Is it just me, or do we have a dearth of glamor- and sun-infused reports from Cannes this year? Maybe it’s because Michael Moore is dominating the headlines and whatever you think of his politics, well, Moore just isn’t that glamorous. I did enjoy A.O. Scott’s dispatch pointing out the strong entries from Asia this year:
This is not the first time that Asian films (and their admirers) have had a significant presence in Cannes: 2000 was the year not only of “In the Mood for Love” but also of “Yi Yi,” “Chunhyang,” “Eureka” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Recently this festival has become one of the premier Western showcases of Asian cinema, a development that reflects both the tastes of the programmers and the state of global film culture in the first decade of the 21st century. What Europe was 30 years ago, Asia is today: a continent with at least a half-dozen artistically and commercially thriving national cinemas producing work in a dizzying variety of styles and genres, from challenging festival fare to populist blockbusters. Their influence is felt around the world, in the high-flying martial-arts wire work that has lately become a Hollywood clichÃ(c) and, more interestingly, in the delicate urban anomie (a specialty of Mr. Wong’s) that permeates Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.”
Scott’s observation is hardly new, and the various Asian national cinemas have been in ascendancy for quite some time. Still, it’s hard to deny that something is in the water cinematically, and that something about Hong Kong or Taiwan’s film culture provides a welcome alternative to the art/popular cinema divide that still informs a lot of Western cinema. Even stock genre films like China’s Missing Gun (which played here only as part of the under-publicized Boston Film Festival) are more interesting aesthetically than a lot of the arthouse slop that gets distributed. And it’s criminal that older breakthroughs like the films of Edward Yang (Terrorizer, Taipei Story) have not had proper distribution in the US; they’re far better, even, than his Yi-Yi.
I can only hope that more of this work will get a release Stateside. Who knows what other treasures we may be missing?
No comments have been added to this post yet.