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)