Let's face it, family dramas are universal: one generation raising the next, the young resisting the old, conflict, tears, intense feelings, "you don't let me," "why don't you," and so forth. Watching Sunflower, a Chinese film from 2005 that finally hit DVD last week, I had the feeling that director Zhang Yang (Shower, Quitting) must moonlight as an alchemist. Working with very familiar, common elements, he makes something fresh and new.

Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Twin Peaks) may be the most familiar face in the cast; she has quietly turned in one marvelous performance after another over the past 10 years outside the US studio system. (Check out the devastating, difficult The Home Song Stories.) Here she plays the pivotal role of Xiuqing, left to raise Xiangyang, her young son, after her husband Gengnian (the equally memorable Sun Haiying) is sent to a labor camp in 1967.

Gengnian returns from camp unable to continue his career as a painter, and so he transfers his artistic ambitions to his son, who wants nothing to do with this stranger who has taken over the household. Gengnian has a powerful will, though, and is determined to see his son succeed, whether he wants to or not.

The story takes place over four different eras of recent Chinese history as Xiangyang grows into a man and eventually contemplates fatherhood himself; Zhang Yang drew from his own life experiences for inspiration. Sunflower is simply told. The rich period details look gorgeous (Christopher Doyle served as visual consultant) and each episode leads inexorably to the next.

The DVD from New Yorker Video includes a "making of" feature and the original theatrical trailer. Sunflower is perfect for a summer evening's rental, a contemplative consideration of love, destiny, and the strongest bonds of all.

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Continue reading Indies on DVD: 'Moolaadé,' 'Kurt Cobain: About a Son,' 'Terror's Advocate'

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The Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, 98 years old as of this writing, is a walking bit of cinema history. Born in Oporto (where they make port wine) he reportedly worked on a film as early as 1928 and made his official directorial debut in 1931 with a short documentary, Working on the Douro River. Even though Hollywood had implemented sound by then, many other countries had not. And so Oliveira carries the distinction of being not only the oldest movie director still active, but also the only movie director to have begun in the silent era. In Europe, he's considered a master, with several films already in the canon. Despite all this, only two of Oliveira's films have received any kind of regular distribution in the United States, I'm Going Home (2002), which I consider a masterpiece, and the slightly more problematic, but still excellent A Talking Picture (2004). A third, Belle Toujours, opened briefly this summer in New York but has already gone.

Oliveira has made the majority of his films -- more than thirty of them -- since 1979, when he was already past seventy. Because of this, his films tend to be patient and contemplative, or to Western audiences, just plain "slow." He's like an old man driving a car in front of you; perhaps he's keeping us from getting to our destination faster, but if we could only see things from his point of view, maybe we could enjoy the drive a little more. He's learned how to really stop and appreciate things and he has pretty much earned the right to make any movie he feels like making. So he sets his sights on a sort of sequel to Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967), which, in other hands, would have been a travesty. And though it reunites two of the main characters from that masterpiece, it actually turns out to be more of a tribute or an epilogue than a sequel.

Continue reading Review: Belle Toujours

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By the time you read this I will be in Portugal, and so it seemed appropriate that I should take a moment to talk about Portugal's greatest cinematic export, film director Manoel de Oliveira. Oliveira holds a curious record: he's the oldest living film director, and the only living film director to have worked in the silent era. His first film, Working on the Douro River, was an 18-minute documentary made in 1931. Hollywood had converted to sound by then, but many other countries were still silent. (Reportedly, he worked as an extra in a film as early as 1928.)

Currently, Oliveira is 97 years old and has a new movie out, Belle Toujours (additionally, he has finished one other and is in production on two more). I haven't seen Belle Toujours yet; it opened in June in New York and appeared like a blip on the box office chart. It's a sequel of sorts to Luis Bunuel's 1967 masterpiece Belle de Jour, with Michel Piccoli reprising his role as Henri Husson, who once helped sexually awaken the married, bored Severine (Catherine Denueve), turning her on to a life of daytime sexual depravity and mild sadomasochism. Years later, Severine (now played by Bulle Ogier, from Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) meets Henri once again and the two come to terms with their bizarre past.

Continue reading Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows -- Old School, Old Joy

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