Reviews

Superbly acted so trustworthy that the audience gets bored in the beginning but then the plot builds up and the too common situations and characters become a delightful drama with humor, emotions and fine pictures that let you (if you feel like it) more clever after than before.

I was slightly afraid and ashamed to indulge in going to the cinema to watch a movie described as so horribly violent and voyeurist by many trustworthy critics.

I agree it has to be condemned on moral grounds and kept away from the eye of ordinary or sensitive audience - more than "Breaking the waves" that was already pretty tough but still very gentle.

Yet if you dare to overcome this disgust, you will discover a fantastic masterpiece, wonderfully shot and acted, driving you through a unique tale of love, hate, and common life, with clever references to other filmmakers (and first Kubrick of course) far from the usual easy cheap soup or vulgarity movie industry often let us watch.

Beyond moral judgement, I liked this portray of a girl who decided to break a barrier that had never been broken and therefore become as unique as one can be. Of course, stepping in the Guinness book of world records is not exactly enough to create a memorable destiny, and choosing the pornographic field attracts heaps of hungry viewers that cannot exactly be called reputable admirers, and yet...I think movie managed to show us in Annabella a pretty unique and sympathetic character, at the same time excessive, provocative but also sincere and fragile.

I specially liked the episode of her return to Singapore, which depicts so well the gap that has been experienced by this proud, ingenuous nature, hypnotised by the freedom of America - as far as to forget all moral barriers and follow her single pleasure till the extreme - and then crash down on reality when going back to her family roots - probably in search of a recomfort she was starting to miss in the vain and stupid environment of those cynical sex filmmakers.

There is really an Annabel Chong story, that has nothing to do with peeping pornography and condemning judgments.

For a foreign eye, an interesting and humoristic ethnological documentary about life in a typical American country town.

I discovered, liked and laughed at many details pictured in the movie. Maybe some of the caricatures were sometimes a bit excessive (like the jokes with the dumb shopkeeper) but all in all I spent a good moment

I found the drawings and the general esthetic disappointing as compared to other good quality cartoons. I found the sound track disappointing, and I almost found it shocking to hear biblical sentences sung in a Hollywood style. I found the characters disappointing, the prince and his friend looking more like US college graduate than historical figures. But I guess there was a strong educational goal for this movie which simply was not in my expectations.

What I liked best was the sound track, with echoes from Puccini's Gianni Scicci. The plot is also an acceptable average, which also reminds of "Rien ne va plus" from Claude Chabrol, with the same Michel Serrault playing the role of a modest ordinary crook, trying his best to turn his boring life into an affordable extraordinary adventure.