Monday, December 6, 2010

Hong Kong, My Love

Chinese Box (1997) - Wang
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Wayne Wang's love letter to Hong Kong coincides with the 1997 handover of HK to China from the British rule. Jeremy Irons is John, a Brit journalist who never figured out the place where everyone speaks nothing but money. Gong Li is Vivian, a successful business woman who can't get out of the shadows of her past and Maggie Cheung is Jean, a young woman with a scarred face who can't get over her first love. Thanks to Jean-Claude Carrière's nuanced, mature script, the three are not merely stand-ins for the dying Empire/end of the era, old generation bound by tradition and bitter new generation. He captures the year of uncertainty in a specific place/specific political climate like a time capsule. Shot mostly hand-held by Vilko Filac, regular of Emir Kustrica's, HK has never been this intimate or beautiful. Ruben Blades steals the show as a serenading roommate of John. Jared Harris as a straight-faced, forgetful former high school sweetheart of Jean is also memorable. I like this a lot.

Too Goddamn Beautiful

La Piscine/Swimming Pool (1969) - Deray
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It's sunny French Riviera. Jean-Paul (Alain Delon) and Marie (Romy Schneider) are staying in a beautiful summer villa with a fancy swimming pool. They are stunning looking couple. In fact, everything in this movie is fucking beautiful. They have sex, fool around, everything is hunky dory until their friend Harry shows up with his 18 year old daughter, Penelope (Jane Birkin). Tension rises. The couple's fragile relationship is being tested. It's Harry's off hand remarks over dinner or snack near the pool that carries venom for both Jean-Paul and Marie. You see, Marie was Harry's mistress once.

Romy Schneider is radiant in this, much more compelling than lanky, flat chested Jane Birkin's non character whom she is supposed to be jealous of.

There are no real dangerous games or seductions playing out in Swimming Pool. Even though it resembles Delon's better known Plein soleil a little, with his darker side coming out, it's not really a simple morality play. The film is a little too simple on the character's psychology and its pacing is slow but the leads are so damn pretty.

Sour Grapes

Les Rasins de Mort/Grapes of Death (1978) - Rollin
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Soft focus, inept sound, snail's pace, horrendous continuity, bad make up...I should've hated this. But for some reason, I didn't. Jean Rollin might not be the cinema's most celebrated poet of death, but there is something very unsettling about his films. In Grapes of Death, female characters are only there to be naked, beheaded or impaled and only the beer guzzling, uni-browed peasants survive the vineyard pesticide induced zombie attacks (well, not really). I wouldn't call that exactly a social commentary. Still something very macabre about the whole thing. I'd like to see more of his stuff, maybe better ones than this though.