A sneaky, brilliant, gorgeous thing. It's elusive, like a Marienbad, and indeed there are comparisons, for example in the way you see a scene which seems to be told twice with a different outcome - you have to keep your eye on it. And sometimes you're not quite sure where you are in time. And, like the French masterpiece, it is (a) absolutely gorgeous to look at, and (b) a sad, almost tragic, experience.
Clive James finds Maggie Cheung, and her hundred cheongsams, gorgeous; Cannes thought Tony Leung the Best Actor of the year; BAFTA saw fit to give its foreign film award to another Asian film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
The cinematography, by Christopher Doyle (and Ping Bin Lee) and production design by William Chang (who unusually was also the editor and the costume designer!) are so good and distinctive that you could take any frame of film and call it art.
It's shot in the old 1.66:1 ratio and looks like it's old film stock to make it absolutely right for the 1960s. It's perfect - I mean, there's a scene where Maggie Cheung walks up the stairs from the noodle place to Michael Galasso's music (the theme in fact written originally by Shigeru Umebayashi), and every footstep is on the beat.
And a scene with Tony Leung smoking, and you've never seen cigarette smoke in such a beautiful way. (It makes you want to smoke.)
And there's this pattern, particularly in the musical sequences, of the camera laterally tracking its subjects and leaving them behind a texture, obscured or hidden in some way, like their love has to be hidden. It's very like Brief Encounter, and Sofia Coppola is a big fan, specifically mentioning it in her Oscar acceptance speech for Lost in Translation.
It's very wonderful. Have to mention the indispensable Mrs. Suen, Rebecca Pan, and the earthy Ping Lam Seu. And the great (noisy) sound design (Li Chi Kuo and Shiang-Chu Tang).
Finally, Nat King Cole in Portguese adds an intriguing resonance. WELL overdue. Must watch 2046 and other Wais.
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