A Hunger for Film That Could Never be Slaked!

I'm interested in cinema of all types, from the avant-garde to the deliciously low-brow, from foreign artsy-fartsy to those flicks less flatulent.

Current areas of interest include: Eastern Europe, Macedonia/Balkans, Cuba, China and Southeast Asia.

Mar 8 2011
- from I Come With the Rain (dir. Ahn Hung Tran, 2008) I feel lost, like Joshua Harnett in this turgid southeast-asian thriller.  It feels like there are two different movies- Tran Nu Yên-Khê ain’t no Shannyn Sossamon and she doesn’t try to be.  She’s in love with the boy who cries maggots in the fields, his brown palms crusted and sore from a mafia crucifixion.  Honestly, I kind of don’t understand why these two plotlines co-exist, the Romeo meets Juliet in Manila cross-cut with Hartnett chasing this mindbendingly creative serial killer, who melts and warps his dismembered victims until they look like something I definitely saw at MoMA last week.  He’s not fixated on her (thank jesus, i expect so much more from the direct of Cyclo)  but speaking of Cyclo, I feel like this movie is just as anti-colonialist, reclaiming a crime genre which has always nuzzled broken white men into heroism.  The murder uses bodies, sculpts them, twists them and tries to make the corpses beautiful.  I think I understand why Tran shows this, combines the typical noir with yakuza but throws this dreamy wavering landscape into the mix, the sweating jungle trees humid over blood and death.  Dreaming where no-one knows the laws but the people who live there, and ultimately only they can find their way.

- from I Come With the Rain (dir. Ahn Hung Tran, 2008)

I feel lost, like Joshua Harnett in this turgid southeast-asian thriller.  It feels like there are two different movies- Tran Nu Yên-Khê ain’t no Shannyn Sossamon and she doesn’t try to be.  She’s in love with the boy who cries maggots in the fields, his brown palms crusted and sore from a mafia crucifixion.  Honestly, I kind of don’t understand why these two plotlines co-exist, the Romeo meets Juliet in Manila cross-cut with Hartnett chasing this mindbendingly creative serial killer, who melts and warps his dismembered victims until they look like something I definitely saw at MoMA last week.  He’s not fixated on her (thank jesus, i expect so much more from the direct of Cyclo)  but speaking of Cyclo, I feel like this movie is just as anti-colonialist, reclaiming a crime genre which has always nuzzled broken white men into heroism.  The murder uses bodies, sculpts them, twists them and tries to make the corpses beautiful.  I think I understand why Tran shows this, combines the typical noir with yakuza but throws this dreamy wavering landscape into the mix, the sweating jungle trees humid over blood and death.  Dreaming where no-one knows the laws but the people who live there, and ultimately only they can find their way.

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