Amazo Chinese Films

Somehow, thirteen year old Wei Minzhi, who appears unable to act her way out of a paper bag turns in the performance of a lifetime. Blushing, awkward body language, a drifting gaze, and an pre-adolescent thespian's grasp of dialog pacing, filmed docu-realistically, come together to create the most endearing character I've seen in a long time. The film employs nonprofessional actors throughout, mostly children, to amazing effect. It's painful to think that this film portrays a reality of rural China so the story all by itself will probably make you cry. Seeing the story presented by a cast of real people makes it all the more powerful. The stubborn persistence of Wei's character, at first unrealistic, becomes poetic and inspiring. The ending might seem a little contrived but if ever there was a story that deserved a happy ending it's this one. A remarkable film.

The film begins with Ah Yu, played by Taiwanese singer Tarcy Su, being released from prison. We aren't told why she was there or how long she was in for. She makes her way to the home of a weathered motherly woman named An-an, played by veteran actress Yi-Ching Lu, whom she had come to know in prison. An-an takes her in and gives her job at the hostess bar she operates. After an arranged date doesn't pan out the way Ah Yu expected it to, she quits the bar and takes a job at a computer factory. Her relationship with a young supervisor she meets there, along with her ongoing and anchoring relationship with An-an, is the meat of this film.

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sitenoise at the movies: Blue Cha Cha

This is a beautiful film, a colorful love poem to, about, and starring, Chinese actress Zhao Wei. The woman is photographed so adoringly it's almost creepy. She plays two different and distinct roles in the film: a bespectacled graduate student and a sultry piano lounge singer--so librarian fetishists and jazzy drunks alike can fantasize out loud. The funny part, though, is that we're supposed to play along with the notion that donning a pair of bookish glasses suddenly makes Zhao one of those women "who become attractive over time", ya know, ugly. Yeah, right.

sitenoise at the movies: Green Tea (Lü cha) [2003]

I smiled from ear to ear watching this movie from the time sensitive boy was introduced until the very end. This is an exceptionally well done film.

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sitenoise at the movies: Blue Gate Crossing (Lan se da men) (2002)

Maybe the color palette confines itself to a too small range of gray but it is effective. Maybe a few scenes are overly dramatized for effect but I can hardly imagine anything comparing to the real events that transpired. This isn't a documentary and it's not a perfect film but it is an incredibly moving one. There was a bit of an uproar in China over this film claiming it did not demonize the Japanese enough. A member of the Politburo intervened on behalf of the film to keep it in theaters. There's that to chew on. I honestly can't separate recommending the film from recommending being aware of this ugly bit of history. You could just read a wikipedia entry on the Rape of Nanjing but you could also just watch Dr. Phil or Oprah instead of ever going to the movies. It's about like that.

Lost in Beijing is banned in China and its filmmakers are banned for two years from making films in China. What kind of nonsensical time-out is that? I want more of them to fall through the cracks and make films like Lost in Beijing--which is nothing like Farewell My Hero's Kingdom of Flying Yellow Flowers.

sitenoise at the movies: Lost In Beijing

This is a wonderfully surreal 90 minutes spent with interesting characters involved in interesting situations, not so much story wise but in each of the set-pieces on display. It's an experimental film using it's own internal logic telling its story in non-linear fashion but it's easy to follow because it's engaging. One of the reasons Chinese independent films can be so good is that the directors of many of them, like this one, are able to employ top tier actors. Zhou Xun is one of mainland China's best contemporary actresses and Xia Yu is no slouch. He's the captain of goofy suave. The film hops around space and time, sometimes during a single conversation and one of the most remarkable features of this production is the sound design. It remains a constant through all the jumping around making it easy to hang on to the roller-coastering ride. Very well done film.

Director Yibai Zhang's got a real knack for capturing a city on film. His previous work "Longest Night in Shanghai" showed the glamour of that city at night. This one captures the gray industrialism of Chongqing. There's a mystery brewing beneath this slice of life low-key indie that's never fully explained, only suggested. Solid performances from Karen Mok's beautiful legs and especially Wenli Jiang. It's great to see mature independent minded stuff like this coming from the mainland.

sitenoise at the movies: Lost, Indulgence (Mi Guo) (2008) China

No surprise to learn director Xiaoshuai Wang studied painting before becoming a director. This is a marvelously composed film. The screenplay is brutal sharp with one large unnecessary gimmick toward the end. I'm glad this theme was done art-house and not commercial melodrama, which it could easily be. The four main performers are solid and compelling, with lots of shots of faces on bodies doing nothing but carrying burden within. And they all pull it off.

This isn't a perfect film but its story is so moving that any shortcomings in the telling can easily be overlooked.

I was moved to tears several times during the film but more from just thinking about the scenarios than from any melodramatic presentation. Aftershock has a disjointed narrative from time to time and could probably be improved with a second round of editing. Several scenes appear to be part of something larger that got cut out, and a few seem irrelevant. The director's decision to downplay the climax as long as he can is a little disappointing but it fits with the repressed emotional level of the rest of the film after the initial earthquake sequence which, as we are reminded of in a slightly awkward memorial ending that closes the film, is supposed to be its devastating heart. It has structural weaknesses but it's a magnificent and heart-rending story with a lot of legs. Highly recommended to those who like that kind of thing.

sitenoise at the movies: Aftershock

This film is so good on so many levels it's crazy. One of the head-scratching wonders of the film is it's portrait of harmonious village life while this minor conflict is going on. The first reaction most people will have to this film is "Are people really that nice and polite to one another"? It's almost a documentary capturing rural Chinese life in the 1990's in all its humble and honest simplicity. It's also an insightful observation on the changing bureaucracy in China, both vertically and horizontally over time. It's a parable which ponders whether the law, the wisdom of elders, or common courtesy offers the best solution to disputes. Zhang Yimou is fascinated, and maybe discouraged (maybe not), by the changing Chinese culture and weaves a grand metaphorical tale for viewers to consider from many angles.

The Story of Qiu Ju is a slow paced, somewhat repetitive film but it's all the better for it. Viewers are treated to a heart-warmimg world of relationships which are themselves slow-paced and repetitive. It would be a shame to rush through it.

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sitenoise at the movies: Story of Qiu Ju

A thoroughly engaging film on the surface. The creative camera angles, the mostly gray/green color palette accentuating a sense of disease or decay, the original music and sound design, and the beauty of the actors add up to a sensuous ninety minute delight.

Charlene Choi is magnificent as the schizophrenic, sad and lonely Winnie.

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sitenoise at the movies: Diary (Mon seung)

This is the best plotless film where nothing happens I've ever seen. The film focuses on three characters, their loss and loneliness. If there is a story arc it's that each of them finally reaches out to make a connection, a sexual connection, with varying degrees of success. Throughout the film we simply observe them doing, well ... not much of anything, but practically every scene is cut so that you wish you could stay with it for at least a moment longer, to be with that person in that situation for just a bit more time. You can't make a film like this without masterful execution of the crafts of acting, cinematography, and direction. Check, check, and check. I was stunned by this film ... even without considering its symbolisms and allegories.

"Because it is only when we make love that you understand that I'm gentle."

That's all the character development I need. This is an ambitious film about the stalled maturation of an idealistic but troubled young woman flanked by the Tiananmen Square protests, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. The direction is a little chaotic but it reflects the nature of the film. The soundtrack is impeccably chosen and the film is ultimately very sad. I was glued to this 140 minute masterpiece.

More: sitenoise at the movies: Summer Palace

Blind Mountain is an essay on the collision of traditional and contemporary culture. It's not pedantic, nor is it belittling to the realities of the culture at its source, but it's hard not to see it that way, especially through twentieth-century, western eyes. The film does a remarkable job of showing that it's not a matter of simply enforcing contemporary law. It's much deeper and difficult than that.

Baby Gong and Bingbing Li ... if that's not enough, this is a surprisingly good contemporary love story from the mainland. It's hip like we don't usually see from there. Director Dayyan Eng is the first foreigner in the history of the Chinese academy awards to have a film nominated for Best Picture. The story is a familiar one: boy wants girl (Li) out of reach while his best friend (Gong) secretly wants him, but it's played well and Baby Gong is especially worth checking out.

I can only imagine that at some point Hsiao-Hsien Hou found himself with a mad crush on Shu Qi and decided to make a film for her, or of her ... or to her ... or something. People can quibble all day long on whether Hou's anti-cinema springs from genius or pretention, but a film like this ought to be able to escape such discussion because it's really nothing more than a love poem to, or of, or for ... or something ... a beautiful actress. This is a Shu Qi vehicle from top to bottom and the film rests on her shoulders, in her hair, on her lips, in her eyes, on her hips, and everywhere else about her über-photogenic self. Marry that to the fact that one of the best cinematographers in the business, Mark "Ping Bing" Lee is shooting this film and you're going to end up with gorgeous. Add a contemporary throbbing techno soundtrack and you get a hypnotic, slow, empty, and depressing film that's pretty close to cool.

I happen to think Shu Qi is a fine and very intelligent actress. I also like slow, empty, and depressing arthouse films if the characters appeal to me so everything works out as far as I'm concerned. If you don't like Shu Qi you probably won't like this film. There's no real plot to speak of and only a thin story about a woman who likes to hang out in nightclubs, smokes a LOT, does drugs and has crummy sex with her loser boyfriend, meets a gangster, loses a gangster ... fade to black. Awesome.

sitenoise at the movies: Millennium Mambo [2001] Taiwan

I love Zhang Yimou when he does these common-people flicks. This one is funny, touching and real. A fifty-something guy, who so desperately wants to get married and have someone to snuggle with at night, ends up housing and employing the beautiful eighteen year old blind step-daughter of some really unattractive and overweight woman as a sign of his commitment. The fat woman doesn't want the girl because she is a hassle to take care of and the girl was abandoned and dumped on her by some previous loser dude anyway.

As part of his marriage scheme the man lies to the woman, telling her he is the manager of a hotel. But the hotel is nothing more than an abandoned bus in a park that a friend of his had convinced him to slap a coat of paint on and charge young couples to sit inside it and make out. The man had at first hired the daughter to clean up the bus between customers, but when the city hauls the bus away as part of a beautifying the parks campaign the guy is forced to find other means to employ the girl who possesses nothing but cleaning and massage skills. Him and several of his retired friends construct a massage parlor room inside an old warehouse and then take turns getting massages from the girl. He has to pay his friends to get the massages, and they in turn give the money to the girl for tips. The farce can't go on forever, as the guy doesn't have much money to begin with, and it doesn't.

sitenoise at the movies: Happy Times [2000] China

Filmed in the Yunnan Province of China, the cinematography is breathtaking, the story a poignant one. The film begins in the mid 1960s when the spirit of the Communist Revolution was still high and the excesses of the Cultural Revolution hadn't kicked in. Zhang plays bus ticket girl, Li Chunfen. The bus driver, played wonderfully by comedian exploring serious film roles Wei Fan, though much older than Li, has a crush on her (like almost everybody else). Li's affection, however, is for a frequent passenger, Dr. Liu, who's been transferred to Yunnan because his family was rich and he's a bit of an intellectual, qualities that are increasingly suspect as the Cultural Revolution kicks in. The doctor has been sent to a hard labor camp and when Li sneaks out to meet him one night and is caught, things change dramatically for her. She is forced into an arranged marriage with the bus driver who uses his clout with the local party leaders to help her avoid a fate worse than the surface level crime of losing face and bringing shame upon herself.

I don't want to give a complete play by play of the storyline, suffice to say The Road is not only a personal journey and a love story, a really touching one it turns out, without an ounce of melodrama, it's also an educational story for those of us unfamiliar, as a portrait of changing times in China, lovingly told. The film takes us from a time when a sense of community and shared values were alive, through the violence and upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, and into modern times where some celebrate the loosening of a moral structure and others remember it fondly. And it does it without any political agenda. It's beautiful. Bravo.

sitenoise at the movies: The Road [2006] China

Stories of domestic abuse are often so unreal or surreal, if/when they are made into movies they often come off as unbelievable or too melodramatic, leaving the facts of the case alone to provide the emotional impact. The aesthetics of the film itself seem less of a priority. The acting and direction of Night and Fog are so pitch perfect, that even though the story starts at the end so we know the result and it's unraveled through flashbacks and police interrogations, it plays out like a mystery. It's not the what of what happened but the how of what happened that compels. And don't write off Jingchu Zhang as just another pretty face. She nails the part of an ambitious peasant girl from the heartland, in this case Sichuan, who appears to have made it to the top by marrying a Hong Kong man. Her sisters made it only halfway, marrying men from the industrial Shenzhen. This is the ladder of success many young women from the disadvantaged rural areas attempt to climb. No matter that many of the men they pursue, especially the ones from Hong Kong, might already have a wife.

Director Ann Hui places the micro of domestic abuse into a wider macro social context with such honesty it's scary. The film reveals a plight of a segment of the Chinese population it hurts to know about. Hui pushes hard on the social buttons of an issue that many would like to ignore, but that's what gives the film its power. This is one of the more painfully sad films I've seen in a long time. I put it on when it was already way past my bed time, thinking I'd just get a feel for it and fall asleep. Well, a feel for it I got, and ended up staring at it, bug-eyed, the entire two hour runtime.

sitenoise at the movies: Night and Fog [2009]

This is a strange one, in a good way, for the most part. It's a lovely and meditative story of blossoming and innocent young love that jumps back and forth in time and in and out of dreams. It gets a little weird, then a little confusing, and then almost shoots itself in the foot by hinting at some plot to get in the way of the story. I'm not sure that it happened but it seems to have, and it appears to relate to the melodramatic question a young woman asks her mother: "If you could go back to the past and meet dad again, would you still marry him ... but you know that he would have an accident later?"

I think it's a mistake to try and discover meaning in a film like this, as the director or as a viewer, even though it's filled with innumerable possible symbolisms. This is not a commercial love story. It's far too down tempo and poetic. But it is a love story and these kinds of films require a nice couple for us to love, and the two leads provide that here, with extra credit given to the ever watchable Nikki Hsin-Ying Hsieh in her film debut.

The beautiful theme song that plays as the end credits roll is sung by Tarcy Su, a singer and actress I just discovered in the remarkable film Blue Cha Cha.

sitenoise at the movies: One Day (You yi tian)

A five hour xmas day marathon. Costume dramas and any kind of physical (or weapon) fighting are the two things I dislike the most in films so I don't know how it happened but I loved every minute of this monster. Great cast. It seemed made for China, not the USA. That's a good thing.

I think if I had seen the condensed version I wouldn't have liked it. Since there are two 30 minute fight scenes, which would have been half the movie, I would have been repulsed. I loved the "Art of War", men of honor, tea ceremony style languid pace that fleshed out the characters and the gravity of the situation. I even sort of rooted for those guys when they went ONE against ONE THOUSAND ... something so silly I've never understood the prevalence nor appeal of it in film.

EPIC. Long, slow, a little melodramatically meandering but never boring. This is a great film to watch before HERO to get a more standard historical telling of the story of China's first Emperor. It's not stuffy at all. Most of the characters are a little wacky. Hard not to see it as a parallel to state sanctioned historiography of Mao. Chinese unity is paramount, there will be blood.