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Culinary Coproduction
The ingredients for Rice Rhapsody turned out to be harder to mix than expected. Director Kenneth Bi and producer Rosa Li share their recipe.
The Hong Kong/Singapore co-production Rice Rhapsody tells the story of a middle-aged widow (played by Sylvia Chang) juggling a newly renovated restaurant specializing in Hainan chicken, and three sons -- the eldest two who are gay, and the youngest who may or may not be, leading the mother to attempt heterosexual matches for him with everyone from a renowned movie actress (Maggie Q) to a visiting student from France (Mélanie Laurent). Ang Lee references aside, Rice Rhapsody, which came out last year in Asia and is currently available on DVD and VCD through Asian retailers, manages to be both fresh and comforting -- a crowd-pleasing work of noticeable skill, especially for a first-time filmmaker. Director Kenneth Bi, son of legendary Mandarin-language actress Ivy Ling Po (who has a brief cameo in the film), and producer Rosa Li spoke with the crowd at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Bi noted that he wanted to make a Chinese film -- but in a middle-class environment rather than the clichéd concrete and pavement of Hong Kong cinema. He also took pride in the fact that he delivered a film reflecting gay issues in Singapore, a rarity in the famously conservative country. Luckily for the American audience -- which responded surprisingly well throughout the film -- the filmmakers hinted that a U.S. distribution deal would be announced at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in May. APA caught up with Kenneth Bi and Rosa Li on their way to a post-screening party.
APA: You mentioned before the screening that this is your first time showing the film to a Western audience. Any thoughts on its reception?
Rosa Li: I thought it was really good. I was really nervous because there are so many aspects that are very Asian. I don’t know the city of Newport Beach so I didn’t know how the audience was going to react, but I think they reacted very similarly to Asian audiences. Actually we had a screening in Melbourne and London, but this is the other hemisphere. So I guess the conclusion is that people pick up on humor and have the same sensibility to stories and characters that are universal.
Kenneth Bi: The response here was bigger. The first time we saw it was in Pusan, Korea and the response was huge, and in Tokyo the response was a little more subdued. Their culture isn’t as expressive. But judging from tonight, the Western audience was with it all the way. I wanted to know how big the reaction would be. Because some of the lines were in English, I think the English-language audience actually picked it up more than the Chinese-speaking audience.
APA: What were you most surprised by? Anything specifically?
RL: There was one particular line where Sylvia Chang, the mother, said to her oldest son not to get married so she wouldn’t have to suffer, and people laughed. That’s a very Asian thing to sacrifice yourself, so in Asia, people wouldn’t laugh at that. But here, people laughed, and that’s a cultural difference.
APA: I read somewhere online that because it was a co-production, you were able to get the film through the Singapore censors more easily. Was this true?
RL: I think that’s false. Our first rating was an R-21, which is the highest, most severe rating you can get. It took our distributor in Singapore six-and-a-half weeks to get it one notch down, to M-18 -- which means nobody under 18 is allowed -- which I still think is very severe. So I think in fact we got a harsher rating than necessary, because I think they maybe wanted to make an example that Singapore doesn’t condone homosexuality. I’m not trying to speak for them, but there was a little bit of that.
APA: How do you think the fact that it was a co-production weighs into that?
RL: Well, we ironically had financing from the Singapore government: 20% from the Singapore Film Commission, which is a different arm than the censorship board. So I don’t really think they were able to help us on that.
APA: Do you think it was necessary for it to be a co-production to get made, or was that a strategy you were going for?
KB: It needed to be a co-production because it’s not a genre film. It’s not an easy film to make, because investors don’t know what you’re going to end up with in the end. It’s not a horror film; it’s not a crime film; it’s not a cops-and-robbers film. It’s very hard for people to imagine. That’s why we needed a co-producer. We needed to diversify the risk for the investors.
APA: In order to make a big film in Singapore, is co-production the only way to go?
KB: No, actually the Singapore government has a lot of money and they are investing in films. I’m not familiar with their policy, but they do have a lot of money for film. George Lucas just moved part of his arm into Singapore to do animation, partly because of the government incentive. So many American companies are moving into Singapore because of government assistance, so they do have money to make films.
APA: One question about the film. It seems that you were drawing from Eat Drink Man Woman and Wedding Banquet.
D: Does it seem that way?
APA: Well, I don’t mean that in a bad way. Actually I think you go beyond those films in some respects because your film is more open minded that Ang Lee’s are.
D: There is a superficial resemblance with these two films, but that’s as far as it goes. I love those two films, but I didn’t really draw on them. I have so many things in my life to draw from. The French girl is a character from my own life. Just the two superficial things resemble Ang Lee’s films, but that’s about it.
Date Posted: 4/28/2005