dreamdead
10-19-2008, 12:41 AM
Temptress Moon
http://www.lovehkfilm.com/panasia/aj6293/temptress_moon_a.jpg
rec. by Stay Puft
Netflix summary for the interested:
The teeming underworld of 1920s Shanghai collides with old-world nobility in Chen Kaige's harrowing film. Ruyi (Gong Li), the youngest daughter of the noble family, is employed as a servant to her opium-addicted father and brother. Meanwhile, Ruyi's brother-in-law, Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung), enjoys a thriving (illegal) career seducing and blackmailing married women in the city. When he comes to Ruyi's home, the two fall in love, and trouble isn't far off.
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One of my first exposures to foreign cinema was Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine. That film’s balance of time and national history on a limited troupe of performers as Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic swept over China was immaculate. Since that viewing, however, I have been reluctant to revisit it. There has been the fear that some( admitted) internal deification of all Asian Cult obfuscated the simplicity of its themes, that the transition of culture elided matters of formal mastery by Kaige, and that the film’s provocation of Communist China comforts us Westerners more so than it truly challenges.
It is with these thoughts rustling in the back of the mind that I approached Kaige’s Temptress Moon (1996) for this most recent film swap. I am relieved to note that matters of Kaige’s skills are, here at least, rendered moot, as the film’s vision is full-formed even if it remains a somewhat static emotional experience. Yet unlike the critical consensus that emerged when I delved into reviews, I think this stasis is rather intentional, even if it contributes to a lesser investment. Instead, this is a film that operates more on mood and its intellectual approach to cinematography, for its narrative is somehow, despite or perhaps because of the myriad dramas that are enacted, anti-emotional. By this I mean to suggest that Kaige’s themes (such as the historical objectification of women, people-as-commodity, servants bridging class boundaries, and loyalty to notions of family) are mediated by the distancing effect of the camera’s gaze. Despite the numerous close-ups, their ultimate effect ultimately distances us all the more, just as these characters consistently numb themselves from enacting the internal desires that are so much a part of their desired experience. Opium and fraudulent depictions of the self are adopted to suppress their own forlorn natures.
The trajectory of narrative is rendered explicit in the opening frames. Leslie Cheung and Gong Li have an attraction, but familial and societal pressures will prevent that attraction from getting expressed without an appeal to capitalistic notions of ownership and property. That expression, in turn, dooms the relationship, so the film often is simply an examination of Cheung or Li’s evocative face; internal conflict and remorse full on their face, yet somehow it’s so ornate that it eventually becomes dispassionate as a technique.
In fact, verbal locution and dialogue matters less than expressive framing, and here director of cinematography Christopher Doyle busts out all the stops. We have the proto-Dardenne Brothers/Tarr camera that follows the back of characters through extended pathways; close-up deep lensing of Gong Li or Leslie Cheung’s faces; long takes where the camera’s gaze weaves back and forth between characters, charting the sense of real time that operates within all of these interactions. Indeed, this is a film that is foremost concerned with the effects of time, as it operates with the schema that time and national history destroys all of these people. In turn, the film’s ironic moralism becomes interesting as people commit suicide on “Heavenly Lane” or get gunned down moments from escape.
This is a film that works, albeit more from a filmic intellectual examination of the cinematic treatment of Doyle’s camera than for Kaige’s depiction of the narrative. Yet Kaige himself must be given credit for the former ingredients, too, so it’s with a final testimony that I assert the film’s quality if one doesn’t expect emotional investment. As a dispassionate study of the effects of culture onto individuals who wish to exist apart from such constraints, it is rather solid. And it testifies to the brilliance that was Leslie Cheung, who owns every moment that he’s onscreen. His sensitivity gives this film the lingering emotionality that resides in the margins. Such a fine actor, and such a quality performance. Similarly, Temptress Moon is a rewarding picture for the prepared.
81/100
http://www.lovehkfilm.com/panasia/aj6293/temptress_moon_a.jpg
rec. by Stay Puft
Netflix summary for the interested:
The teeming underworld of 1920s Shanghai collides with old-world nobility in Chen Kaige's harrowing film. Ruyi (Gong Li), the youngest daughter of the noble family, is employed as a servant to her opium-addicted father and brother. Meanwhile, Ruyi's brother-in-law, Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung), enjoys a thriving (illegal) career seducing and blackmailing married women in the city. When he comes to Ruyi's home, the two fall in love, and trouble isn't far off.
-----
One of my first exposures to foreign cinema was Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine. That film’s balance of time and national history on a limited troupe of performers as Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic swept over China was immaculate. Since that viewing, however, I have been reluctant to revisit it. There has been the fear that some( admitted) internal deification of all Asian Cult obfuscated the simplicity of its themes, that the transition of culture elided matters of formal mastery by Kaige, and that the film’s provocation of Communist China comforts us Westerners more so than it truly challenges.
It is with these thoughts rustling in the back of the mind that I approached Kaige’s Temptress Moon (1996) for this most recent film swap. I am relieved to note that matters of Kaige’s skills are, here at least, rendered moot, as the film’s vision is full-formed even if it remains a somewhat static emotional experience. Yet unlike the critical consensus that emerged when I delved into reviews, I think this stasis is rather intentional, even if it contributes to a lesser investment. Instead, this is a film that operates more on mood and its intellectual approach to cinematography, for its narrative is somehow, despite or perhaps because of the myriad dramas that are enacted, anti-emotional. By this I mean to suggest that Kaige’s themes (such as the historical objectification of women, people-as-commodity, servants bridging class boundaries, and loyalty to notions of family) are mediated by the distancing effect of the camera’s gaze. Despite the numerous close-ups, their ultimate effect ultimately distances us all the more, just as these characters consistently numb themselves from enacting the internal desires that are so much a part of their desired experience. Opium and fraudulent depictions of the self are adopted to suppress their own forlorn natures.
The trajectory of narrative is rendered explicit in the opening frames. Leslie Cheung and Gong Li have an attraction, but familial and societal pressures will prevent that attraction from getting expressed without an appeal to capitalistic notions of ownership and property. That expression, in turn, dooms the relationship, so the film often is simply an examination of Cheung or Li’s evocative face; internal conflict and remorse full on their face, yet somehow it’s so ornate that it eventually becomes dispassionate as a technique.
In fact, verbal locution and dialogue matters less than expressive framing, and here director of cinematography Christopher Doyle busts out all the stops. We have the proto-Dardenne Brothers/Tarr camera that follows the back of characters through extended pathways; close-up deep lensing of Gong Li or Leslie Cheung’s faces; long takes where the camera’s gaze weaves back and forth between characters, charting the sense of real time that operates within all of these interactions. Indeed, this is a film that is foremost concerned with the effects of time, as it operates with the schema that time and national history destroys all of these people. In turn, the film’s ironic moralism becomes interesting as people commit suicide on “Heavenly Lane” or get gunned down moments from escape.
This is a film that works, albeit more from a filmic intellectual examination of the cinematic treatment of Doyle’s camera than for Kaige’s depiction of the narrative. Yet Kaige himself must be given credit for the former ingredients, too, so it’s with a final testimony that I assert the film’s quality if one doesn’t expect emotional investment. As a dispassionate study of the effects of culture onto individuals who wish to exist apart from such constraints, it is rather solid. And it testifies to the brilliance that was Leslie Cheung, who owns every moment that he’s onscreen. His sensitivity gives this film the lingering emotionality that resides in the margins. Such a fine actor, and such a quality performance. Similarly, Temptress Moon is a rewarding picture for the prepared.
81/100