If the film fare at Cannes is anything to go by, Asian directors
are reaching out beyond cultural borders, roping in Hollywood stars
for universal tales set in fresh, inspiring locations. And Western
film-makers are returning the compliment, moving the action to Asia
and bringing regional actors on board.
A flurry of films premiering at the Cannes filmfest underscores
a new restlessness among the Asian industry's top talent, driven by
a desire to paint on bigger canvases and reach broader
audiences.
First off at the festival that ends next weekend was My
Blueberry Nights, Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's
bittersweet ode to the American road movie, starring Jude Law and
singer Norah Jones.
In the picture, Wong revives some of the slow-burn erotic
longing from his 2000 international hit In the Mood For
Love.
But this time the budding romance is set in New York, shot in
Wong's signature rich colours and mood lighting that render the
city all but unrecognisable in its dreamlike beauty.
As Jones' character Elizabeth ventures west, Wong is clearly
taken with the big skies and sprawling plains that mark a dramatic
departure from the cramped high-rises of Hong Kong.
Wong said he had to seek help from his cast and crew to avoid
presenting a distorted view of US culture -- something he said many
Western directors failed to do when making pictures about Asia.
"I always wanted to make a film in a different language but I
did want to avoid these problems," he said.
"A kiss means something different in Chinese or to Chinese
characters (than) to Western characters. There's a subtle undertone
which I have to make sure (to capture) because I want to do justice
to Americans, to the characters, which I expect from other films
about Chinese."
Taiwan director Hou Hsiao Hsien, whose 2005 Three Times
was selected to compete for the top prize, this year features in
the Un Certain Regard sidebar with Flight of the Red
Balloon, starring French actress Juliette Binoche.
Based loosely on the 1956 children's classic The Red
Balloon, the new picture features Binoche as a Parisian
puppeteer and single mother who seeks help in caring for her small
son from a Taiwanese film student.
So East and West intersect in the French capital, shot with an
awe for the city's beauty as only an outsider can possess. Hou said
he had worked hard to present a vision of Paris that would ring
true even to natives.
"I tried to spend as much time as possible exploring Paris. I
watched how people in the neighbourhood I chose lived, their corner
cafes," he told AFP.
"I gradually became accustomed to the regulars of those cafes
until I felt I understood the rhythm of that part of Paris."
Cannes' sprawling market section too is promising more East-West
films to come, including I Come With The Rain, directed by
Vietnam's Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) and
starring Josh Hartnett of The Black Dahlia.
In the movie, still in pre-production and to be shot in Hong
Kong from June, Hartnett plays a private detective who heads for
Asia in search of the vanished son of a Chinese billionaire.
Westerners, such as French film-maker Olivier Assayas, are
stretching out this year too, sending characters to Asia for
fish-out-of-water plot twists depicting an ever smaller globalised
world.
Assayas' Boarding Gate stars Michael Madsen of Kill
Bill, Asia Argento (Marie Antoinette) and Sonic
Youth's Kim Gordon -- using the Cantonese she picked up when she
lived in Hong Kong as a teenager -- alongside Asian-born actors
Kelly Lin and Carl Ng.
Assayas said moving his story mid-film from an anonymous Western
city to Hong Kong had opened up the picture to new stories, new
characters and a broader range of actors.
"I have never thought that there was a separate strain of Asian
cinema but rather that Eastern and Western cinema have, at least
during this last decade, been in this process of
cross-pollination," said Assayas, who was once married to Hong Kong
superstar Maggie Cheung.
"It has been one of the exciting events within contemporary
cinema and I have always felt part of it."
(Agencies via CRI.cn May 22, 2007)