CIFF Diary: Everlasting Regret, and making the political personal

Though its scope might be a little large, more and more this year's CIFF strikes me as an extraordinarily well curated film festival. For one thing, they're covering their bases as far as programming goes, with a healthy balance of foreign and domestic, micro-indie and name talent – and people are coming out in droves. Every public screening I've so far attended has been packed, if not oversold.  Not only that, but the films have been scheduled extremely well amongst themselves; when you're sitting through three or four films back to back, it's always nice when it feels like each slot has been filled with purpose, so that the films bounce off of and react to one another. It certainly makes my job a little bit easier, and that's even nicer.

I sat through just such a double feature yesterday: Everlasting Regret, a film from Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang, and Free Zone, from Israeli auteur Amos Gitai. Both films are primarily concerned with bringing major political conflicts down to the level of the personal conflicts of beautiful women. Results are, perhaps predictably, mixed: Regret, a gorgeous-looking film, gets bogged down by its determination to hold a mirror up to forty years worth of Shanghai history. Free Zone is a greater success, but it seems to dance around its true aims a little too gracefully; it fails to pack a significant punch.
 
Everlasting Regret, executive produced by Jackie Chan, is a relatively sprawling period piece, tracking the changing social and political face of Shanghai, from the art deco late-30s to the polyester-clad early-80s, through one woman's sex life. Qiyao (Sammi Cheng) is a beautiful teenager when we meet her, with quietly seductive eyes and a kind of porcelain doll fragility and grace. She enters a local beauty pageant and meets a photographer named Mr. Cheng, played by Tony Leung Ka Fai (not to be confused with Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who starred in Wong Kar Wai's 2046; this Tony Leung hasn't made a film for that director since 1994's Ashes of Time). Mr. Cheng falls in love with Qiyao after taking her picture, but Qiyao moves on to an older general named Li. On Li's arm, Qiyao quickly enters the luxury class, but when he's forced to disappear, she's forced to fend for herself. She soon meets and falls in love with another rich man, but he, too, must leave Shanghai, leaving her pregnant and penniless. She arranges to marry a sick man in order to give her unborn daughter the illusion of proper parentage, and then raises the child herself after than man's death. All the while, as friends and lovers, for reasons mostly related to the percolating Revolution, continue to abandon her, Qiyao refuses to leave Shanghai. The only constant in her life is Mr. Cheng, who always seems to be dropping by for stilted conversation and tea. He's obviously in love with Qiyao, but one thing or another keeps them apart. Sometime in the 70s, just when it looks like the two might have another chance, Mr. Cheng makes the mistake of introducing the (now suppossedly middle-aged) Qiyao to a 20-something rebel named Kela (Jue Huang), whose petty criminality finally brings Qiyao's allegiance to her city to a dark end.

Did I get that right? I'm not sure. The story propelling Regret is, obviously, incredibly convoluted, and I have to think the subtitles on this print may not have been translated entirely accurately; I often found myself confused as to key plot points, and it seemed like only a small segment of the audience were getting the film's occasional jokes. It really is stunning to look at, with each scene art directed in sumptuous period detail, but basic continuity is an inescapable problem. The film takes forever to click into into any kind of internal logic or steady pacing, and when it does, its best formal ideas seem borrowed from In the Mood for Love. Where this film goes that Wong's doesn't, is into the bedroom – and it's a mistake. We still see very little – Qiyao's finest sex move is an terribly aggressive French kiss, something like a teenager crossed with a Dyson wetvac – but it's enough to make each successive affair seem less interesting than the last. One wonders when Qiyao is going to get punished – really punished – for her promiscuity, but even when that happens, the film only goes halfway. It's obvious that her May-Decembering with Kela will be her final, fatal error, but because Ms. Cheng is so beautiful (and so unconvincingly made-up as a 50-something) the relationship loses its urgency. In fact, her beauty is a problem throughout; Sammi Cheng's face has a benign blankness to it that undermines the turmoil her character is obviously going through. Though her skin should bear the permanent cracks of a heart broken many times over, her face looks suspiciously fresh and clean. When the actress should be enigmatically silent, her attempts at letting her eyes do the talking make her look half-asleep.

A too-beautiful protagonist might have also been the death of Amos Gitai's latest, but Natalie Portman's exquisite face actually turns out to be one of Free Zone's greatest assets. For more on that film, click here.