APA runs through a few of the hits and misses at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.
Be With Me
Dir: Eric Khoo
With scarcely a line of conventional dialogue, Be with Me is entranced by the countless other ways we communicate: e-mail, instant messaging, love letters, text messages, subtitles, photography, autobiography, dance, violence, suicide, cooking, touching. The silence is jarring, but it expands our senses, reminding us of how alive we are in our everyday encounters. Be with Me is breathtaking with its desaturated formal compositions and achingly on-cue with its direction of non-professional actors. Watching the film's tactile intensity, we become silent witnesses to their empowering expressions of sympathy and yearning.
BRIAN HU
American Fusion
Dir: Frank Lin
The melting pot runneth over in this frothy, fun, but ultimately play-it-safe romp in interracial dysfunction. Sylvia Chang and Esai Morales are the middle-aged singles searching for something beyond their own insulated, family-driven lives. The rest of the cast -- newcomers Randall Park (who also co-wrote) and Collin Chou; old-timers Pat Morita and a never-better Lang Yun -- display some impeccable comic timing. But the film is rambunctious without actually being revealing -- fusion of the P.F. Chang variety.
CHI TUNG
The Conventioneers
Dir: Mora Mi-oh Stephens
Made for less than $500,000, Mora Stephens' The Conventioneers is a shining example of filmmaking stripped to the core, driven by compelling dialogue and the hypnotically volatile interactions between its lead characters. Matthew Mabe and Woodwyn Koon play old college almost-flames who reunite after seven years to find themselves at polar extremes -- one a Texan delegate at the 2004 Republican National Convention, the other a New York City liberal protesting it. High degrees of amusement come from both subtle moments (the awkward silence when politeness fleetingly masks uncontrollable wrath) and more blatant ones (seen in real-life footage of the RNC protest), amounting to a provocatively honest portrayal of the complexities of clashing ideals.
ADA TSENG
The Journey of Vaan Nguyen
Dir: Duki Dror
Through the raw narration of 21-year-old Vaan Nguyen, director Duki Dror creates an intimate portrait of the immigrant's internal battle with her Vietnamese-Israeli identity. Dror captures every painful revelation and shattered dream that emerges during Vaan's journey through her native Vietnam. Ultimately, The Journey of Vaan Nguyen is a highly emotional, highly relatable tale of displacement and maturation that reels its viewers in so close, it's impossible not to feel every moment.
ANA LA O'
Eve and the Fire Horse
Dir: Julia Kwan
Sundance cause celebre Julia Kwan's full-length debut is a surprisingly deft examination of the role adopted spirituality plays in Asian-American identity. Though at times struggling to reconcile mystic irreverence with its weightier, more plangent themes, Eve eventually finds its stride by offering a compassionate eye and pretentionless observations on the wisdom (and folly) of youth. Phoebe Kut and Hollie Lo captivate as the Eng sisters, but it's Asian-Am veteran Vivan Wu as Momma Eng whose lingering sadness serves as the film's emotional core.
CHI TUNG
Red Doors
Dir: Georgia Lee
Making its 35mm premiere at SFIAAFF, Red Doors is refreshing because its characters are uptight about everything except their race, and whether it's young love, nihilism, or lesbianism, Georgia Lee takes a detached comic stance, trusting her audience to make the emotional connections out of her characters' zany adventures. Nothing overtly ambitious here -- certainly nothing we haven't seen before -- but Lee's deceptively delightful script and Tzi Ma's pitch-perfect performance as the family's philosophically challenged patriarch make the film one of the most satisfying pleasures of the year so far.
BRIAN HU
Dreaming Llasa
Dir: Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam
Filmmakers and husband-wife team Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have made a name for themselves with their documentaries covering Tibetan subjects. Their first foray into fiction, Dreaming Llasa follows Karma, a Tibetan-American filmmaker who goes to India to document an exiled ex-monk's mission to locate a missing freedom fighter. Unfortunately, the directors' decision to use non-actors in lead roles causes some of the would-be powerful moments in the film to fall painfully flat, but as the first film which dares to capture Tibet from a contemporary point of view, Dreaming Llasa is a journey of rediscovery that helps bridge the younger generations of Tibetans to their culturally loaded past.
ADA TSENG
The Crimson Kimono
Dir: Samuel Fuller
Never before have I rooted harder for a Hollywood film to end with a heterosexual coupling. Two detectives on a murder case fall for the same woman, threatening not only their work, but a friendship spawned on the battlefields of Korea. What makes The Crimson Kimono such a landmark film is that one detective is white, the other Japanese-American. The white woman they both love falls for the Japanese-American's luscious solo piano skills and sensitivity, but he (played by the legendary James Shigeta, subject of this year's SFIAAFF retrospective) is no effeminate Oriental. In his first film, Shigeta is electric; look at that sideways grin he shoots as he leans sexily on an office chair, or the way his fingers stroke Victoria Shaw's back as they embrace. He's a hard-boiled talker in a luscious Fuller noir. He's funny without being the joke. The Crimson Kimono proves just how embarrassed Hollywood ought to feel that in the 47 years since the film's release, no studio has made a mainstream film about Asian male sexuality as intelligent and provocative as this.
BRIAN HU
Gaijin 2: Love Me As I Am
Dir: Tizuka Yamasaki
Set amidst a backdrop of war, political turmoil, and economic unrest, Gaijin 2 strives to be an epic of one Japanese family's immigrant struggles in Brazil. However, its compelling storylines of single mothers and interracial marriages drown beneath the film's overwhelming melodrama and sentimentality. Maria (Tamlyn Tomita) and Gabriel (Jorge Perugorría)'s tumultuous, soap-opera-ready relationship provokes more laughter than tears. Gaijin 2 fails to create sincere pathos, but manages to satisfy anyone looking for a happy ending in which heroines persevere and immigrants find home.
ANA LA O'
Confessions of Longing
Dir: Various Makers
The entries in short film programs tend to be hit or miss, and this one is no exception. But as with the best programs of the sort, the shorts are more interesting as a package than separately. Tina Bartolome's Balikbayan Confessions celebrates the Philippines as a space for queer sanctuary (“I would prefer to be an oddity than to be looked down upon in America”) while Shu-ling Hsieh's Long Distance idealizes America as a place for a lesbian to escape familial pressures in Asia. Both shorts are overly simplistic but together show the ways nostalgia and migration make the Asian-American LGBT experience a transnational one.
A major discovery in the program is Kevin Huang's And I Knew, which follows a trio of friends from childhood to adulthood, as they shift genders and sexualities on the way toward the love of their lives. Huang confidently and effectively uses freeze frames, still photos, and blur effects to evoke the uncertainty of their actions and the fragility of their emotions. Another standout is Kai Ling Xue's A Girl Named Kai, a poetically stylish short shot on grainy Super 8 and 16mm. The fast editing mirrors the stomping duple meter on the soundtrack, reflecting the narrator's marching charge toward lesbian consciousness. In a quick ten minutes, Xue shows her blossoming identity through sped-up family videos and the motif of public head-shaving, a bloody experience that stands for a long emotional journey spanning three continents, culminating with a sensuous rush of confidence and joy.
BRIAN HU
Published: Thursday, March 30, 2006