Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Raise the Red Lantern"

In the Hit Me With Your Best Shot Series we look at pre-selected films from all decades, genres and countries and choose the shots that mean the most to us. Today, Zhang Yimou's Oscar nominated masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern (1991) starring the exquisite Gong Li. You could stare at her face for hours and Zhang Yimou knows it, framing his sensational then muse dead center close-up in an unbroken shot for the film's very first moment, a conversation that's more like a self-annihilating monologue.

Introducing Songlian (Gong Li), the The Fourth Mistress...

Songlian: Mother, stop! You've been talking for three days. I've thought it over. All right, I'll get married.
Mother: Good! To what sort of man?
Songlian: What sort of man? Is it up to me? You always speak of money. Why shouldn't I marry a rich man?
Songlian's Mother: Marry a rich man and you'll only be his concubine.

Raise the Red Lantern is strange riveting look into the secluded estate of a rich man in China. Songlian, a 19 year old university drop out, becomes his Fourth Mistress. The Master is barely even a character in his own world, cleverly left on the edges of the frame or visible only in longshots. Raise the Red Lantern's true subject is the wives/concubines who vie for his attention, hoping that the lanterns will be lit at their house indicating his favor. The women compete for this honor partially out of boredom but also, clearly, due to their own patriarchal sexist indoctrination. One of the wives refers to her only child as "a cheap little girl" and even Songlian, the most educated among them, willfully resigns herself to a fate where she lives only to serve a man she cares nothing about.

Songlian: Let me be a concubine. Isn't that a woman's fate?

At first you wonder where Gong Li's performance could possibly go since she starts the film as an emptied out shell, already implacably sad. But the performance has unexpected range. Soon she's more lively, caught up in the psychological catfighting and attempts to please her Master and eventually the sadness curdles barely visibly into rage. The women play petty and truly vicious games for a prize that none of them want. It's as damning a screed against institutional sexism as I've ever seen and a profoundly sad portrait of the way oppressed people often become agents in their own oppression.

Though the film is completely ravishing too look at, with perfect symmetrical compositions, extraordinarily warm color and repeated closeups of one of the all time great screen faces, choosing a best shot seems perverse. Why? Because Raise the Red Lantern is pure cinema, it's images only gaining their true potency when lined up with the other images and juxtaposed with sound both expected and surprising from out of frame, revealing subtle differences of season, emotional flare-ups, or actual narrative shifts. 

The film's cumulative power is far greater than any individual moment but two shots completely unsettled me, my entire body seizing up as things spun out of control for the concubines and servants. The first was a profoundly sad shot of Songlian's maid Yan'er watching her own stolen lanterns burn to ash, their beauty snuffing out along with her dreams however impossibly tiny those dreams may have been. You know as you're watching that she'll die with them.

The second, and perversely my choice for "best" is the most atypical shot in the film's otherwisely stately composition and serene camera movements. Not since David Lynch's camera lept like a wild beast toward Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive has a shift in camera movement upset me as much. It's screen magic as I can't explain away its deep affect on me. In a sequence near film's end (I'll withhold spoilers) Songlian has witnessed (from afar) a disturbing event at "The House of Death" a mysterious locked room on the rooftops she was warned about early in the film. As she approaches the house we suddenly move to a shaky POV shot from Songlian the camera as unstable and fearful as her heavy chilled breath. 

Three frames juxtaposed (to approximate shaky cam) as Songlian approaches the House of Death

Songlian begins the film with something like youthful arrogance, a haughty contempt for everyone and everything (including herself). When she makes dramatic pronouncements like

Ghosts are people. People are ghosts."

it's difficult to separate the drama queen from a sharp truth teller. Songlian's initially shallow pronouncements and anger about the meaningless of her existence are giving way to a deeper understanding of how right she's been. Songlian is mad at the world and driving herself to madness. The locked room is the least of it. This whole estate is the House of Death.

Raise the Lanterns For
The Seventh Mistress...The Film's The Thing
The Eighth Mistress... Cinesnatch
The Ninth Mistress... Film Actually  
The Tenth Mistress... Antagony & Ecstasy
The Eleventh Mistress...  Encore Entertainment
The Twelfth Mistress... Okinawa Assault
The Thirteenth Mistress ... Pussy Goes Grrr

Next on 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot': Tomorrow  Pariah (2011); Wednesday May 9th, The Exorcist (1973); Wednesday May 15th, the original Burton + Depp fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990); Wednesday May 23rd, Joan Crawford in Possessed (1947). Join in! Movies are too beautiful to experience alone.

"A Separation" Wins Big at the Asian Film Awards

Congralutations to Andy Lau (representing Hong Kong's Oscar submission A Simple Life) and Eugene Domingo (the star of The Philippine's Oscar submission Woman in a Septic Tank) who won the People's Choice Award for Actor and Actress at the 6th Annual Asian Film Awards.

They look so happy. The Oscars are long over but somehow it's comforting to know that people hold new trophies every day of the year for something or other and not all of them are dreaming of Oscar. And not all awards bodies are concerned with whether or not Oscar voters are watching.

It was a big night for A Separation (which we were just talking about) which took home the top prize and three others. The craft categories were mostly split between Wu Xia and The Flying Swords of Dragon Gale, neither of which have come to US cinemas.

The acting awards were all over the place both in terms of films and countries.

The Winners
Film A Separation [Iran]
Director Asghar Farhadi, A Separation [Iran]
Actress Deanie Ip, A Simple Life [Hong Kong]
Actor Donny Damara, Lovely Man [Indonesia] 
Newcomer Ni Ni, The Flowers of War [China] 
Supporting Actress Shemaine Buencamino, Nino [The Philippines]
Supporting Actor Lawrence Ko Jump, Ashin! [Taiwan] 

Donny Damara plays a transgendered father in "Lovely Man"

Screenplay Asghar Farhadi, A Separation [Iran]
Cinematography Jake Pollock & Lai Yiu-fai Wu Xia [China | Hong Kong]
Production Design Yee Chung-man, Sun Li, Wu Xia [China | Hong Kong] 
Score Chan Kwong-wing, Peter Kam, Chatchai Pongprapaphan, Wu Xia [China | Hong Kong]
Editor Hayedeh Safiyari, A Separation [Iran]
Visual Effects Wook Kim, Josh Cole, Frankie Chung, The Flying Swords of Dragon Gale [China | Hong Kong ]
Costume Design Yee Chung-man, Lai Hsuan-wu The Flying Swords of Dragon Gale [China | Hong Kong] 

The Flying Swords of Dragon Gale hasn't come to the States yet but since it stars Jet Li and it's action oriented, I suppose we'll get it at some point.

Special Awards Lifetime Achievement for Hong Kong director Ann Hui and The Edward Yang New Talent Awards for Indonesia's Edwin. 

Golden Horse Awards: Two Oscar Submissions Win Big

I'm so itching for a big American awards show to hit us. Soon, soon. But until then, let's look to Taipei where The Golden Horse Awards were just handed out.

As expected the hit Taiwanese film Warriors of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale took home Best Picture. There's the jubilant cast doing an aboroginal dance on the red carpet. Fun!

Andy Lau and Deanie YipThe big winners of the night are both Oscar submissions this year in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Taiwan's Seediq Bale which is a action drama about aboroginal tribes battling occupying Japanese forces won the top prize and four other statues including "Audience Choice". Hong Kong's caretaking drama A Simple Life must have been close to a surprise sweep since it managed three of the top four statues: Director, Actor and Actress.

Superstar Andy Lau won Best Actor for the second time. He'd previously won for an Infernal Affairs sequel (the original Infernal Affairs was remade into the Oscar winning The Departed where Matt Damon took on Lau's role). Lau then presented Best Actress a category wherein he'd worked with 3 of the 4 nominees. You can see Shu Qi, he calls her "the most huggable woman ever", grinning throughout the presentation. Best Actress went to Lau's costar and actual godmother Deanie Yip. She also won the Volpi Cup at Venice this year for this role as a grown man's lifelong help who he must then care for when she has a stroke.

Video, complete list of winners, and fashion after the jump.

Click to read more ...

London: W.E., Oslo and Japan

David here, reporting from the final week of the London Film Festival. If there's one name guaranteed to grab my attention, it's...

The sight of Madonna's name heading up movie credits is a slightly surreal one, and it's difficult to imagine the icon standing behind a camera, and so W.E.'s worst foible is an understandable one from such a deified person. Re-edited after a poor reception at previous festivals, there is a fair deal to admire here, but all those flashbulbs must have gone to her head, because the photography is stuffed with dramatically posed shots, as if its being filmed with a still camera. Yet it's in the camera work that the film digs up shards of emotional truth amongst the narrative cliches, suggesting that Madonna might prove a worthwhile director. When the camera moves, it does so with a defiant tactility, a visual sense alive with feeling and clarity. This story of a late-'90s neglected wife (Abbie Cornish) in New York turning to the story of Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough, superbly poised) for comfort and reflection is the stuff of clunky parallels with little sense of historical ambiguity. The soundtrack is alarmingly overloaded. But the immediate, reactive sense of the photography delves through the physical to the emotional roots, scoring unpredictable truths. (C) more articles on W.E.

Oslo, August 31st is like two pages ripped from a diary; one covered with words, the second blank and sodden with tears. After his first feature, the textured novelistic Reprise, director Joachim Trier follows in Louis Malle's footsteps by adapting Pierre Drieu La Rochelle's Le feu follet, a melancholy tale of a man debating suicide. Anders Danielsen Lie, one of the two leads of Reprise, is given the luxury of a film to himself ...only his character, Anders, isn't one to luxuriate. The film's first half is full of words. Anders attempts to spread his wings, testing the waters of the outside world as he breaks from a spell in rehab. A discussion with his friend Thomas (Hans Olav Brenner) stretches imperceptibly to twenty minutes, dense with completely natural musings, arguments, and agonising admissions that absorb both characters and viewers. As Anders spirals into the night, and into August 31st, the film shifts into sensory expression, the lens focus shifting lucidly, the soundtrack slowly emptying to mournful desolation. Far from easy to watch, and tearfully inconclusive, this is nonetheless another quiet triumph from Trier. (A-) more articles on Oslo August 31st

two brothers in "I Wish"

Two brothers on a quest to repair their family. It's a story out of 1980s Hollywood cinema, and I Wish does ring with the cliches of quest narratives like Stand By Me or The Goonies. Hirokazu Kore-eda, a festival favourite thanks to films like Nobody Knows and After Life, directs this bright tale which centres around the supposed miracle that occurs when two bullet trains pass each other. Koichi and Ryu, each stuck with a parent on opposite sides of Kyushu, plot a voyage to witness the miracle and wish their family back together. Where Kore-eda betters his Stateside influences, though, is in his generous characterizations of the adult characters, who lack the intimacy we're granted with the vibrant kids but feel alive with both warmth and foibles. Inevitably, the film cycles through familiar ideas, but the wheels are so smooth it scarcely matters. The achievement of the quest isn't the thing, but the journey, and you're unlikely to find a more heartwarming, vibrant trip all year. (B+)

Actresses (2009): On Being A Female Actor

Alex BBats here, dishing about about a film that has been on Nathaniel’s must-see radar, the South Korean film The Actresses. (Nathaniel, you will LOVE this film!)

The Actresses recently screened in Los Angeles at the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles as a part of their bi-monthly film-screening program.  Though it is usually a projected DVD affair, it is free and I have fond memories of this venue because it was the first place I saw a movie in LA.  Jail Breakers, four long years ago …good times. If you’re in the LA area, why not give it a shot (hint: cheap date night). 

Time passing is one of the main topics of discussion in The Actresses.  Get ready for lots of discussion, because that’s all that happens.  Six actresses ranging from 20 to 60 years old get together to talk about acting, public pressures, rivals, boys, failed marriages, fashion, face size, while drinking and smoking.  The entire film happens within the set of a Korean Vogue photo shoot, minus a few driving and apartment shots at the beginning.  They start out seemingly like archetypes, Ok-bin Kim (Thirst and this year's Korean Oscar submission The Front Line) as young and eager to please starlet and Yeo-Jong Yun (The Housemaid 2010) being the fiery, no-nonsense veteran (who seems to be dealing with ageing better than everyone else), but the character deepens as they have legitimate discussions and debates about the benefits and drawbacks of being an actress and what has changed in the landscape of Korean and Asian entertainment. 

Some very funny and awkward set pieces make for a great start like Ok-bin running to get coffee when one of her seniors wants some, only to show up a hair too late. The entire scene of the actresses meeting at the beginning of the day is very enjoyable.  The only other people to have any sort of dialogue are the make up team, and you will enjoy their bitchiness  (“I heard you had a pearl inserted in your nose.” Gold.) There’s a bit of forced drama between Choi Ji-Woo (TV drama Stairway to Heaven) and Ko Hyun-jung (Woman on the Beach) that’s about...Hyun-jung not liking Ji-Woo, I guess?  That portion falls flat, but the real meat is last hour of the film which occurs around a table set for Christmas dinner.  The director, E J-yong, said each scene was improvised around certain scenarios, and the ladies let loose here, emotionally peaking during a discussion about how divorce stalled and nearly ruined some of their careers.  

The cast at the shoot

Why is the shoot taking place on Christmas Eve? Who cares. I could think of much worse ways to spend a holiday than with six gorgeous women chatting about the culture of fame and beauty.  I ended up just like Kim Min-hee (Hellcats) at the end of the film; a fly on the wall, listening to wise women speak of love and film with a smile plastered on my face.