CANNES -- Ah, the indignity. A Toronto based colleague of mine was trying to get an interview with someone involved in Clean, Olivier Assayas's new Competition film, which actually has some Canadian presence in it.
I believe my colleague wanted either the director or star Maggie Cheung. He was offered Don McKellar. "I don't need to come to Cannes to interview Don Fucking McKellar. I can interview him at the market two blocks from my house."
AND I THOUGHT I WAS TOUGH -- I'm trying to find a polite way to describe the Cannes closer, De-Lovely, some way that doesn't involve the phrase "the worst idea since talkies" when I come across Jonathan Romney's review of After We're Gone (Director's Fortnight) in today's Screen International. The review includes this sentence. "(Director Damien) Odoul's attempt is a nadir of the genre, an excruciatingly precious exercise that in its own way is as narcissistic as Vincent Gallo's already-legendary dud The Brown Bunny, but nowhere near as entertaining." Yikes. For those of you with short memories, The Brown Bunny was described as a movie that "redefines badness".
FUCKING MIRAMAX -- They got a few of us out of our regularly scheduled screenings to see Hero, which they are finally releasing. They promised a 109-minute cut of the film. The print screened was the same 98-minute cut of the film that I've had on a Chinese DVD for about six months. It's great to see it on a really big screen, but not in the middle of Cannes.
THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS -- Zhang Yimou's newest effort in the wuxia (sword and chivalry) genre, The House Of Flying Daggers casts the director's current muse, Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as Mei, a blind dancer in a Peony Pavilion (brothel) who's really an undercover agent for the Flying Daggers, a secret society in rebellion against the current Emperor, current in this picture being the ninth century CE. It's not as extravagantly shot as Hero -- where Chris Doyle was his cinematographer -- or as spectacularly cast. Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau are stronger actors than Jet Li and Donnie Yen in the previous film, but they aren't as strong on the martial arts elements, and Zhang has to create their fights in the cutting room as much as on the set. It's also really strange to see Andy Lau in a period film.
He's such a stalwart star of the Hong Kong crime drama -- check Infernal Affairs 1&2 or Full Time Killer -- that to see him without a gun in his hand is rather like seeing him naked.
It's not exactly involving -- there's a huge set of reversals toward the end of the film which completely alter every character relationship in the film, but the Echo Game dance number which turns into a fight featuring Zhang Ziyi. Wow!
And has anyone thought about this weird exchange going on between the worlds of Zhang Yimou and the Wong Kar-Wai? Hero was shot by Wong's favorite cinematographer, Chris Doyle, and re-unites Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung from In The Mood For Love. Takeshi Kaneshiro, featured in Flying Daggers, is one of Wong's favorite actors, Zhang Ziyi is in both of Zhang's wuxia and Wong's new 2046, as is Maggie Cheung, star of Wong's In The Mood For Love and Zhang's hero. Gong Li, Zhang's former muse and star of Raise the Red Lantern and To Live is the star of 2046.
(The Hong Kong industry is very tightly knit, but neither Zhang nor Wong is a conventional, industry bound HK directors -- Zhang works out of China, and Wong is an "international" filmmaker..
THE SWORD IN THE MOON (Ui-seok Kim, Un Certain Regard) -- Trying to spice things up a bit, the Festival's been throwing midnight screenings of Asian action movies that don't come with Zhang Yimou's pedigree, including this martial arts epic from Korea.
There's so many factions and betrayals going on in the political text of the film that when at one point a bunch of guys in those gauzy Quaker hats show up to kill one of the bad guys, at least, I thought he was one of the bad guys, I had no idea who they were.
There's the bad Korean soldier known as The Human Butcher, who is loyal to his skill, then there's the good Korean soldier who has left the army to fight for right, and there's a bunch of assassins, and rebel factions, and the girl whose father died and now wants revenge and, shows up at the end, suddenly transformed into the Invincible Sword Goddess, for some reason.
The plot was just way too tricky for me -- and the ending battle is badly botched. Too bad. There's almost a great movie here.
