Jakarta int'l film festival showcases new Asian cinema

Jakarta int'l film festival showcases new Asian cinema

By Dini Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): Before bankruptcies swept through Asia in the
last years of the 20th century, the millennium was going to be
called the Pacific Century.

That judgment has been reconsidered. Yet if the spate of Asian
films shown at JiFFest this year is any indication of a
renaissance -- economically, politically, culturally -- the so-
called Far East may be rising after all.

The majority of films under the festival's "New Asian Cinema"
category are, without overstatement, sublime. They are visually
beautiful, emotionally touching, and unexpectedly optimistic.
Like cheerleaders, the directors whisper to Asians struggling
with poverty and urban alienation: move forward, accept no
defeat, retain your dignity.

Some of these directors are no stranger to praise. Zhang
Yimou's best films -- Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, and To Live,
all starring his former muse Gong Li - are regarded
internationally, not only in Asia, as modern masterpieces.

Not One Less is familiar territory for Zhang. A sensitive
portrait of the ordinary tribulations of a remote mountain
village, the film won for this revered cinematographer yet
another Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival. Along with
Singapore's Eating Air and Thailand's Nang Nak, Not One Less was
shown on the festival's first day.

If you missed those showings, don't miss the other glimpses of
China's cinematic ascendancy. Director Zhang Yuan, whose work is
familiar to MTV audiences, is a candidate for Zhang Yimou's
mantle. He too has an honest eye, and Crazy English highlights
his gritty, direct approach.

The documentary follows motivational speaker Li Yang as he
galvanizes crowds from the Forbidden City to the Great Wall; the
final product is a hilarious piece of reality theater.

Seventeen Years, shot in a 100-year-old prison, is as sober,
and won Zhang the Best Director prize at the 1999 Venice Film
Festival. Inspired by a real-life story of a young girl who
unintentionally kills her stepsister, the tale is a poignant
portrait of redemption.

Shower, by fellow music-video veteran Zhang Yang, is also an
elegy to atonement. Shower is arguably the feel-good movie of the
year; rarely have I heard audiences laugh so generously, as they
did at the festival's premiere.

Perhaps MTV helped polish sense of humor of these directors;
it certainly improved their editing and framing skills. Every
carefully sketched scene in Shower has a purpose. There are no
extraneous moments, no pretentious quips, no unnecessary fancy
shots. Make no mistake, this is a beautiful movie: beautifully
filmed, beautifully acted, beautifully structured. But it is a
lesson in simplicity. Avant-garde cinematographers who see this
film may be shamed into reconsidering their techniques.

Scriptwriters should take note too. The plotline -- revolving
around a father and his two sons -- is so delicately presented
that one remembers not the names of the characters, but their
sanguine faces and singular voices. Like his retarded brother
Erming, the eldest son, a businessman who left Beijing to make
his fortune in southern China, barely speaks at all.

Together they communicate with their father, the aging master
of a bath-house, in delicate but awkward gestures -- much like
the way a modernizing society tries to relate to its heritage.
Urban dwellers around the world are familiar with the tug-of-war
between the traditional and the modern, but the dilemma is often
condescendingly painted as a hostile, zero-sum game. Shower
forsakes a black-and-white depiction for, quite fittingly for an
Asian production, a multihued portrait of compromise and
congruence.

For example, when the yuppie son buys his father a contraption
which essentially would make his livelihood obsolete, the father
revels rather than scorns the apparatus. And when the father
reprimands some local mafioso harassing a deadbeat-debtor in his
bath-house, the gangsters respect his authority. Even when so-
called progress wins, tradition can -- and does -- continue too.
Buildings are built and bulldozed, as are fortunes, but families
and friendships survive. Life goes on, bridging the past with the
future. If you're feeling depressed about the future of humanity,
go see Shower - you'll be skipping all the way back home.

Three Seasons, by 26 year-old director Tony Bui, is less
buoyant, but no less exquisite. If Shower is a giggly teenager,
Three Seasons is the moody, introverted sibling. It is the first
American film shot in Vietnam since the war and it features
Vietnamese actors. The story weaves its threads around four
characters crossing each other's paths while forging their own
journeys. Her long hair trailing over her modest dress, lotus-
picker Kien An harks back to the days of yore. Rickshaw driver
Hai, weary with urban hardship, gets misty-eyed about the past
too, yet he nevertheless falls for a miniskirted prostitute.
Young Woody sells trinkets to tourists, among them former G.I.
James Hager (Harvey Keitel), who is looking for the daughter he
left behind in the war. All seemingly have no place in the new
Vietnam.

Fine performances and superb camera work carry the film.
Cinematographer Lisa Rinzler, who has worked for legendary
director Wim Wenders, plays with shadows and showers; most of the
film unfolds at night and in the rain, giving her palette texture
and luster.

In the downpour, the characters -- symbolizing the nation's
disparate elements desperate to forge a unitary identity --
collide with the nation's glaring neon lights, and still maintain
nobility and faith.

One can criticize the ending as being too tidy, almost
Hollywood-influenced. Yet one can also argue that a more bleak
conclusion, one which dismisses the optimism underpinning modern
Asia, is more structured and predictable. Life is not -- and both
Shower and Three Seasons soar for saying so.