Change Your Image
vincentinparis
Reviews
Yong jiu ju liu (2009)
Scud is a filmmaker to watch
Did anybody else wonder why the Chinese guy with a thick Chinese accent is an orthodox Jew living in Israel and unable to speak Chinese? Does anyone watching this film wonder how the Hong Kong tech geek morphs into an Australian filmmaker (who is about to make Scud's next films - how's that for self-indulgent)? More jarringly, is there any psychology in Ivan's instant transformation from over-achieving workaholic in denial to hedonistic, self-accepting, out gay man? Did anyone else in the audience feel that all the female characters (the granny, the mother, the lesbian pal, Windson's mother) walk on for their cameo, but ultimately are missed opportunities in characterization?
Don't get me wrong, this film has a lot going for it. Windson's suppressed sexuality that lets him flash his bits around the gym sauna and be used naked in bed or in the shower without any ability to reciprocate emotion is more subtly drawn, perhaps because he is unable to develop emotionally, leaving his contradictions to express his frustrations. Ivan's morbid obsessions from childhood to the end of his own life are poignant. The film is beautifully shot, even while it is being coy with shadows about its flaunting of gratuitous nudity.
Flawed, yes, but moving and watchable nonetheless. Let's see what Scud does next.
The Timekeeper (2009)
pretty awful adaptation of a bestseller
Take a sadistic villain with the psychological depth of a cartoon character. Add a goody-two-shoe hero, who comes to right the wrongs in this world (and who never in 52 days of fleeing through the wilds or working in a chain gang never, ever needs a shave or runs out of hair gel). To this simplistic recipe, add a few supporting roles and extras who lack any interest or dialogue or intelligence (I mean, wouldn't you just catch fish or eat berries rather than scrounge scraps out of discardedtins in the garbage heap?). In their flight from the camp from hell,one character leaves (but you guessed it, he'll come crawling out of the woods just when he's needed) while another, the stereotyped strong, silent Indian who has no dialogue other than grunting in the direction of the river bank, simply disappears, with none of the other characters seeming to notice or care. (I suspect that his native wisdom told him he'd be better off in some other movie that actually had a script.)
With every line of trite text, the sparse audience I saw this film with emitted groans, then nervous giggles, then was left in stunned silence at the dreadfulness of it all. I think about half a dozen of us actually managed to hang on until the final credits. Everybody else did what the exploited laborers in the film didn't have the good sense to do: they simply walked out and did something better with their time.