not get its potential depth fully
analyzed or appreciated. 3½ Stars
out of 5 – Heng C S
An
elderly couple (Yolande Moreau and Michael Lonsdale)
commences the film amidst idle chatter and bloodied
fowls, proudly earning their stripes as 19th century
versions of Gladys and Abner Kravitz with the newly
engaged libertine Ryno de Marigny's (Fu'ad Ait Aattou)
torrid 10-year long amour with Italian-Spanish coquette
Lady Vellini (Asia Argento) as their scandal du
jour. The hot-blooded Vellini finds out soon enough
that her overweening extra-pallid dandy is soon
out to marry his way into higher circles through
the fragile heart of virginal Hermangarde (Breillat
devotee Roxane Mesquida) and through the sprightly
imaginations of her household’s feisty matriarch
(Claude Sarraute). And hell hath no fury like a
woman scorned. Especially when the woman in question
is directed by agent provocateur Catherine Breillat,
she of “Anatomy of Hell”, “Romance
X” and “Fat Girl” infamy. But
here, Breillat tones down the transgressions of
venereal shock for the (comparatively) sumptuous
reservoirs of rapturous passion and fervent sexual
anxieties – a refined take on the stock battle-of-the-sexes
formula with arthouse cinephiles’ wet dream
Argento as Breillat’s latest codpiece in her
intense dissection of Parisian high society’s
cannibalism and its mordant gender politics. Argento’s
Velli is no less than a force of nature as she ascends
into a conduit for Breillat’s declarations
and shouts it from the rafters; her sexual aggressiveness
play tricks on masculine insecurities and her vociferousness,
a conscious affront to feminine coyness. At the
peak of her captivating sensuality and at the height
of her enigmatic inscrutability, Argento’s
magnificence here is one of furious defiance.
4½
Stars out of 5 – Justin Deimen
The
large bell in a bar intermittently rings for last
orders and the inevitable rush to queue forms at
the counter – do we want what we need only
when it’s too late? Or is the irony of the
opening scene’s wailing Cassandra a more resonant
reflection of our perceptions on individual existence?
There’s an endless fascination about where
writer-director Roy Andersson wants to take us in
his fourth feature, “You, The Living”.
With fifty or so semi-related vignettes strung together
by a penchant for tragicomic hyper-reality, its
wistful interpretations and symbolic instances of
life that bind us all in this great big cosmic Sisyphean
struggle. The sheer simplicity of these vignettes
act to dramatise the tenuity and immense preciousness
of being apart of the symbiotic relationships we
have with one another. Andersson might whittle down
the complexity of the human condition through harsh
and fast cynicism more than he should, but he also
reminds us of the inherent, reassuring glory of
waking up each morning to a new tomorrow when we’re
all aware of our own distinct forms of arrested
development. 3½
Stars out of 5 – Justin Deimen
Pascale
Ferran's “Lady Chatterley” arouses the
intentions of an intellectual mind rather than the
consummate capitulations to the cataract of passion,
and other sensual stimuli. Arriving with a brag
sheet that includes five 2007 Cesar Awards, including
ones for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Photography,
the Ferran’s overreaching adaptation of D.H.
Lawrence’s “John Thomas And Lady Jane”,
clearly has pedigree and an elegantly realised French
sensibility. But there has to be something said
for its lack of transgressions, an unwelcoming throwback
to the days of muddled visions of carnal congress
that was better served by the imagination in bodice-ripping
erotic literature. Even by the nature of its anti-revisionist
material and its ideas of sexual awakening as a
process that by extension has to entail bridled
fervour, the film’s divisions are so neatly
devised that there's nothing left for us to react
to in its hollow exercise in ardent romanticism.
3 Stars out of 5 – Justin
Deimen
Echoes
of “The Lives of Others” pervade this
well-made debut from writer-director Andrea Arnold,
an otherwise indulgent psychological thriller propped
up by a compelling central performance by Kate Dickie
as Jackie, a surveillance-room operator in Glasgow’s
inner sanctums. The veritable witness to life, purveyor
of misanthropy and observing through isolation,
Jackie is the centre of Arnold’s slow-burn
whispers for need and control, fantasy and madness.
Envisioned as the first film in a new incarnation
of Dogme 95-style cinema-realism protocols, it does
become reminiscent of ambiguously serpentine arthouse
chic; the more it crawls up its own hole, the more
aseptic it becomes. When it turns itself inside
out with a dispassionate affair that cries wolf
while pulling the rug from under, its subtle seduction
becomes clear, locking its characters within a labyrinth
of remorse, obsession and disfigured memory.
3½ Starsout of 5–
Justin Deimen
Wang
Quanan’s fascinating film “Tuya’s
Marriage” is a quietly powerful story of female
reverence, shot on location against the arresting
landscapes of deepest Mongolia, with its immensely
graceful protaganist being the prepossessing shepherdess
Tuya (Nan Yu), caught between a marital loophole
and the tightening grip of subsistence when she’s
forced to look for a new husband willing to take
care of her young children and an invalid ex-husband.
Austere and gorgeous, Wang’s observations
on the encroaching capitalism in a rural land so
entrenched in tradition and its collective, scuttles
from background to foreground when Tuya explores
her options and their economic viability. Wisely
eschewing a formal romanticism of the arena, Wang
takes us deeper into the wide-open humanism of the
film, when he chooses a cogitative docu-drama approach
to the film, a striking reminder that a film’s
aesthetics are part of its ethos and message. Triumphing
at the 2007 Berlinale with the festival’s
top prize, Wang delivers a film so complex and rich
that it finds its tracts in the human capacity for
compassion and sorrow.
4 Stars out of 5 – Justin
Deimen
If
you have loved director Han Yew Kwang’s outrageous
comedy feature Unarmed Combat (2005), you’d
adore his latest feature about two men who write
anonymous love letters to investigate whether their
wives are faithful. Originally produced as a High
Definition (HD) telemovie, the talky but engaging
movie has deservedly clinched awards at the Lyon
Asian Film Festival. While the story plays out like
a staged theatre production, the truthful and winning
dialogues are more than welcome in this day and
age of clichéd writing. Because of the HD
technology used, expect lighting that is appealingly
comfortable to the eyes. Male leads Adam Chen and
Alaric Tay deliver empathizing performances, while
Yeo Yann Yann (881) appears to be more remarkably
striking than fellow female lead Magdalene See.
A commendable piece of effort that deserves a wider
audience, this movie will appeal to the locals as
well as those who want to explore more about themes
of love and commitment - the fun way.
– John Li
A
piece of gem that is waiting to be uncovered, Liew
Seng Tat’s charming little picture tells the
story of two Malaysian Chinese boys who grow up
without their mother. Their father is a workaholic
and the boys want to reach out to him. Along the
way, we get introduced to a puppy, a fatherless
Malay girl and lots of authentic and natural charm.
The kids give wonderfully engaging performances,
and they prove the point that under good direction,
movies about kids always go down well with viewers.
Do not expect a movie with high production values
– what you are going to get is real independent
filmmaking that makes you forget all the glitz and
glamour of high-budget pictures. With this crowd
favourite at Pusan and Rotterdam, director Liew
has joined his friends from Da Huang Pictures James
Lee (who gives a melancholic performance as the
father in the movie), Tan Chui Mui and Amir Muhammad
as the emerging New Wave of Malaysian cinema.
– John Li
On
route to redefining the modern biopic, Todd Haynes
has also made one of the most memorable American
filmic exercises of the past year by fusing style,
substance while finally being percipient on Bob
Dylan’s once mythic hipster groove. A cast
list that drew bated breaths is also one that complements
Haynes’s dauntless reach beyond the boundaries
of narratives, performances and subject. His portrait
of Dylan, is an interwoven collage of inhabited
incarnations that not only pays tribute to a singular
artist’s personal and social identities, but
to the many instances of creative process and its
resulting capricious chaos that have left its slippery
mark in our minds and as such, is as much about
Todd Haynes as it is about Bob Dylan. With droll
narrative swagger reminiscent of Todd Solondz’s
equally mind-bending “Palindromes”,
where multiple actors play a single character through
different forms and times, Haynes gleefully glides
through the eras, remarking on the cults of celebrity
that have defined them and the fantasia we prefer
to remember. 4 Stars out of 5 –
Justin Deimen
Japan’s
foreign-film entry to the 2008 Academy Awards
is a doozy and arrives from one of the country’s
preeminent filmmakers, Masayuki Suo. In his first
film since 1996’s “Shall We Dansu?”,
he brings the same discriminating eye back to
Japan’s cultural and social norms and in
“I Just Didn’t Do It”, zeros
in on its oppressively rigid judicial system.
Observed on a level that can only be described
as stark realism, a true departure from Suo’s
august social comedies and a distinct legal procedural
going by its narrative trajectory of showing the
inciting incident, investigation and to the courtroom
in its various stages of due process – Teppei
Kaneko (Ryo Kase) is accused of molesting a schoolgirl
on his way to a job interview, subsequently coerced
by weary detectives to accept the charge and pay
the fine instead of pursuing vindication –
a system that Suo notes as the reason for Japan’s
almost perfect conviction rate and institutionalised
prejudice against the accused.
4 Stars out of 5 – Justin
Deimen
Silly
crowd-pleaser that finds widowed grandma Maggie
(Marianne Faithfull) giving handjobs to strangers
through a hole in the wall at a seedy Soho club
– its premise is meticulously handled for
maximum satirical result, while paid sexual release
is drained of lewdness in place of quaintness. The
best hands in the biz, says smitten pimp-with-a-conscience
Miki (Miki Manojlovic) and dubs her: Irina Palm.
Endless sad-happy tropes of “The Full Monty”
follow courtesy of its backstory that involves requiring
some quick funds for grandson Ollie’s (Corey
Burke) urgent life-saving procedure in Australia.
Director Sam Garbarski’s idea of injecting
social commentary involves doors shutting in Maggie’s
face hours before she brings new meaning to "working
with one's hands" or the "daily grind".
For all of Faithfull’s magnificent performance
and her chemistry with best pal Jane (Jenny Agutter),
“Irina Palm” is just too self-satisfied
in its outlandish one-joke set-up and much too disingenuous
in presenting its dingy low-end sex trade as lucrative
and worst yet, as the reason for Maggie’s
self-empowerment after years of marriage and child-rearing.
2.5 Stars out of 5
– Justin Deimen
Canadian
cult filmmaker Guy Maddin’s ecstatically perverse
jaunt into childhood’s protracted gestation
period is a hypnotic murk-fest filled to the brim
with Sturm und Drang neo-psychedelia. Guy (Erik
Steffen Maahs) returns to his childhood homestead,
a lighthouse to restore it with two coats of paint
for an ailing mother. Outsized delirium takes over:
ghoulish rituals, surreptitious experiments, demented
ghosts, social vampires and other phantasms of psychosis
of an overextended memory is underpinned by distinctly
Freudian impulses turned into artistic statements.
The miscegenation of silent-era aesthetics, a mosaic
of encoded visual cues and Maddin’s continued
fascination with high theatricality punctuated with
trippy pop iconography delivers a gothic fever dream
that remains etched in your mind, whether you like
it or not. 4 Stars out of 5
– Justin Deimen
Famously
disqualified as Israel's foreign-language entry
to the 2008 Academy Awards for containing a surplus
of English dialogue, “The Band’s Visit”
could have been a worthy winner. But the reason
for its exclusion is as ironically fitting a reminder
of any when the crux of the film exists in the void
of communication and the yearning for common ground.
This charming and utterly profound take on the Arab-Israeli
divide is sensitive, patient, compassionate and
inherently funny. Two pillars of immense performances
hold up this remarkable film: stoic conductor Commander
Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai) leads his eight-man Alexandria
Ceremonial Police Orchestra to the opening of the
Arab Cultural Center in Israel where they get stranded
in a desolate town with the mysterious Dina (Ronit
Elkabetz), the owner of a small café who
boards them for the night. Minor events turn into
life-changing ones. Every frame in writer-director
Eran Kolirin’s soulful feature debut has a
double entendre – an embedded moral code with
social and romantic significance. Even with a residual
feeling of suppressed conflict, everyone connects
with each other on a human level, translating the
quiet awkwardness into silent understanding to modestly
point out our universal commonalities. 4
Stars out of 5
– Justin Deimen
The
first thing that catches your attention is the familiar
backdrop of this Derek Chiu-directed film about
the fictionalized tale about Chinese revolutionary
leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s exile in Penang in
1910. You see colonial buildings, people speaking
Malay, Cantonese and Hokkien, as well as Chinese,
Malay and Indian passers-by in the crowded streets
of Penang. Winston Chao plays the respected historical
figure effortlessly, while Angelica Lee plays his
supporter Danrong with gusto. Wu Yue carries enough
weight to play the compelling character of Dr. Sun’s
lover Chen Cui Fen. The directing is sure-handed,
while the scenic backdrops are complemented with
a lush cinematography. If you are no history buff,
the film comes off as just another film about the
struggles of a revolutionary leader. If you are
like Danrong, this film may make you pick up your
history books to re-live Dr. Sun’s glorious
years and patriotic past. –
John Li
Chinese
American Wayne Wang’s latest independent feature
is a bittersweet drama filled with touching and
melancholic moments that will have you reflecting
your own outlooks and values. The story tells of
a father travels from Beijing to America to visit
his just-divorced daughter. There, he experiences
communication problems, feels out of place, and
sees a clash of values between the Asian and Western
cultures. There are simple yet poignant scenes of
the father’s interactions with an Iranian
woman in the park and two American students in the
apartment. Engagingly played out, these affecting
scenes make you feel for the old man’s predicaments.
What also leaves you feeling for this picture is
the theme of communication and how it bridges two
human beings together. The unrushed and steady pace
of the film is accompanied by a solid cinematography
and reliable performances from Henry Q and Faye
Yu’s central characters. –
John Li
Remember
your 21st birthday? The friends and family members
who attended your party? The larger-than-life
birthday cake? The happy and joyful celebration
that took place? Come April, the Singapore International
Film Festival (SIFF) celebrates its 21st edition,
and you can be sure there will be highlights as
memorable as your 21st birthday.
Coherence
and consistency are intentionally sacrificed, in
exchange for a challenging and crazy ride. To appreciate
this film, one has to be aware that it is a film
made by 7 Singapore directors, with each knowing
only what has happened in the last 1 minute of the
previous segment. Because the 7 directors were intentionally
chosen for their vastly diversified style and taste,
it is not difficult to identify when each segment
starts and stops. Finding a common theme is trickier,
though not impossible. My vote goes to the 2nd segment.
It simply sizzles in style and surrealism! The 4th
segment perturbs with its perversion and plot, but
amuses with its animated additions. The 5th segment
sticks, not because of its satirical scorn at censorship,
but rather its bloody and gory scenes. In sum, I
would have preferred them to separate as shorts.
3 Stars out of 5 –
Heng C S
Despite
a car crash, the protagonist survived miraculously.
It could be a blessing in disguise, as he seemed
to suffer from visions of the dead. Aptly titled
as "Shadows", the film is not just about
the supernatural, but also about living in the shadows
of the others and the past. Unless one is well versed
with the history of Macedonia, one may overlook
the parabolic plot and symbolic signs, dismissing
it simply as a horror film. The first half thrills
and chills indeed, but the dead keeps dying repeatedly
and reappearing unscathed, such that the scares
soon sedate. In essence, the revelation comes too
late, but it is an important one. At this stage,
audience would have to reconcile their prior assumption
of simply a horror film with the important message
about humanity and history. In depicting devastation
of the dead, the film celebrates life. An ambitious
film that may not get its potential depth fully
analyzed or appreciated. 3½ Stars
out of 5 – Heng C S
An
elderly couple (Yolande Moreau and Michael Lonsdale)
commences the film amidst idle chatter and bloodied
fowls, proudly earning their stripes as 19th century
versions of Gladys and Abner Kravitz with the newly
engaged libertine Ryno de Marigny's (Fu'ad Ait Aattou)
torrid 10-year long amour with Italian-Spanish coquette
Lady Vellini (Asia Argento) as their scandal du
jour. The hot-blooded Vellini finds out soon enough
that her overweening extra-pallid dandy is soon
out to marry his way into higher circles through
the fragile heart of virginal Hermangarde (Breillat
devotee Roxane Mesquida) and through the sprightly
imaginations of her household’s feisty matriarch
(Claude Sarraute). And hell hath no fury like a
woman scorned. Especially when the woman in question
is directed by agent provocateur Catherine Breillat,
she of “Anatomy of Hell”, “Romance
X” and “Fat Girl” infamy. But
here, Breillat tones down the transgressions of
venereal shock for the (comparatively) sumptuous
reservoirs of rapturous passion and fervent sexual
anxieties – a refined take on the stock battle-of-the-sexes
formula with arthouse cinephiles’ wet dream
Argento as Breillat’s latest codpiece in her
intense dissection of Parisian high society’s
cannibalism and its mordant gender politics. Argento’s
Velli is no less than a force of nature as she ascends
into a conduit for Breillat’s declarations
and shouts it from the rafters; her sexual aggressiveness
play tricks on masculine insecurities and her vociferousness,
a conscious affront to feminine coyness. At the
peak of her captivating sensuality and at the height
of her enigmatic inscrutability, Argento’s
magnificence here is one of furious defiance.
4½
Stars out of 5 – Justin Deimen
The
large bell in a bar intermittently rings for last
orders and the inevitable rush to queue forms at
the counter – do we want what we need only
when it’s too late? Or is the irony of the
opening scene’s wailing Cassandra a more resonant
reflection of our perceptions on individual existence?
There’s an endless fascination about where
writer-director Roy Andersson wants to take us in
his fourth feature, “You, The Living”.
With fifty or so semi-related vignettes strung together
by a penchant for tragicomic hyper-reality, its
wistful interpretations and symbolic instances of
life that bind us all in this great big cosmic Sisyphean
struggle. The sheer simplicity of these vignettes
act to dramatise the tenuity and immense preciousness
of being apart of the symbiotic relationships we
have with one another. Andersson might whittle down
the complexity of the human condition through harsh
and fast cynicism more than he should, but he also
reminds us of the inherent, reassuring glory of
waking up each morning to a new tomorrow when we’re
all aware of our own distinct forms of arrested
development.
Pascale
Ferran's “Lady Chatterley” arouses the
intentions of an intellectual mind rather than the
consummate capitulations to the cataract of passion,
and other sensual stimuli. Arriving with a brag
sheet that includes five 2007 Cesar Awards, including
ones for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Photography,
the Ferran’s overreaching adaptation of D.H.
Lawrence’s “John Thomas And Lady Jane”,
clearly has pedigree and an elegantly realised French
sensibility. But there has to be something said
for its lack of transgressions, an unwelcoming throwback
to the days of muddled visions of carnal congress
that was better served by the imagination in bodice-ripping
erotic literature. Even by the nature of its anti-revisionist
material and its ideas of sexual awakening as a
process that by extension has to entail bridled
fervour, the film’s divisions are so neatly
devised that there's nothing left for us to react
to in its hollow exercise in ardent romanticism.
Echoes
of “The Lives of Others” pervade this
well-made debut from writer-director Andrea Arnold,
an otherwise indulgent psychological thriller propped
up by a compelling central performance by Kate Dickie
as Jackie, a surveillance-room operator in Glasgow’s
inner sanctums. The veritable witness to life, purveyor
of misanthropy and observing through isolation,
Jackie is the centre of Arnold’s slow-burn
whispers for need and control, fantasy and madness.
Envisioned as the first film in a new incarnation
of Dogme 95-style cinema-realism protocols, it does
become reminiscent of ambiguously serpentine arthouse
chic; the more it crawls up its own hole, the more
aseptic it becomes. When it turns itself inside
out with a dispassionate affair that cries wolf
while pulling the rug from under, its subtle seduction
becomes clear, locking its characters within a labyrinth
of remorse, obsession and disfigured memory.
3½ Stars
out of 5–
Justin Deimen
Wang
Quanan’s fascinating film “Tuya’s
Marriage” is a quietly powerful story of female
reverence, shot on location against the arresting
landscapes of deepest Mongolia, with its immensely
graceful protaganist being the prepossessing shepherdess
Tuya (Nan Yu), caught between a marital loophole
and the tightening grip of subsistence when she’s
forced to look for a new husband willing to take
care of her young children and an invalid ex-husband.
Austere and gorgeous, Wang’s observations
on the encroaching capitalism in a rural land so
entrenched in tradition and its collective, scuttles
from background to foreground when Tuya explores
her options and their economic viability. Wisely
eschewing a formal romanticism of the arena, Wang
takes us deeper into the wide-open humanism of the
film, when he chooses a cogitative docu-drama approach
to the film, a striking reminder that a film’s
aesthetics are part of its ethos and message. Triumphing
at the 2007 Berlinale with the festival’s
top prize, Wang delivers a film so complex and rich
that it finds its tracts in the human capacity for
compassion and sorrow.
If
you have loved director Han Yew Kwang’s outrageous
comedy feature Unarmed Combat (2005), you’d
adore his latest feature about two men who write
anonymous love letters to investigate whether their
wives are faithful. Originally produced as a High
Definition (HD) telemovie, the talky but engaging
movie has deservedly clinched awards at the Lyon
Asian Film Festival. While the story plays out like
a staged theatre production, the truthful and winning
dialogues are more than welcome in this day and
age of clichéd writing. Because of the HD
technology used, expect lighting that is appealingly
comfortable to the eyes. Male leads Adam Chen and
Alaric Tay deliver empathizing performances, while
Yeo Yann Yann (881) appears to be more remarkably
striking than fellow female lead Magdalene See.
A commendable piece of effort that deserves a wider
audience, this movie will appeal to the locals as
well as those who want to explore more about themes
of love and commitment - the fun way.
– John Li
A
piece of gem that is waiting to be uncovered, Liew
Seng Tat’s charming little picture tells the
story of two Malaysian Chinese boys who grow up
without their mother. Their father is a workaholic
and the boys want to reach out to him. Along the
way, we get introduced to a puppy, a fatherless
Malay girl and lots of authentic and natural charm.
The kids give wonderfully engaging performances,
and they prove the point that under good direction,
movies about kids always go down well with viewers.
Do not expect a movie with high production values
– what you are going to get is real independent
filmmaking that makes you forget all the glitz and
glamour of high-budget pictures. With this crowd
favourite at Pusan and Rotterdam, director Liew
has joined his friends from Da Huang Pictures James
Lee (who gives a melancholic performance as the
father in the movie), Tan Chui Mui and Amir Muhammad
as the emerging New Wave of Malaysian cinema.
– John Li
On
route to redefining the modern biopic, Todd Haynes
has also made one of the most memorable American
filmic exercises of the past year by fusing style,
substance while finally being percipient on Bob
Dylan’s once mythic hipster groove. A cast
list that drew bated breaths is also one that complements
Haynes’s dauntless reach beyond the boundaries
of narratives, performances and subject. His portrait
of Dylan, is an interwoven collage of inhabited
incarnations that not only pays tribute to a singular
artist’s personal and social identities, but
to the many instances of creative process and its
resulting capricious chaos that have left its slippery
mark in our minds and as such, is as much about
Todd Haynes as it is about Bob Dylan. With droll
narrative swagger reminiscent of Todd Solondz’s
equally mind-bending “Palindromes”,
where multiple actors play a single character through
different forms and times, Haynes gleefully glides
through the eras, remarking on the cults of celebrity
that have defined them and the fantasia we prefer
to remember. 4 Stars out of 5 –
Justin Deimen
Japan’s
foreign-film entry to the 2008 Academy Awards
is a doozy and arrives from one of the country’s
preeminent filmmakers, Masayuki Suo. In his first
film since 1996’s “Shall We Dansu?”,
he brings the same discriminating eye back to
Japan’s cultural and social norms and in
“I Just Didn’t Do It”, zeros
in on its oppressively rigid judicial system.
Observed on a level that can only be described
as stark realism, a true departure from Suo’s
august social comedies and a distinct legal procedural
going by its narrative trajectory of showing the
inciting incident, investigation and to the courtroom
in its various stages of due process – Teppei
Kaneko (Ryo Kase) is accused of molesting a schoolgirl
on his way to a job interview, subsequently coerced
by weary detectives to accept the charge and pay
the fine instead of pursuing vindication –
a system that Suo notes as the reason for Japan’s
almost perfect conviction rate and institutionalised
prejudice against the accused. 
Silly
crowd-pleaser that finds widowed grandma Maggie
(Marianne Faithfull) giving handjobs to strangers
through a hole in the wall at a seedy Soho club
– its premise is meticulously handled for
maximum satirical result, while paid sexual release
is drained of lewdness in place of quaintness. The
best hands in the biz, says smitten pimp-with-a-conscience
Miki (Miki Manojlovic) and dubs her: Irina Palm.
Endless sad-happy tropes of “The Full Monty”
follow courtesy of its backstory that involves requiring
some quick funds for grandson Ollie’s (Corey
Burke) urgent life-saving procedure in Australia.
Director Sam Garbarski’s idea of injecting
social commentary involves doors shutting in Maggie’s
face hours before she brings new meaning to "working
with one's hands" or the "daily grind".
For all of Faithfull’s magnificent performance
and her chemistry with best pal Jane (Jenny Agutter),
“Irina Palm” is just too self-satisfied
in its outlandish one-joke set-up and much too disingenuous
in presenting its dingy low-end sex trade as lucrative
and worst yet, as the reason for Maggie’s
self-empowerment after years of marriage and child-rearing.
2.5 Stars out of 5
– Justin Deimen
Canadian
cult filmmaker Guy Maddin’s ecstatically perverse
jaunt into childhood’s protracted gestation
period is a hypnotic murk-fest filled to the brim
with Sturm und Drang neo-psychedelia. Guy (Erik
Steffen Maahs) returns to his childhood homestead,
a lighthouse to restore it with two coats of paint
for an ailing mother. Outsized delirium takes over:
ghoulish rituals, surreptitious experiments, demented
ghosts, social vampires and other phantasms of psychosis
of an overextended memory is underpinned by distinctly
Freudian impulses turned into artistic statements.
The miscegenation of silent-era aesthetics, a mosaic
of encoded visual cues and Maddin’s continued
fascination with high theatricality punctuated with
trippy pop iconography delivers a gothic fever dream
that remains etched in your mind, whether you like
it or not. 4 Stars out of 5
– Justin Deimen
Famously
disqualified as Israel's foreign-language entry
to the 2008 Academy Awards for containing a surplus
of English dialogue, “The Band’s Visit”
could have been a worthy winner. But the reason
for its exclusion is as ironically fitting a reminder
of any when the crux of the film exists in the void
of communication and the yearning for common ground.
This charming and utterly profound take on the Arab-Israeli
divide is sensitive, patient, compassionate and
inherently funny. Two pillars of immense performances
hold up this remarkable film: stoic conductor Commander
Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai) leads his eight-man Alexandria
Ceremonial Police Orchestra to the opening of the
Arab Cultural Center in Israel where they get stranded
in a desolate town with the mysterious Dina (Ronit
Elkabetz), the owner of a small café who
boards them for the night. Minor events turn into
life-changing ones. Every frame in writer-director
Eran Kolirin’s soulful feature debut has a
double entendre – an embedded moral code with
social and romantic significance. Even with a residual
feeling of suppressed conflict, everyone connects
with each other on a human level, translating the
quiet awkwardness into silent understanding to modestly
point out our universal commonalities. 4
Stars out of 5
– Justin Deimen
The
first thing that catches your attention is the familiar
backdrop of this Derek Chiu-directed film about
the fictionalized tale about Chinese revolutionary
leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s exile in Penang in
1910. You see colonial buildings, people speaking
Malay, Cantonese and Hokkien, as well as Chinese,
Malay and Indian passers-by in the crowded streets
of Penang. Winston Chao plays the respected historical
figure effortlessly, while Angelica Lee plays his
supporter Danrong with gusto. Wu Yue carries enough
weight to play the compelling character of Dr. Sun’s
lover Chen Cui Fen. The directing is sure-handed,
while the scenic backdrops are complemented with
a lush cinematography. If you are no history buff,
the film comes off as just another film about the
struggles of a revolutionary leader. If you are
like Danrong, this film may make you pick up your
history books to re-live Dr. Sun’s glorious
years and patriotic past. –
John Li
Chinese
American Wayne Wang’s latest independent feature
is a bittersweet drama filled with touching and
melancholic moments that will have you reflecting
your own outlooks and values. The story tells of
a father travels from Beijing to America to visit
his just-divorced daughter. There, he experiences
communication problems, feels out of place, and
sees a clash of values between the Asian and Western
cultures. There are simple yet poignant scenes of
the father’s interactions with an Iranian
woman in the park and two American students in the
apartment. Engagingly played out, these affecting
scenes make you feel for the old man’s predicaments.
What also leaves you feeling for this picture is
the theme of communication and how it bridges two
human beings together. The unrushed and steady pace
of the film is accompanied by a solid cinematography
and reliable performances from Henry Q and Faye
Yu’s central characters. –
John Li