...But Is It Cinema?

MAY 2007, Part A: Sex? Or Magic?

There is a thin line that exists between true love and unbridled sex. I'm not talking about porn, though we came pretty close to satisfying that segment of our audience hungry for Japanese "pink eiga" films through our programming this year. No, the kind of stories I'm talking about are ones in which filmmakers place multi-faceted aspects of love, romance, and sexuality as an integral ingredient of compelling storytelling. So what if the random breast (well, copious depictions and representations thereof) and male/female genitalia abound throughout our programming this year? In this year's edition of VC FILMFEST, filmmakers not only confront all aspects of "nakedness," but pay just as much attention, if not more so, to the inevitable morning after -- both literal and figurative.

Take, for instance, Lou Ye's SUMMER PALACE, which includes numerous scenes of college coeds having hot n' heavy sex, complete with both female AND male full frontal nudity (gasp!!!). This would be considered quite scatalogical and frivolous if not for the setting: late 1980s Beijing, in the months leading up to the June 6, 1989 government crackdown of student protestors in Tiananmen Square. Seen in this context, SUMMER PALACE is at once an altogether different sort of coming-of-age film: one in which the potential of youthful ideas and experimentation is blunted by both time and dissolusion. As the main characters disperse around the world and take up other pursuits, the dualities of love/hate play against the realities of growing up, damning both one's faith in progressive ideals and in true love. The end result is a film that is at once epic, brilliant, messy, and unresolved. Kind of like the relationship at the core of the story.

I've made mention of Anna Biller's VIVA in an earlier entry, but the vast expanses of flesh (again, b oth male and female) that dominate much of the film serves a dual purpose: sex and nudity firmly place the film's characters within a distinct social and cultural milieu; and foregrounds the director's resolve in being true to her characters -- she herself plays the lead character, Barbi, and spends much of her screen time either nude, or having sex, or both! Such commitment!

A far tamer (and arguably, less frank) brand of sexuality is on display in both Gene B. Rhee's THE TROUBLE WITH ROMANCE and Othello Khanh's SAIGON ECLIPSE. Rhee's film, a veiled riff on Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's FOUR ROOMS and Park Ki-yong's MOTEL CACTUS, observes the ambiguities of modern romance within the walls of a luxury hotel. And SAIGON ECLIPSE, the second of three features starring Dustin Nguyen, is yet another retelling of Vietnam's national peom, Truyen Kieu (The Tale of Kieu). Modern, sexy and thoroughly accessible, this tale of Kieu is as much male eye-candy as tragic romance.

Love and sex is not limited to the young, as evidenced by Michael T. Uno's THE WASH, which features vetran actors Mako and Nobu McCarthy making whoopie in a last-ditch attempt to rekindle a failed marriage. And it doesn't come without grave consequences, as seen in Nadine Truong's THE MUSE, in which the randomness of circumstance visits a young artist in a most cruel way.

There are a lot of other images throughout the selections in this year's Festival that may strike audiences as risque or offensive. My thoughts on the matter is: look deeper -- MUCH deeper. Representations of both physical and emotional love, not to mention honest depictions of sex (different from porn!!!) will be, I think, much welcomed this year.

posted by Abraham Ferrer @ 7:45 PM