Friday, October 16, 2009

Remembering Dalian

Films this year:

68. Zhang Yimou, Happy Times (2000)
69. Kim Ki-duk, Breath (2007)

68 is a film with a very unhappy ending. It makes every sensible person cry. My Chinese student says it's a story with a real backdrop of a heavy recession and a mass internal immigration to Shin-sen. Nicely done, comic, and ruthlessly sad. Set in Dalian and I liked it all the more for it.

69 is like an absurdist drama. The story is far-fetched, yet the whole piece is more than attractive. The strangeness of the heroine is well over-done, but you'll get used to it. With so little number of actors and settings, how can he make this much sensation? Amazing.