Philippine & HK

One Offs

The local scene is becoming a grab all of one off movies. In Sydney,  Randwick Ritz seethes with them. 

Quezon's Game Bagastsing, Bianco, Billy Ray Gallion & friend.

Matthew E. Rosen’s Quezon's Game showed up there. How long is it since you saw a Philippino film? It’s clearly a movie of high seriousness. It deals with the Philippines president in power in 1938 as the transition to self government from the USA is taking place and World War II looms. This one is not going to tell us about native rice famines and the establishment of a Philippino language however. Star Raymong Bagastsing, a busy actor with a background in martial arts films and appearing in the Spanish 1898 Los Ultimos Filipinos, spends the movie agonising about twelve hundred Jews that the Nazis prove anxious to off load, while racist elements in the American political system block his attempts to accept them.

This works out as lots of footage of the cast impersonating historical personages smoking cigars and wearing baggy tropical gear at card games where we never see the value of the hands. The presence of David Bianco's Dwight Eisenhower, then in the American colonial administration, keeps on threatening to provide significant historical comment and failing to do so. Jennifer Blair-Bianco’s Mamie doing the To Have and Have Not put down of the “shameless bitch” band singer who has eyes for Ike does spark interest but goes nowhere. At least a nasty SS Officer in full black dress uniform provides variety.

What we get is endless detail on immigration quotas, visas, the agonising process of crossing names off a list produced by placing an advertisement in German papers to attract immigrants for the new Quezon City, while Bagatsing coughs blood into a folded white hankie.

As director, Commercials specialist Matthew E. Rosen can’t manage the drama unearthed for Ship of Fools or Exodus. He does better under his other hat as cameraman, providing an appealing, sunny Manila of luxurious Malacañang Palace interiors, homes and terraces and picturesque poled water taxis.

Add this one to the list of political toned, English (mainly) speaking foreign movies like Curtiz or Paris Song that are turning up in fringe distribution.

First Night Nerves

Stanley Kwan was in the eighties one of the brightest lights of Hong Kong Cinema. He’s spent most of the last decade producing in an uneasy relationship with the Beijing industry.  Now he’s promoted as China’s one openly gay director. Since coming out (a big deal in that environment) his work has been erratic and distorted by wanting to reach the gay audience.

Well here he is back again with Baat go leuiyan, yat toi hei (Eight Women, One Stage) / First Night Nerves a film that clearly shows his interests and style. If you think you are going to see something comparable to Kwan’s 1986 Love Unto Wastes, Rouge 1987 or even Center Stage 1991, you’re likely to feel you’ve burned your fourteen bucks but if you’re curious about it’s maker’s career, this one intrigues. 

 It’s a great looking movie and proves to be densely plotted and finally likeable if you stay with it.

Basically it’s about two celebrity actresses who are cast in a theater production in the giant Hong Kong City Hall (for which Kwan joined in protests to keep developers at bay). The women have a history, the anticipated antagonism arrives and there’s some sword crossing - Gigi Leung has done a line count and finds Sammi Cheng has more than she does so she's hired in a critic, that transgender director Kam Kwok Leung hates, to beef up her part and the director has a heart attack. Cheng’s reduced circumstances make her take a small flat but the play’s enthusiast backer lights a fire under the attorney handling the late husband’s will and activates a trust fund for their child’s education. We lean that the husband died on a flight with another wife with whom he had two more children. Throw in the sixteen year old son skyping he wants his mum to acknowledge his teenage boy friend.

Leung's late discovery character is still agro over the fact that the Beijing producers of her last movie didn’t think her Mandarin was up to standard and had her dubbed.

The lead pair have a long talk out in the cemetery, reconcile and the play opens - apparently to success.

 

Stanley Kwan's First Night Nerves.

 

 

 

The piece suggests the influence of the Casavetes Opening Night as with the characters taking tasty looking meals together back stage. Theater manager Kiki Sheung rushes in to say there should be no open flames in the building. She is comforted to learn that a light bulb is the heat source and joins in.

I found First Night Nerves hard to follow and was continually trying to catch up. Some of the native language speakers to whom the performers were more familiar had problems too, so (without one of those English language press books of the kind that creates a comfort zone for the regular commentators) I may have got some of this wrong.

The plot rates as dodgy but the film’s imagery is exceptional in the best Jacques Demy tradition. A costume fitting has one of the leads in the grey dress decorated with the red stitched-on flowers. The pink light falls on the gauze behind which the musicians play lit by the set’s giant green neon lettering. The smoothly circling camera crossing the stage edge hu du men shows the action as a theatrical presentation and a domestic interior, without an edit. Diffusion makes the participants look like they have been dusted with icing sugar. Attention wanders following the narrative but it is constantly snapped back by the visuals.

 

Barrie Pattison 2020