Asian

The second movie as the director of Hung Hung, Human Comedy, is divided in four stories separated by interconnected chapters focusing on the contradictions of the human condition inside the modern Taipei. The first story narrates the misfortunes of a young shoe saleswoman who is in love with the actor Tony Leung who lives virtually isolated of all inside in a world of fantasy that she has been created around it. In the second chapter we get in the shoes of an actor who must fight with the director of the play he is working for (AIDS patient) and with his conservative mother who is coming to Taipei to visit him. The third story concerns on engaged couples that are forced to seek for a new house because their house is infected with cockroaches. Read More »

Diagnosed with cancer and unable to afford treatment, a woman decides to leave her unhappy marriage search for her first love in Beijing.Read More »

The story takes place in a beautiful pavilion in 1930’s Suzhou. Jade is a famous songstress courtesan, marrying into the noble house. She develops a dubious relationship with a female cousin of the family and also being admired secretly by her butler. LAN, the cousin, is a modern woman who wants to be independent and serves her country, but when she meets the charismatic Shing, an official from the North, all her plans go astray.

These two women’s love bears no fruit with their men and in the end they have only each other to lean on.Read More »

Two teenage girls in a small Chinese fishing town vow to become sisters no matter what. When one becomes happily married to a stranger, the other is cruelly betrothed to the abusive son of a wealthy family. Seeking to free herself from a lifetime of abuse, Hui-hua desperately looks for a way out.Read More »

Liu Chia-Liang plays Wang Hsieh Yun, a teacher of a martial arts school teacher who has just reopened the school after having to move due to the government building a road where the school once stood. The school’s original master was to come and help open the school, but sends his Americanized daughter Mei Ling (Kara Hui) in his place, hence making her the senior and boss. Mei Ling feels Master Wang’s techniques are old fashioned and take to long to learn, boasting that her father has changed the way he teaches and that she is the authority on how it should be done. Read More »

Non-ko (36-sai Kaji Tetsudai), 7th film directed by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri. Stars Maki Sakai and Gen Hoshino (Shakerock). Nobuko commonly called Nonko who is 36 years old and a once-divorced woman returns Shinto shrine that her family runs, to help out around the house. There is no drive and no place to belong, just a backwards little country town. The only thing she does is riding her bicycle and going to the bar to drink with the owner, an another divorcee. She cannot remember the last time she had sex. One day, Nonko encounters a young man named Masaru who has great expectations about selling chicks at shrine’s festival. Masaru is rather naive and pitiable, but this earnest and straightforward younger man puts a smile back on her face, and she gradually becomes more emotionally and physically receptive…Read More »

Quote:
-La pierre de l’attente (1991) about a girl who meets his future husband in a boat people camp. They later establish in France (Paris 13eme arrondissement, “our” Chinatown !), have a kid…but their serenity is broken when the man discovers a terrible secret… based on an old vietnamese tale…but I won’t describe it as it’ll spoil the film … and the secret mentionnedRead More »

Quote:
this one was the mandatory project every cinema student has to make at the end of his studies. Also based on a vietnamese tale , image seems to be transfered from a videotape, not fantastic quality, but I presume you’ll never see it in better form…
Anyway, it’s also the first apparition of the incredibly beautiful Yen-Khe Luguern …a few years before she married Tran Anh Hung… that’s enough for meRead More »

Synopsis
Narrow Street is the story of two youths: Xia, an easygoing, good-humored mechanic, and Yu, who is rather shy and delicate. They first meet in the late sixties, during the chaotic days of the Cultural Revolution in China. The chaos and desperation around them strengthens their friendship, but one day Xia discovers that his friend actually a girl. Yu then tells him her story – the sufferings of her family, why she had to disguise herself. When Xia tries to find a wig for her, he is badly beaten, and by the time he leaves the hospital, Yu has disappeared. The film is a powerful condemnation of the political radicalism of the Cultural Revolution and shows how ordinary people were victimized during a decade of turmoil.Read More »