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Palm Springs Film Festival 2008: capsule reviews

By APA Staff

APA looks at three notable Asian films screened at this year's festival: The Sea Wall, Painted Skin, and Mumbai Meri Jaan.

The Sea Wall
dir: Rithy Panh

When The Sea Wall ended, I heard a woman say that the film reminded her of Indochine (1992). I secretly concurred. Then the woman added, "That's why I like this film." Here the disagreement begins. Unfortunately, the comparison with Indochine is apt. Indochine represents a trilogy with L'Amant (1992) and Dien Bien Phu (1992), films that remember oh-so-elegantly and romantically French colonialism. A tradition of French élan brought to the colonies where either the romance between a man and a woman or the romance of war drives the plot, with a similar look and splendour, is the standard description. The most staggering thing about The Sea Wall is that despite the 16-year difference, it never really strays from the Indochine syndrome. Granted, the film is based on a text by Marguerite Duras (as is L'Amant), but since I haven't read it, I have to place the blame on director Panh for a rather tired and even trite film. The film is paved with good intentions: an attempt to convey the complexity of colonial relations between the French and the Cambodians, between peasant Cambodians and rich Cambodians, between men and women, between working-class French settlers and rich French settlers, etc. There are even hints of taking on French corruption in the allotment and seizure of land from Cambodian peasants, as they construct a "sea wall" to prevent the flooding of rice crops. But the film ultimately boils down to watching a dysfunctional French family that's not even that interesting, despite Isabelle Huppert's usual, appealing insouciance.  --Rowena Aquino

Painted Skin
dir: Gordon Chan

It's tempting to compare Painted Skin to the most famous Liaozhai adaptation, Ching Siu-tung's classic A Chinese Ghost Story from 1987. Both are supernatural romances with a bit of everything else: comedy, horror, special effects thrills. On every count, Gordon Chan's Painted Skin pales in comparison with its predecessor, but that's to be expected. These days we're content that a new Hong Kong film can simply pay off each genre it fervently throws in. The digital effects are bloody fun and the horror sends us spinning and giggling. Most of all, by the end, the film is genuinely romantic, primarily because actresses Zhou Xun and Zhao Wei are uncompromised by the film's rag-tag game of overabundance. But from the clunky storytelling to Donnie Yen's usual non-acting, Painted Skin as a whole feels like a project that was conceived but never developed. As with Tsui Hark's Missing, Painted Skin is a nice throw-back to Hong Kong cinema's anything-goes 80s, back when three genres in one film simply weren't enough. 20 years ago, Painted Skin would have been liked but not remembered. Now that Hong Kong produces only a fraction of what it used to, every new costume picture is expected to be the next big thing. Which is unfortunate because Painted Skin is a medium-sized treat and that's hardly a bad thing.  --Brian Hu

Mumbai Meri Jaan
dir: Nishikant Kamat

No one can argue the tragic timeliness of Mumbai Meri Jaan, which depicts the seven bomb blasts on Western Railway stations that occurred on July 11, 2006 and the lives of several Mumbai inhabitants in the aftermath. At a Q&A after the screening, director Kamat eloquently described the double-edged sword of the film's critical and popular success in India. He also articulated in a rather moving way the fictional lives and motivations of those affected directly and indirectly by the bomb blasts in the film. So engaging was Kamat that you couldn't help wishing that the sincerity and earnestness with which he spoke had been translated more emphatically on the screen. The film's overall impact is somewhat diluted by an obligation to form: the inclusion of a song and other musical montage sequences strike discordantly with the scenes shown, in addition to a gesture towards universality that somewhat defeats the film's specificity and touches close to lecturing. But lest I be accused of being totally unfeeling, Mumbai Meri Jaan does carry the physical and mental impact of the bomb blasts and the aftermath, and the fear and suspicion instilled in the everyday that marks trauma. The cross-section of experiences is the film's strong point. Irfan Khan and Soha Ali Khan's story threads in particular offer strong comment on the repercussions of living in a post-terrorist attack environment and a critique of media-hungry reporters that all too easily swarm around tragedy for ratings.  --Rowena Aquino

Date Posted: 1/23/2009