Vancouver Dispatch. 1.

The timing of the Vancouver International Film Festival is one of its greatest strengths. Mere weeks after Toronto has launched the North American premieres of scores of American, Canadian and international films, it ends up with almost as many major films as New York. Opening night was Atonement, while Paranoid Park closes the festival on Friday, October 12.

Among the screenings between those poles are 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Flight of the Red Balloon, A Girl Cut in Two, Go Go Tales, I Just Didn't Do It, The Last Mistress, The Man From London, Persepolis, Redacted and Secret Sunshine, all screening in New York - some days before, some days after, but for all intents and purposes playing at the same time. And for every film New York has that Vancouver doesn't (like No Country For Old Men, say, or The Romance of Astreé and Céladon), Vancouver has something as enticing in its own way, like Tamara Jenkins's The Savages or Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais or Roy Andersson's wickedly funny You, the Living.

And that barely touches on what has brought Vancouver it's own small fame in the festival world: the Dragons and Tigers showcase of Asian cinema. Where other festivals vie for prestigious world or national premieres, Dragons and Tigers is more concerned with finding new talent from Asia (as well as keeping up with already established directors) and providing a showcase for their little-seen works. The competition is reserved for first or second feature films. The sidebar of 45 features and shorts programs as a whole, however, is a small snapshot of the cinematic currents of China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc, both commercial and underground.

The showcase Special Presentations spot belongs to the commercial side, but The Sun Also Rises (China) from Jiang Wen, respected actor (The Emperor's Shadow) and director (Devils on the Doorstep), is decidedly unconventional and playfully imaginative for a mainstream Chinese feature. It's essentially a trilogy of loosely connected tales in rural Communist China that weave their crisscrossing strands into a glorious and magical pattern, a piece of Chinese magic realism filled with humor and irony and inexplicable events that border on make-believe yet play as simply another element of everyday magic. And yet for all the laughter and love and color, including a magnificent coda of multi-cultural brotherhood between the Chinese and the Russians in the far reaches of Mongolia, this is no celebration of Communist idealism, but rather, of the magic of human resilience in absurd situations. Anthony Wong (surely the hardest working man in Hong Kong) is endearingly deadpan as a local teacher and Joan Chen a giggly delight as a village doctor smitten with the oddball professor in the middle story, but Jaycee Chan (Jackie's son) and newcomer Zhou Yun, who play devoted son and quite possibly insane mother in the first story, and Jiang himself, who moves from supporting player in Wong's tale to star of the third act, are equally good; throughout, Jiang's direction is buoyant and beautiful, with stabs of tragedy to remind us that this is no lost paradise.

The Matsugane Potshot Affair (Japan) from Yamashita Nobuhiro, the director of Linda Linda Linda, could be Japan's answer to the Coen Bros' Fargo. This deadpan crime comedy, this bizarre black farce opens on a hit-and-run with a wickedly perverted twist and moves into a blackmail, a small fortune in stolen gold bullion, and a family whose dysfunction finally pushes the only centered member of the clan, young policeman Kotaru (Arai Hirofumi) into madness. The opening scrawl claims that it's all inspired by "events which we ourselves witnessed," a claim made more dubious with each tawdry turn. Yamanaka Takashi is priceless as Kotaru's shiftless screw-up of a twin brother Hikaru, whose face freezes into a maniacal grin whenever he's on the spot - which is most of the time.

Posted by dwhudson at September 29, 2007 1:45 PM