Far East Film at UdineIncontri

[Mark Schilling]

Here's my Japan Times report on the second edition of Far East Film at the
UdineIncontri festival in Udine, Italy. Dedicated to popular Asian cinema,
Far East Film fills an important gap in an international festival scene
that focuses largely on made-for-export Asian art films, while ignoring
excellent work from the region tagged with the "commercial" label. Also,
chief programmer Derek Elley has broadened the program beyond Hong Kong
martial arts epics to films that successfully straddle the border between
art and commerce, that do not sacrifice audience enjoyment for auteurist
vision.  

Unfortunately, Far East Film currently overlaps with the Hong Kong and
Singpore festivals, a situation the organizers hopes to rectify next year
by moving the date back to late May or early June. See you in Udine in
2001!

Mark Schilling 



Far East Film at UdineIncontri

Big film festivals often try to be all things to all people, offering
everything from the subtitled musings of European auteurs to the latest
Hollywood effects shows. Smaller festivals often specialize in arthouse or
cult films, because they either reject Hollywood glitz or have resigned
themselves to the fact that, unless they can arrange another tete a tete
with President Clinton, Leonardo DiCaprio is not going to show. 
	But though Asian films often feature prominently at festivals both big and
small, they are usually not the kind that Asian audiences pay to watch. Ho
Hsiao Hsien may be a world-reknowned master director with a shelf full of
festival awards, but in his native Taiwan, his films are hard to find on
theater marquees, while those of Jackie Chan and Ringo Lam are everywhere. 
	Three years ago, a group of film enthusiasts in Udine, a city in the
Fruili region of northern Italy, addressed this lacunae by presenting a
week of Hong Kong commercial films at a local theater. The response was so
enthusiastic that they were able to persuade the sponsors of UdineIncontri,
a local festival that had been changing its focus every year, to screen
commercial films from Hong Kong, China, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore for its
1999 edition. Dubbed Far East Film, this program was a smashing success --
and the festival decided to retain the Asian theme for the following year. 
	The 2000 edition of UdineIncontri's Far East Film program broadened its
scope to include films from Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. The 56 films
screened from April 8 to April 16 thus represented every important
film-making region of East Asia, as well as one, North Korea, whose films
had seldom been seen abroad, for obvious reasons. 
	Also, while offering the expected Hong Kong action favorites (Jackie
Chan's "Gorgeous," Ringo Lam's "Victim"), as well as Korean mega-hit
"Shuri," chief programmer Derek Elley included films, such as Chen Kuo-fu's
"The Personals" and Zhang Yang's "Shower," that were more about emotions
than explosions, art than commerce. One could quibble with the mix (why,
for example, eight films from that cinematic hotbed North Korea and only
five from Japan?) but the program provided a far more accurate barometer of
current Asian movie-going tastes, from high to low, than the usual festival
selections of Asian films, which often come from the same minimalist cookie
cutter. 
	The Asian guests, including Hong Kong action stalwart Simon Lam and comic
Stephen Chiau, also got a far warmer response from the crowd  than most
auteurs -- including cheers, whoops and dozens of flashing cameras. One
reason was the large Asian contingent, which had made the pilgrimage to
Udine from all over Europe to glimpse their favorites. Another was the
large number of Italian fans who actually knew these stars and their films.
Thinking of similar festival audiences in the United States, who pattered
their polite applause at Asian faces they only knew from their programs, I
realized why this festival was different -- and successful. Every evening
screening in the cavernous theater, which doubled as an opera house the
rest of the year, was packed to the rafters. 
	What were the favorites? One of mine was "The Mission," a Hong Kong gang
film by Johnnie To that plays with genre cliches to amusing and
hard-hitting effect -- think "Pulp Fiction" on testosterone overdrive. The
set-up is a standard: an elderly triad boss (Ko Hung) is nearly whacked by
a rival gang and orders his chief lieutenant Frank (Simon Yam) to find the
hitmen. Frank in turns hires five bodyguards to protect the boss from
further damage. The bodyguards are not Kevin Costner New Age types, but
hard guys of various persuasions, from a lean, glinty-eyed disco manager
(Roy Cheung) to a fat peanut-chewing weapons expert (Lam Suet). 
	In a typical thriller, we would expect the bodyguards to get knocked off,
one by one, until the most handsome and sympathetic survivor takes on
baddies alone. In "Mission," the bodyguards fend off attack after madly
violent attack with a flawlessly choreographed professionalism that is
cool, but never merely cartoonish. Several of the action sequences,
including a gun battle on a moving escalator, are brilliantly excuted gems,
but To and scriptwriter Yau Nai-hoi also take time out to establish the
characters of their unlikely heroes. In one scene, the bodyguards -- bored
out their skulls with one of the endless waits that are part of the job
description (but are rarely shown in films), play sit-down soccer with a
balled-up piece of paper. The scene is not only funny, but revealing of the
bodyguards' essential humanity -- and the growing bonds between them.
	Another find was Zhang Yang's "Shower," a film that might be described as
"Forrest Gump" with the saccharine removed, but the off-beat humanism
retained. Daming (Pu Cunxin), a prosperous businessman in the Shenzhen
economic zone, returns home when he hears that his father (Zhu Xu), the
owner of a Beijing bathhouse, has died. But the old man, he discovers, is
still very much alive -- and still resents Daming for abandoning him and
the family business to seek his fortune. At the same time, he has
established strong bonds with Daming's mentally retarded younger brother
Erming (Jiang Wu) as well as the bathhouse's eccentric regulars, including
a round-faced young man who always sings "O Solo Mio" in the shower. 
	Though he resists, Daming is inevitably drawn back into the family circle
and the world of the bathhouse, while he wrestles with the problem of what
to do with Erming when his father is no longer able to care for him. The
typical Japanese commercial film would drench this situation in
sentimentality, but "Shower" takes a more distanced -- and at times
hilariously comic view -- of its principals, while allowing them to emerge
as fully realized individuals. As in the best of family dramas -- think Ozu
-- by the end of "Shower" one has become, not just a spectator, but a
member -- and when that the family disintegrates, as it must, the impact is
wrenching. I never thought I would listen to an off-key rendition of "O
Solo Mio" with tears streaming down my cheek, until I saw "Shower."
	Any other reasons for coming to Udine? Well, the movies are free, the
people are friendly, the food is terrific, the town is full of interesting
shops and sights, while being blissfully free of tourists and the types who
prey on them. Also, it's one hour by car from the ski slopes and the sea,
amid some of the prettiest old towns in northern Italy. Why, I wonder, did
I get on that plane back to Narita? But there's always next year, isn't
there?