JoanChen Tagged Articles at Cinematical

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.

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor won nine Oscars out of nine nominations, sweeping every category except acting (stars John Lone, Peter O'Toole and Joan Chen weren't nominated). It was chosen as one of the year's ten best films by Cahiers du Cinema, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Roger Ebert, Richard Corliss, and even the National Board of Review. Gene Siskel voted it the year's best film, as did Judy Stone of the San Francisco Chronicle. Filmmaker Samuel Fuller chose it as one of his ten favorite films of all time. In 1998, it received a major theatrical re-release, supervised by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, with nearly an hour's worth of footage edited back into the film, bringing the total from 160 to 219 minutes. Yet, it has somehow fallen into the list of hard-to-find films. For years, it has only been available on VHS or import DVDs. Now the Criterion Collection has come along and corrected this oversight by delivering perhaps 2008's most spectacular DVD release so far. (Blu-Ray be damned!)

Criterion's four-disc release includes both cuts, as well as two more discs full of extras. (Many are from 1987 and some were created more recently; the bonus is a series of "video postcards" shot by Bertolucci in China while preparing for the film.) Personally, I like getting to decide which version to watch, rather than having someone else choose the definitive version for me. The 160-minute version is the one that garnered all that praise, but the longer version -- here called the "television version" -- is great, too. The extra scenes don't particularly work to "drive" the movie forward, but they give a richer understanding of Pu Yi and the emptiness of his life.

The Australian Film Institute Awards -- the Aussie Oscars -- have been announced, and it looks like a majority of the the big winners came from the same two films. I guess it's a pretty open race over there in a year without a new Crocodile Dundee film. But seriously folks, I kid the Australian people! I kid because I love. The big acting winners were Eric Bana (Hulk, Troy, Munich) and Joan Chen (Twin Peaks, Lust, Caution). Bana won for his role in Richard Roxburgh's Romulus, My Father -- which was also named Best Picture of the Year. Romulus co-stars Run Lola Run's Franka Potente and tells the story of "a post World War Two migrant family dealing with isolation in Australia and a mother struggling with mental illness." Oooo, sounds like a fun one! You can read Monika's not-too-impressed review of Romulus here.

Chen won Best Actress for The Home Song Stories, in which she plays "a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer who struggles to survive in 1970s Australia with her two young children." Sheesh! I guess the depressing films get the same praise Down Under that they do here in the states. Get the family together, pop some popcorn, and have a little double feature with these two good timey Saturday night flicks! The Home Song Stories also won awards for: Best Direction (Tony Ayres), Best Screenplay (Ayres again), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Original Music Score, and Best Production Design. How exactly did it miss Best Picture?