Hey folks, Harry here with Amahagger Muggle in Rotterdam telling us about I LOVE YOU from China. It sounds like I LOVE YOU will be quite a good film to see, however, it doesn't sound as transcendently wonderful as SUBWAY SPRING, a film I saw in Beijeng last year. Here's Amahagger...
Hi, you good people at Aint-it-cool-news, here is a limited view of the Rotterdam Film Festival from Amahagger Muggle.
For this years festival, I've been immensely stuuupid. Me and my friends had been gambling on a couple of movies but... Well, like Elaine said, there are a couple of big films missing, and Rotterdam sometimes has a habit of getting these films one year after the buzz about them started. They showed Avalon in 2002 (we anticipated it for the 2001 festival) and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2001 (instead of 2000). Last year, we were hoping Spirited Away would be shown, but it had it's european premiere mere weeks later in Berlin instead and wrote history there. So guess what we were expecting this year? Not Hero, that'll probably show in 2004. No, we wanted Spirited Away!
And it's not being shown.
Making Rotterdam maybe the only festival that hasn't shown it. We are probably the only country in Europe that hasn't had it in the cinema's yet. So that was a very big disappointment, but we started looking through the list for more cool stuff from Asia: The Eye? Not shown. Dark Water? Not shown. Resurrection of the Match Girl? Yes! Oh, wait: cancelled. The next thing that happened was the total breakdown of the internet reservation system (leaving us stranded for a couple of titels), and we started to give up on this years festival. And that was what I meant with "incredibly stuuupid".
For it's that very attitude that has made me miss a couple of movies which I probably could have seen, if I had just put a bit more effort in it. Whale Rider? Missed it. Russian Ark? Tried to get tickets, but just missed it (and everyone standing in line for THAT one was telling each other how wonderful Whale Rider was, which didn't help). "Three" is a movie about three ghost stories from Korea, Thailand and Hong-Kong, and a friend of mine calls it the best movie he's seen in... haha... three years. Missed it. However, this one is not totally my fault: it wasn't on the list originally. I'm just warning everyone: the word is out that "Three" is very, VERY good indeed.
The very atmosphere of the festival started to get to me once I finally was in line for tickets. Even though that ended without getting into the movie I was hoping for, the conversations with fellow moviegoers were fun. Indeed, the moment people know you are going to (or have been to) a movie, total strangers start asking your opinion on it, leading to good information on other movies and friendly disagreements. I've been bitten by the festival bug again. So next year, I'll do my homework better and put in more free time and effort.
So what did I DO manage to see? I went to "I Love You". And here is my review:
"I love you", directed by Zhang Yuan, China, 2002.
Although Zhang Yuan has shown his movies in Rotterdam before, I have never seen any of them yet. However, this one was on my "to see" list because it takes place in Beijing (a place I recently was lucky enough to visit) and was advertised as a realistic view about a young couple marrying (which I'm about to, so it seemed worth seeing the worst that could happen). As a minor disappointment to me personally, not much of Beijing was shown, but that doesn't hurt the movie at all because it's about people and not Beijing.
The story is very simple: a boy, Yi, and a girl, Ju, are shown meeting and falling in love. Very quickly they marry, but with the two of them living together in a tiny appartment, tempers start to flare. Even though they love each other they start to fight, and keep fighting almost continuously until the relationship tragically spirals out of control. And that's basically it. Most of the time you are watching the two of them being mean to one another, in close-up.
A couple of things keep this interesting to watch, namely the terrific acting by the two leads, Xu Jing Lei and Tong Da Wei (embarrasingly I don't know which is which), and the facts that the fights are believable and (dare I say it) vaguely recognizable for everyone in the group I saw it with. Note: discussions afterwards are guaranteed, especially if you are seeing it with a group of mixed gender! This is because the two main characters aren't caricatures. Both are initially likeable, and it's not pleasant to watch these two tearing into each other later on. Yi is a bit easygoing and isn't comfortable with showing affection in public, while Ju demands attention and is quick to nag when she doesn't get it. Escalation is quick. A typical evening for the lovely couple: Yi wants to be left alone, Ju wants attention, Yi gets angry and withdrawn, Ju starts pulling stunts to get a reaction out of him, Yi starts calling her childish and crazy... etcetera. Before you know it, both are yelling insults and accusations. You get to watch this a lot in this movie, with differing results. Sometimes one of them is right and the other unreasonable, but that shifts often. You start to fear for the both of them. Hell, if Miike Takashi was in charge, you'd be waiting for the chainsaws to come out! But Zhang Yuan keeps his tale firmly rooted in reality, with the only horror being the unstoppable deterioration of their relationship even though they both obviously care. Watching them fight is tragic, but also occasionally funny as they jump from one subject of conversation to another when cornered, or when the reproaches become absurd ("you are UGLY!", Yi at one point yells at Ju, who is quite the looker). The nice cinematography and music didn't hurt either. What I didn't like was the absence of any way to find out how much time had passed. Are the fights shown daily, weekly or over years? There are certainly points where I'd have liked to know how long they would have put up with their "situation". Or, come to think of it, their neighbours with them? Also, some events seem a bit fabricated, like an explanation for Ju's sometimes hysterical nature that comes out of nowhere.
However, the main point is to show how these two characters butt heads, and this film brings it's points across on that account. There is also no easy ending to this story. It never becomes "War of the Roses", and it's never "Audition", but sits inbetween those two, toned down until it looks realistic enough to be believable. More than a day later, I'm still pondering this movie, and that's what it sets out to do.
Extra note: reading the slightly inaccurate blurb about this picture in the festival newspaper, I'm also pondering if I've mixed up the names of Ju and Yi in the review! If I did, I did it consistently though, so exchange them all or don't exchange them.
This was Amahagger Muggle from the Rotterdam Film Festival. I hope to "score" tickets for a couple more movies, and I'll be quick to write reviews if I succeed. And it's just been confirmed that Whale Rider, Russian Ark and Spirited Away WILL get released in the Netherlands later on, so I'll get to see them anyway! And "Resurrection of the Match Girl" can already be imported on DVD. Reviews are out on the internet, and apparently it looks gorgeous, being described as as intelligent as Avalon but as entertaining as The Matrix. Huh? Why isn't it here, in Rotterdam, now? I'm getting mad again...
