The Island Tales
Reviewed by YTSL
Stanley Kwan is a director whose name I like to
invoke when telling people that there's more to Hong Kong movies than just
action features and Wong Kar Wai. While I have yet to view that many
of his works, the very "real"-feeling "Hold You Tight", the early "Love
Unto Waste", the critically acclaimed "Centre-Stage" (a.k.a. "Actress")
and his "Yang +/- Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema" documentary left
me impressed or moved, or both. As such, it was with quite a bit
of eagerness that I awaited the release of his latest film; and some exasperation
that I read the critical reviews -- filled with complaints about how he
REALLY was asking (for) too much (patience and understanding) from his
viewers THIS time -- that came out in the wake of the Berlin Film Festival
as well as Hong Kong premieres of the multi-tale movie which centers on
a motley crew unexpectedly stranded on an island by medical quarantine
measures.
After viewing THE ISLAND TALES though, I have
to say "mea culpa" to those Cassandras who had tried to warn people about
this major cinematic disaster. Words almost fail me when trying to
describe what is wrong with this work. Labored? Tedious?
Pretentious? False-feeling? Painful-viewing? Excruciating-listening?
Yes to all of that. Additionally, there is the fact of this 104 minute
long work being the first Hong Kong film -- out of 200+ post 1985 offerings
(thus far) and who knows how many pre-1980 movies this then child was dragged
to watch by her parents -- I have ever found myself so repulsed, bored
and made tired by that: I could only bear to deal with it for about
twenty minutes at a time; but still came close to falling asleep on each
of those occasions!
Outside of watching embarrassing Category III
rated scenes, never have I felt such an urge to press the fast-forward
button; but the particular rub with THE ISLAND TALES is that since it is
such a dialogue-heavy piece, doing so would cause the entire experience
to be even more devoid of meaning than it already was. Yet it was
precisely the utterances of the movie's characters as they conversed --
or, quite often, thought aloud -- that threatened most to drive me either
crazy or comatose. It is truly ironic that the first Hong Kong movie
that actually has substantial sections filmed in a language I understand
(English; N.B. There is more English and Japanese spoken in this Japan-Hong
Kong collaboration -- whose main characters include two Japanese individuals
and one supposedly American citizen as well as a Taiwanese lass and three
Hong Kongers -- than there is Cantonese but also Mandarin) turned out to
be one which I heartily wished had less talk and more action (as well as
plot and character development).
Beyond the difficulties of understanding the heavily
Japanese accented English of Takao Osawa (playing a journalist with writer's
block) and Kaori Momoi (portraying a photography-interested, drug-loving
free spirit), and underlying the Asian Convent School English of Michelle
Reis (improbably playing a brittle American-Chinese lesbian who mouths
off lines like: "Yeah right. Five minutes and you junkies are best
buddies"; "Charm...Fucking stupid charm"; and "I've heard Taiwanese women
like to stay home and sing karaoke while waiting for their man") is the
leaden-worded script whose author does not seem to want to allow the movie's
characters to interact. And it does not help matters that they (who
include a forlorn Taiwanese female separated from -- and consequently often
whining as well as pining for -- her English boyfriend played by Hsu Chi;
who was spared from having to act in a language that was not her mother
tongue (Mandarin) but did not spare her audience from having to listen
to her sickly sweet as well as horribly high pitched voice) generally only
speak in short, sharp sentences (witness Hsu Chi's "I need to pee" wail)
even while being prone to recite whole poems at -- rather than to -- others.
At some point in THE ISLAND TALES, Michelle Reis'
character intones: "Not something a real person could relate to...that's
your work". I cannot emphasize enough how much I feel this is the
case with regards to this artificial -- in the worst sense of the term
-- as well as ponderous effort. Supposedly "a parable about Hong
Kong's transformation from a crown colony to part of the Chinese mainland
and life between repression and expression" (So sayeth the director, according
to a Der Spiegel review of the movie), all this (re)viewer witnessed was
a frantic effort to flood the soundwaves with apparently heavy yet meaningfully
empty words and pleasurable sounding yet disjuncture causing music.
Even the beautifully shot -- and lit -- pictures, often full of good-looking
people (Michelle Reis is particularly photogenic), courtesy of Kwan Pun-Leung
(reckoned by some to be the latest in a long line of genius Hong Kong cinematographers),
seemed to be of no significatory avail.
Lest there be any doubt: It definitely was
NOT sensory overload that caused my brain to be unable to put together
these elements to come up with a coherent -- forget profound -- picture
as well as developed portraits of any of the featured characters (who also
include two middle-aged Cantonese speakers who come in the form of Elaine
Kam and Gordon Liu; and a spoilt Hong Kong movie star played by Julian
Cheung who firmly answers in the negative when asked whether making movies
is fun...). And I challenge director Kwan and scriptwriter Jimmy
Ngai to point to one genuine, non-discordant note in this wreck of a work
that stands as negative testimony of its being so that even when accompanied
by lots of sound (Is there even one moment of absolute silence in THE ISLAND
TALES?), a series of beguiling pictures do not constitute a real (satisfactory)
movie.
My rating for the film: 2 (and this much
only because of the brilliant cinematography)