Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Moon Yun and Albert Lanier who have taken in the grand opening of the "Spring" version of the Hawaii International Film Festival. Does this fest ever take a break? Looks like the answer's no. Here they are with their word on LADY VENGEANCE, TSOTSI, DISTRICT 13 and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN.
Aloha, Moon Yun signing in from Hawaii. Last night I went to the first night of the Hawaii International Film Festival Spring Showcase.
It was a very strong start. I saw the powerful and poignant Foreign Film Oscar winner TSOTSI. Then I saw the third installment of the vengeance movie – LADY VENGEANCE – by master cult filmmaker Park Chan-wook.
These are two worthwhile movies to seek out and watch.
TSOTSI starts out powerfully as we watch a bunch of hoodlum eye their next prey at the subway station of Johannesburg, South Africa. They spot a gentle looking rotund man who’s making a purchase of ties as his next victim. Their tongues are practically wagging at the wad of money he takes out of his pocket.
They gang up on him in the subway and one of them senselessly stabs him when he objects. They kill the fat man and this shakes up the group. Well, almost everyone in the group except Tsotsi, played by Presley Chweneyagae. He does not flinch. You know he’s the “hero” of the movie, and as the hero that does bad they end up, “A” in jail or “B” dead. That’s what I remember Tony Soprano say in THE SOPRANOS.
One night Tsotsi carjacks a slick BMW and inadvertently kidnaps a baby who was seated in the back of the car. The violence was so disturbing when he shot the baby’s mother at Pointe blank. By this point you’ve got no sympathy of him.
For some strange reason he takes the baby home with him and immediately starts bonding with it. Another key character of the movie is a young mother he forces to nurse the baby.
Caring for the baby changes him and we see flashback of him as a child with an abusive father. He runs away from him. His real name is “David” and that’s how he started out in life as “Tsotsi.”
As Tsotsi, Chweneyagae goes from killer thug with no feelings to someone who’s very sorry for their act.
The movie had a CRASH thing to it. The protagonist does something despicable in the beginning and then he redeems himself. I won’t say whether Tsotsi ends up dead or in jail, just that it’s worth it to see for yourself how he ends up.
LADY VENGEANCE
I did not like OLDBOY. I missed the first one – SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE – and all I kept hearing was that this director, Park Chan-Wook, is the Korean Quinton Tarantino. But I really liked this one. Since this film doesn’t come out until May 5, here’s a sneak peak (with some spoilers) of this movie that you got to go see!
LADY VENGEANCE is about a 19-year-old woman who is wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of a little boy, and after 14 years in prison, she seeks out justice. Geum-ja, played by Lee Yeong-ae, is a beautiful young woman who can go from sweet and docile to dangerous and crazy at a beat. In prison she kills those giving anyone grief and befriends those in the same cell. When she gets out she keeps contact with them so they can go on together with their dirty deed. She discovers that the person who did kill the boy is an English teacher who moves from school to school preying on kids. She also had to give up her daughter when she went to jail. So we follow her on her trip to Australia where her daughter had been adopted by good people. Her daughter goes back with her to Korea, and not to spoil it for you, but Geum-ja doesn’t feel worthy to keep her and considers sending her back to Australia.
Moon Yun singing out…
NEW e-mail alert: moonyunchonolulu@aol.com
And here's Albert Lanier with his own look at the two above-mentioned films as well DISTRICT 13 and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN.
TSOTSI, LADY VENGEANCE AMONG OPENING FILMS FOR SPRING FILM SHOWCASE
by Albert Lanier
Greetings from the wettest place on earth-or what seems to be-as torrential rains have pounded Hawaii and caused small but powerful floods especially here on Oahu this past week.
Just as I thought I would have to swim to the Regal Dole Cannery 18 theaters for the start of the Hawaii International Film Festival's 9th annual Spring Showcase, the sun finally came out on the afternoon of Friday, March 31st.
I don't know if this is a sign from God or not (I'm not religious and I don't put any stock in omens) but if it is, God sure has great timing.
In any event, this year's Spring fest has 26 films from 13 countries and even though this festival is largely made up of a collection of features that are on the cusp of commercial release or limited distribution, this Spring Showcase is always worth checking out if not for the possibility of hidden cinematic jewels.
Friday night featured four opening films: Park Chan Wook's LADY VENGEANCE, recent Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film TSOTSI, the U.S. Premiere of manga based ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET and another Japanese film LINDA, LINDA, LINDA.
Turnout was quite good. The screening of TSOTSI I attended at 6:45 p.m. was pretty much packed to the rafters and the 9 p.m. screening of LADY VENGEANCE was said to be a "rush line" film (meaning largely sold out but if you really want to see a film, you can stand in line and perhaps buy a ticket if there are any seats left).
However, instead of reviewing a couple of the opening night films (such as LADY VENEGANCE which I will review later), here are a couple of shorter reviews of films playing through the week. I break with custom because I want to review some of the "smaller" or overlooked films that I often have to bypass in favor of the bigger guns so to speak.
DISTRICT 13: Scheduled to play this weekend and on Wednesday March 5th is this kinetic, pulse-pounding actioner written by THE PROFESSIONAL's Luc Besson and directed by Pierre Morel.
Set in 2010, a rundown, decrepit section of a French City is walled off completely (it seems like a highly urban version of the occupied territories) from the outside, a straight arrow cop named Damien (Cyril Rafaelli) is ordered by his superiors to penetrate this no man land's called Burrough 13 to recover a semi-nuclear Neutron bomb type prototype device set to go off in 24 hours.
That means that Damien has less than a day to find his way through Borough 13 (a place he has never been to), find the bomb and defuse it.
His only help and escort through the district is a fairly muscular and beefy resident named Leito (David Belle) who has been on the run from a drug lord named Taha who just so happens to have possession of the bomb thanks to a armored car robbery staged by his goons.
Of course, things are not always what they seem in DISTRICT 13. Essentially, a Gallic take on John Carpenter's enjoyable ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, DISTRICT 13 is essentially a stripped down, lean action film with essentially one dimensional characters at best and a lack of subtext, extensive backstory or any other expansive story elements.
In fact, the story is so pared down that it seems more an outline or scenario on screen most of the time.
Still, DISTRICT 13 works as an action film largely because...of its stripped and pared down script.
Luc Besson's script provides all the basic plot elements we need to get by as an audience and focuses largely on the physically involving action sequences based on the French Martial art of Parkour-which seems to consist of jumping from roof to roof of apartment buildings and out of open windows-and these sequences are worth watching.
The performances by leads Cyril Rafaelli and David Belle are adequate at best and the direction by Pierre Morel is decent, Morel's success lies largely in working with his editor to keep the scenes moving lickity split and ensuring a fine overall pace for the film.
DISTRICT 13 could rightly be considered an Action Film for Dummies (then again most action films are for dummies) but DISTRICT 13 is just smart enough to be a lean, mean action film without a lot of storytelling filler and byproducts. It succeeds-barely-but it does succeed.
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN:
A Chinese remake-scheduled to be screened this weekend and on Tuesday, April 4th and Thursday, April 6th- of the original story written by Stefan Zweig and first made by Director Max Ophuls in 1948, Writer/ Director Xu Jinglei stars a young woman who fallen rapturously in love with a well-known writer since she was a young girl living in an nearby apartment with her mother.
However, despite the fact they have met and made love, the writer never remembers the woman who loves him no matter what.
The film spans a couple of decades incorporating the pre-war thirties and post-war years as the film glides through a series of flashbacks triggered by the letter in the title which is read via voice over.
Though technically a fairly well-made film, LETTER is a lushly made failure on the script and character level. The main character is essentially an emotional martyr of sorts who is enveloped in a childish love for a man who doesn't even know her name or if so has forgotten and focused on more important things.
Credit DP Li Ping Bin on his fine cinematography here largely shot in apartments and dance halls but even Li Ping Bin's work cannot save this movie despite fairly good performances from Xu Jinglei and Jiang Wen as the writer.
The major mistake of the film is to situate as the main character, a woman who not only suffers from unrequited love but disconnected love, love that is foolish not so much because it is passive but because it is doomed because is a child's love that has never grown into a mature, adult emotion but remains stupidly pre-adolescent and pre-adult, never seeking anything and never gaining anything as well.
My advice: return this LETTER to sender.
