First Love

Arnault CASTEL acastel at indocarrsec.com
Tue Nov 24 03:53:06 EST 1998


I found this review of the movie "First Love", which I have not seen (i
think it flopped badly in HK
and was not shown for a very long time in cinemas.
I know very little about this movie except that :
- Eric Kot is part of a comedian duo "soft and hard", with Lamb hai fung (a
 HK version of cornelius,
who is also a singer/musician, an actor and a director : see 4 faces of
eve, co-directed with Eric Kot)
- the titled is "first love / lover on the breeze" a reference to the UK
pop band Suede (Cf. the song Trash,
which was also covered by lamb hoi fung and antony woong).
- I guess Chris doyle worked on this movie. that's why you believe it is a
WKW movie. I have mixed
feelings about Chris Doyle. I think his style was perfect in chungking
express (very close
to the storyline/mood) but it's now turning to a gimmick (which makes WKW's
 Fallen Angels
only a half success). he hence needs to work with strong-minded director (
as Stanley Kwan).
In the excellent Happy together, I found WKW wanted to explore a new
directions both in story-
telling 9a less fragmented and more focused story line) and art direction
(darker, less
obvious) and we only had few "Chris doyle gimmicks"

Sorry is this message is not Japan cinema -related but i have not found a
good forum to discuss
HK/Chinese/Taiwanese or Asian movies.

To finish on a japan-related note. Does anyone know if Cornelius (a musical
 genius imho) has
been involved in film (directing/acting/soundtrack), and what are the
connections, if any, between the
shibuya sound and the movie world

ArC



"If the wild and snappy First Love: Litter on the Breeze is anything to go
by, the industry is
 beginning to reinvent itself. Produced by Wong Kar-wai (Happy Together,
Chungking Express)
 and directed by actor Eric Kot, First Love brims with ideas, is
chockablock with local color and
has fun playing with the idea of cinema. There's hardly time to catch a
breath as Kot sweeps
us through a couple of way-out romances bouncing along on Hong Kong's urban
 swell.

The film's fragmented storyline and spinning cinematography are Wong
trademarks. And it
 comes as no surprise to learn that he was deeply involved in the project
from the start.
Asia's most influential film-maker nursed prot
-------------- next part --------------

?g? Kot through the two years
 it took to put
First Love together, spending many late-night sessions advising on
everything from the script
to handling actors to editing.

"Kar-wai gave me the confidence to try something different, to experiment,"
 says Kot, for
whom First Love is his first full directorial role. He previously directed
two sections of the
four-part Four Faces Of Eve. "Other bosses, with their eyes on box-office
returns, would have
done the opposite." Yet Kot, 31, is by no means overwhelmed. He brings a
quirky fanciness
to the movie where his mentor would probably have used off-beat
introspection.

The stories that make up First Love are fragmented, with Kot taking a
hammer to the usual
idea of plot structure and then putting the pieces back together. It's a
two-parter that
owes a lot to Wong's seminal groove, Chungking Express. Just for fun, Kot
starts things
off with a story about a man falling in love with his favorite Japanese
porn star (a not-unknown
occurrence), before stopping mid-flow and starting again.

Part one proper features teen idol Kaneshiro Takeshi as a garbage collector
 who
falls for a young sleepwalker. It turns out that she has actually woken up,
 but he doesn't know
it. Part two features a married but lovelorn man being forced to face his
past when his ex-girlfriend
(played by Karen Mok) comes back on the scene.

The fractured plot structure came about because Kot was in a fix. The
film's Japanese
production house, Amuse, insisted on a romantic theme -- and on the title
of the movie.
Kot's problem was to respect that and yet not appear hackneyed. He says:
"For my
first film as director, I probably wouldn't have chosen this subject. It's
difficult to think
of an original love story." Finally, he and Wong chose to play around with
the idea of love,
rather than just tell a romantic story. "We realized that first love occurs
 in many different
ways between people. We tried to express this by having the first story
begin before love
has arisen, and the second story taking place after it has passed," he
says.

Kot is passionate about movies. First Love is intercut with grainy video
footage of the director
talking about the filmmaking process. Almost in tears at one point, he lets
 us in on the hopes
and frustrations he encountered along the way. A prolific actor (about 20
films to date -- the latest,
He Comes From Planet K, opened at Christmas), Kot says he enjoyed directing
 his first full-length
effort so much he wanted to say so on screen. "I have been around movies
all my life, but
 I really fell in love with directing during First Love. Working on the
film was like being with
a girl. It was like falling in love for the first time. I realized that you
 can be in love with an object
as well as a person -- in my case, my movie. So I wanted to put that
feeling in the film, too."

Kot's passion is given a special kind of quirkiness by the fact that he
addresses the camera
sporting a huge Afro hairdo and 1970s shades that would make funk musician
Bootsy
Collins look like he were in his Sunday best. "I refused to cut my hair
while I was
making the film," the director says. "Normally, I'm a short-hair kind of
guy. But because
I loved my movie so much, I decided to change myself for it." True? Who
knows?
With someone like Kot, you can't quite be sure.

Sometimes First Love careers out of control like an amphetamine version of
Chungking
Express. And the director's enthusiasm often spills over into
self-indulgence. But
the film's exuberance and sheer positive energy carry the day. With movies
like this,
the Hong Kong cinema is not headed for the landfill yet."




Josiah Luke Winn <jlwinn at umich.edu> on 19/11/98 21:41:56

Please respond to KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu

To:   KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
cc:    (bcc: Arnault CASTEL/Banking/ASIA/BANQUE_INDOSUEZ/FR)
Subject:  First Love


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Hello,
Could anybody fill me in on the film, 'First Love'.  It's just been
released on video in Japan and is produced by Wong Ka Wai, photography by
Chris Doyle and looks very much like a WKW film.  I could understand
enough from the Japanese subtitles to pick up what was going on generally
but not enough to piece it all together.  It looked like an interesting
film.  It made reference to WKW, featured the director, Eric...? who
narrated it, seemed to have several narrative threads running through it,
mixed a variety of film stocks, 35mm/16mm/S8? and featured a
rather nice SONY DVC camcorder.  I'd never heard of the film.  I wouldn't
be
surprised if somebody told me this Eric guy was WKW in disguise....

well, clearly I need help...

thanks

Joss







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