SIFF '08 Retrospective: Part I

So, SIFF's been over for more than a week and I figured I'll shed a bit of my thoughts on the films I saw. I saw a total of 6 films this festival. I definitely enjoyed myself this year, although I definitely felt the lack of selection of films since the festival was scaled down this year. This doesn't necessarily mean I had exhausted my options, there were definitely other films I wanted to see. I'll include the first 3 films watched in this post:

The Fall

Country: USA

I came into this film with a little skepticism. Tarsem (as he likes being called) directed The Cell, which was filled with wild, vivid, and sometimes gory imagery. I felt that film had so much eye candy that it was trying to get you to forget how shallow the acting and plot was. Although The Fall looked more promising, I was hoping I wouldn't get the same letdown. I did not. The story follows an injured stuntman in 1920's LA who befriends a little girl in a hospital and tells her a tale about 5 warriors on a quest to defeat the evil Governor Odious. As the story progresses, we find that the stuntman's tale is more than just mere fiction. This film is far from original in it's form of storytelling, it was a good combination of radiant visuals and heart wrenching human emotion. Films that are in the same vein to me are The Wizard of Oz and Big Fish. Although I did feel some of the visuals were absolutely gratuitous and overdone, they were very pleasing to the eye and added a solid connection of the fantasy with the reality of the story elements. I had wished the characters were a little fleshed out, I never got the real nitty gritty of what made the characters ticked as you are restricted to what the tale tells you. Romanian native Cantica Untaru (who plays the girl Alexandria) absolutely steals the show and her on-screen chemistry with the stuntman (played by Lee Pace) is heartfelt and believable. The soundtrack immersed me into the movie, it was epic yet very soothing. I'd recommend this film, don't go into it expecting anything profoundly novel but it's a film filled with adventure, humor, love, and picturesque cinematography. The film has had a wider release in America since the end of May, so if you can find it try to give it a watch.

Official Movie Site: http://thefallthemovie.com/
Trailer:



Nocturna

Country: Spain

I had really wanted to see an animated film while at the festival this year and this one seemed to be the most promising of what was available. Although this filmax animation films: filled with a child's whimsical imagination and creativity. production hails from Spain, it was dubbed in English most likely due to the fact that it was targeted for a much younger audience. The SIFF site advertised this film as similar to Monsters, Inc. and Miyazaki films. Nocturna takes us to a land that thrives after every child is asleep, where creatures of the night make sure children are in slumber and engrossed in dreams. Orphan Tim stumbles upon this world one night when he refuses to go to sleep after discovering that his favorite star has suddenly been snuffed out. With the help of his cat and a Quasimodo-esque character known as the Cat Shepherd, Tim discovers a greater threat that could endanger the night and Nocturna. The character design and art direction in this film are great, but I found the story a bit half baked and had a drawn out resolve. Once the characters are introduced and you are thrown into this universe of Nocturna, then the movie has to find find some direction and it had trouble finishing off it's barely 80 minute run time. I was confused at times about the consistency of the characters as well, one character I wasn't sure if he was supposed to be an antagonist or protagonist by the end of the film. Some portions of the film are so drawn out and dark, viewers may begin to feel sleepy, I went to watch this at 11:00 am and I felt like it was bed time during parts of the movie. I also felt the British voice acting hurt the film a little, maybe if this film gets a wider release American actors can do the voices - not that something like that would make it a whole lot better. It's really too bad, with all the time invested in creating this world and these characters, I wished that more time had been put into constructing a more engaging plot.

Official Movie Site: filmax International's official page in English
Trailer:

The Home Song Stories

Country: Australia

The difficulty about finding information about this film before I saw it was that it's definitely an Asian film involving Chinese characters, but it does not come from China or Taiwan or Hong Kong - it comes from Australia. Director Tony Ayres wrote and directed The Home Song Stories, which is based on his childhood growing up in the 70's in Australia. Rose is a singer from Shanghai night club singer who marries an Australian sailor and moves to the land down under, bringing her son and daughter with her. She moves from man to man, trying to find a way to support herself and her children. Her relationship with her kids develops before our very eyes as we see her children grow up and she grows older. We see much of not only an immigrants struggle to survive, but also the pressures of Chinese culture and traditions. This movie was quite the emotionally draining experience for me. Being Chinese-American and wondering what struggles my grandparents may have had trying to make it in America set the foundation for this film bringing me right on in from the beginning. We see Asian family dynamics between the son and his mother, the daughter and her mother, as well as the brother with the sister. Joan Chen's performance is incredible as the sometimes confident and other times emotionally neurotic mother trying to get by. I cannot imagine what it would be like for Ayres to write a story about his mother this way, it must have been quite a feat. This is definitely a recommend, although I'm not sure when it'll be available in America.

Official Movie Site: http://www.dendyfilms.com.au/homesongstories/
Trailer: