Beautiful 2012 (7/10) - This is an anthology film comprised of the following four short films:
You Are More Than Beautiful, directed by Kim Tae-yong
Walker, directed by Tsai Ming-liang
Long Tou, directed by Gu Changwei
My Way, directed by Ann Hui
I've seen and enjoyed Walker before, when it played at TIFF a few years ago, and I was a big fan of Ann Hui's A Simple Life and have been wanting to see more from her, so I've been meaning to track this down and check out all the shorts. Ann Hui also has a new movie that just opened here, which I'm hoping to check out this week. Anyways, I'll tackle these in order...
You Are More Than Beautiful (6/10) is a decent drama about a guy who hires a woman to pretend to be his fiancée, while visiting his dying father. The central performances are good and carry the film. The story is eh. There are individual moments that are nice (visiting horses, singing Korean opera) but the movie doesn't add up to much.
Walker (10/10) is the first (I think?) of Tsai's Walker series, in which Lee Kang-sheng plays a monk in red robes who walks slowly (very, very slowly) through public spaces. Tsai has made a few of these now, but the only other one I've seen is Journey to the West, which also stars Denis Levant (it's good, but maybe not as good as this first one). The first time I saw Walker, I liked it and thought it was surprisingly humorous. Another viewing has only amplified my appreciation. Tsai has a great sense of humor, and it's on full display here, as he finds many playful and witty variations on his basic image (at some points, he turns the movie into a game of Where's Waldo). The ending is an incredible punch line. This is basically performance art, and the project gains its greatest sense of clarity in the centerpiece image of Lee walking slowly down the middle of the frame, in the middle of a road in a busy market. People stop, stare, take pictures, etc. By inserting Lee into the middle of a busy market, he's able to alter the rhythm of the entire scene, as if the onlookers are all slowly pulled into the monk's gravity field. From concept to execution, this is pretty much the perfect short film. I found the whole experience calming and peaceful (and funny!). I adore this film.
Long Tou (5/10) is something of an interesting audio/visual experience. It has a great soundtrack, as it takes sounds from various scenes and folds them together, moving them forward through the entire piece, creating a compelling and ethereal soundscape out of repetitive, mundane noises. There is also one scene, in which a girl shares a memory of traveling home in the winter, and struggles to make sense out of the passing of time, that I found surprisingly moving. But that's all the praise I can give this film. Otherwise, I thought it was kind of a meandering mess.
My Way (7/10) often feels a little silly and naïve, even if its heart is in the right place. I would actually like to have seen a longer version of this, however, as I think Francis Ng does a pretty good job and could have built a really strong performance with more material. I'm not sure how I feel about the flashbacks, however, and if they were even necessary. It's too short to do justice to the different plot threads and emotions on display. But there are a couple scenes that cut very deep, indeed, and overall, I thought it was nicely done.
