| Day One |
Thursday September 6th, 2001 First day of the film festival and I am fighting off the beginning of a cold. Never fails, I always seem to get run down just before, during or immediately after the festival and catch a cold. With a heavy weekend of 4 films on Saturday and Sunday, followed by another 5 on Monday I'll have very little opportunity to rest up. Pass the Vitamin C and Echanicea. The beginning of the festival was off to an interesting start when some dumb- ass volunteer thought that it wouldn't make a difference wether people were ushered into Varsity 1 or Varsity 6 to see Orphan of Anyang since the film was showing at the same time on both screens. The volunteer decreed that they would fill Varsity 1 first and Varsity 6 second, well the confusion that resulted was comical, frustrating and just plain inexcusable. I had a ticket for Varisty 6 and was expecting to meet friends there. Of course they had already been seated in Varsity 1, luckily Don came and looked for me in Varsity 6, but when we tried to return to Varsity 1 they gave us a hard time since our tickets said 6. D'uh! To top it off latecomers not aware of the boneheaded move came into Varisty 1 expecting to find seats only to discovered it filled already. This ended up being very disruptive to Noah Cowan's introduction of some of the people involved with the film. And to think its officially the Year of the Volunteer. Heaven help us! Okay on with the review of the film...
Title: The Orphan of Anyang Director Wang Chao's use of static drawn out shots makes this otherwise interesting look at an orphaned child of a prostitute, raised by an unemployed factory worker, excruciatingly painful to watch. While the technique does add something to the opening and closing scenes of the movie it does little to enhance the remainder of the film. The opening sequence featuring the unemployed factory worker wandering through various parts of the titular city, Anyang, and Chao's camera technique does heighten the sense of boredom, lonlieness and isolation that the character must be feeling. Likewise the final scene set in a noodle house also works to capture the mood of the character and the location. Those two scenes aside, the films pacing leaves the viewer with too much time and not enough to look at. At one point when the title "One Month Later" appeared, I was nearly convinced that it was warning me that I had been watching this film for over a month since despite its running time of only 84 it felt excruciating long.
Barely Tolerable
-- Contemplated walking out but curiosity kept me there against my better judgement. Probably not the worse film I am likely to see this week, but not the best to kick off my 31 films with. Bring on the next film! Until Later.... |