Starry Starry Night: A Coming of Age Story for All Ages

It is tough being the kid with an artistic temperament in school.  Having trouble at home is a double whammy for both Mei and Jay.  At least they have each other’s support in Tom Shu-yu Lin’s Starry Starry Night (trailer here), an exquisitely sensitive portrait of young love that opens this Friday in New York following its 2012 NYAFF screening this afternoon.

Jay is a shy kid with a remarkable talent for creating art.  He has a hard time making friends, because he and his mom must constantly move to new addresses.  Mei has many friends, but is not particularly close to any of them.  Her mother has taught to appreciate fine art through the jigsaw puzzles they use to put together as a family.  Unfortunately, he parents are now too busy fighting to spend quality time with her.  She feels her closest connection to her aging grandfather, who lives in a Kinkadean cabin in the woods, until she meets Jay.

At first it is a case of fascination for Mei, but as she and Jay share their mutual interests, an innocent friendship blossoms into innocent love.  Grieving her grandfather and upset by the announcement of her parents’ impending divorce, she leads Jay on a journey to the late woodworker’s cottage nestled deep in the mountains.

In a nutshell, Starry could be considered the Taiwanese Moonrise Kingdom, except its young protagonists are far more endearing and their troubles are considerably more real.  The closing credits even feature illustrations from Jimmy Liao’s picture book, upon which the film is based.  Yet despite the more liberal use of CGI, bringing to life origami animals animated by the duo’s purity of spirit, Starry is much more grounded.  Indeed, the emotional stakes involved in growing up and caring for others are quite real throughout Lin’s sympathetic screenplay.

Young Josie Xu carries a disproportionate share of the film’s dramatic load, but she is fantastic as Mei.  Charming and vulnerable as circumstance demand, it is a remarkably assured screen performance.  While his character is more reticent and reserved, Eric Lin Hui Ming is also quite compelling in Jay’s big revelatory scenes.  Starry also boasts a special too-significant-to-be-a-cameo appearance by Kwai Lun Mei in an epilogue completely one-upping anything Nicholas Sparks ever wrote.

True, Starry is not afraid of a little sentiment, but it earns its pay-off, every step of the way.  Firmly but elegantly helmed by Lin, the film treats its young characters and their dilemmas with refreshing respect.  Its lush animated backdrops are truly striking, but the film never really engages in magical realism, per se.  It is merely amplifying the feelings of its charismatic leads.  Nonetheless, it is quite visually dynamic (with particular credit due to Penny Tsai Pei-ling’s design team), capturing the essence of Liao’s book.  Enormously satisfying and hugely commercial, it is precisely the sort of international film that can break into the mainstream.  Highly recommended for general audiences, Starry Starry Night opens this Friday (7/6) in New York at the AMC Empire and in Seattle at the AMC Pacific Place, courtesy of China Lion Entertainment.

NYAFF ’12: 10+10

Taiwan is a country with a tragic history and rich legacy of pop music.  Both factor prominently when ten established Taiwanese filmmakers and ten emerging new talents were commissioned by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival to create a five minute films expressing the country’s unique character.  The resulting anthology 10+10 screens this coming Thursday as an official selection of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Viewers going into 10+10 should not get hung up on consistency.  These twenty filmmakers will cover a lot of emotional and thematic ground.  The tension between tradition and modernization will be a recurring motif, beginning with Wang Toon’s opener, in which a bickering pair of cousins treks up to a remote shrine.  They intent to curry favor with the spirits by showing them the 3-D DVD of Avatar.  It is a quiet but clever piece.

Nostalgia is also on tap in Wu Nien-jen’s A Grocery Called Forever.  Depicting a spirited elderly woman who insists on keeping her family’s corner store open, it is a pleasant slice of life.  Taiwan’s aging population play central roles in several constituent films, perhaps most touchingly in Cheng Wen-tang’s Old Man and Me.  Told from the persona of a now deceased man suffering from Alzheimer’s, it serves as his thank-you to the townspeople who searched the countryside for him when he wandering off to his demise.

Given the approximate five minute durations, many of the installments are rather sketch-like.  Indeed, entries like Wang Shaudi’s Destined Eruption and Yang Ya-che’s The Singing Boy seem to end just as they are getting started.  However, several pack quite a bit of narrative into their limited running times.  Somehow, Chang Tso-Chi’s Sparkles shoehorns the entire 1949 Battle of Kinmen Island into less than ten minutes.  A powerful war film, it follows an innocent girl being escorted to the island’s doctor by the Nationalists, as they desperately try to hold off the invading Communists.

Featuring plenty of explosions, Sparkles is probably one of the most NYAFF-esque films in 10+10.  The other would be Chung Mong-hong’s satisfyingly dark Reverberation.  What starts as a teenaged bullying drama takes a dramatic u-turn into gangster territory.  Karma will be a hard thing.

Easily the strongest shorts are those directly inspired by music.  Chen Kuo-fu’s The Debut is a lovely ghost story, portraying the spectral encouragement offered to a discouraged pop ingénue by one of the great torch singers from yesteryear.  Likewise, Rendy Hou Chi-jan pays tribute to the sentimental ballads of the 1960’s, depicting one song’s power to transcend time.  Ranking just a notch below the lyrical pair, Cheng Yu-chieh’s Unwritten delivers some ironic laughs satirizing the concessions made by the Taiwanese film industry to the mainland market.  Frankly, it is increasingly relevant to Hollywood as well.

Not every film works particularly well.  Wei Te-sheng’s Debut ought to be a DVD extra for his aboriginal war drama Seediq Bale, essentially following his first-time actor Lin Ching-tai as they take the epic to the Venice Film Festival.  Arguably, the low point comes with Kevin Chu Yen-ping’s uncomfortably manipulative and awkwardly didactic The Orphans.

Surprisingly, there is a fair amount of star power in 10+10, including Shu Qi looking typically radiant in marquis contributor Hou Hsiao-hsien’s slight but nonetheless engaging closer La Belle Epoque.  Kwai Lun Mei also graces Leon Dai’s oomph-lacking Key.  Despite attempts to glam her down, she remains a vivid screen presence.

By their nature, anthology films are inherently uneven.  Yet, there are enough good things going on in 10+10 to satisfy connoisseurs of either short films or Asian cinema.  On balance, it is an effective sampling of Taiwanese cinema, well worth a look when it screens this coming Thursday (7/5) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Reelabilities ’12: Ocean Heaven

Old beyond his years, Wang Xingchang is dying of liver cancer. Fortunately, he can rest easy, secure in the knowledge the People’s Republic will care for his grown autistic son, Dafu. No, not really. Fearing the worst, the desperate widower is planning a final exit for both himself and his son in Xiao Lu Xue’s Ocean Heaven (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Reelabilities Film Festival.

Known as “Old Wang,” Dafu’s middle-aged father works as a handyman at Qingdao’s version of Seaworld. It would seem like a cool job to a young child. Unfortunately, Dafu is still a little boy, emotionally and intellectually. He can swim like a fish though, which is one reason why Old Wang’s attempt to let the sea take them fails. Reluctantly accepting their reprieve, he renews his fruitless search for a humane social service agency that will care for Dafu once he is gone.

Ocean relentlessly goes for the heartstrings anyway it can. While the father-son story is obviously front-and-center, perhaps the most touching scenes involve Madame Chai, the kindly neighbor Old Wang obviously loves but never pursues because of his all consuming commitment to his son. Likewise, the ambiguous friendship Dafu strikes up with Ling Ling, a clown with a visiting circus, is appealingly sweet and innocent. However, the way Ocean puts the dying father through the ringer, forcing him to endure Dafu’s tantrums and stubbornness while suffering increasingly acute physical pain, might be realistic, but it borders on the outright punishing for viewers.

Hailed as Jet Li’s straight-up no-cheating dramatic breakthrough-debut, it showcases the action star quite effectively. Indeed, Li has a genuine Tom Hanks (before he was too full of himself) everyman quality as Old Wang. So convincing as Dafu, reportedly many have erroneously assumed Chinese T V actor Wen Zhang was himself autistic. Given realities, his character can only experience the subtlest of development arcs, which he duly implies with fine nuance. Though her part is rather underwritten, Taiwanese singer-actress Kwai Lun Mei (or Gwei Lun-mei) is a luminous presence as Ling. However, the compassion and open vulnerability of Yuanyuan Zhu’s Madame Chai is truly moving, in an honest and direct way.

Given the subject matter, one can hardly be shocked by Ocean’s brazenly manipulative nature. Still, it is a highly polished production, featuring the typically straight forward yet evocative cinematography of Australian expat Christopher Doyle.

It must be fully acknowledged Jet Li rises to the challenge of such a tear-jerking role. Action fans will also be interested (or frustrated) to know Jay Chou performs one of the soundtrack’s featured songs. Kwai performs the other main theme and adds a serious dose of cuteness to the proceedings. The results might be predictable, but Ocean delivers a real emotional payoff nonetheless. Sheepishly recommended for Kwai’s loyal fans and those curious to see Li flex his acting muscles, Ocean screens again tomorrow (2/11) at venues in Manhattan and Staten Island, as well as this Sunday (2/12) at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, during this year’s Reelabilities Film Festival.