Get ready for the fourth edition of the Film Festival of Deauville from March, 7th to March, 10th 2002. This French festival improves each year with a richer and richer programme and fantastic guests. Here you'll find the list of guests, the programme, the schedule of the 4 days, and the link to the official site of the Pan Asia Film Festival. Updated 06/02/2003

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2003 EDITION - - NEW

Deauville was the place of memorable premieres, i.e. Time and Tide in 2001 and Shiri in 2000. Shu Qui was a prestigious guest in 2001, and was voted the Chinese newcomers of the year 2001 in France , after the success of Millennium Mambo.
She is currently busy in Marseille where Luc Besson casted her in a new French action movie.
Last year Wu Bai (Time and Tide) and Lawrence Ah Mon (Spacked Out) were amongst the guests to meet in priority.
Let's have a look to what's on in 2002.

Asian Clichés: Deauville Report

Although the Festival team work and the guest presence were spot on, we were a bit disappointed on the film front. It was indeed rare to find in any of the selected movies what attracted us to Asian cinemas: a sense of aesthetic, a style, new ways of directing and editing, original themes and a fast-paced action. Four major styles of movies were screened, i.e. world cinema, Asian blockbusters, the exploitation feature, films under obvious influences. These are the sort of movies we have tended to escape by moving on to the Asian cinema. Some could think we were very hard with the films dealt with below, (I wish it was that simple) but we tried to be as nice as possible…

The world cinema
In Whispering Sand a mother protects her young daughter against herself and men. This movie was attracting because it has this tag 'from Indonesia', a country that doesn't produce many movies a year. But unfortunately we soon realised that it could have come from anywhere else in the world. Besides being slow the story was quite unoriginal.

The second feature of this category was Deathrow, a Filipino film taking place in prison where fights and rapes occur every 5 minutes. It was intriguing for the first 10 minutes, but boring after half an hour of raw violence and sobbing. This movie talks about what's on in jail but without any originality or showing much more than mere violence. If it is what really happens in jail, which I can believe, some new elements or proper sub-textual materials would have lift that movie above the average prison flick. Unfortunately, it wasn't the case. Maybe ten times harsher than any Midnight Express but also ten times less interesting as well.

Pan Asian blockbusters
They are big budgeted movies co-produced by various countries. They tend to respond to the invasion of Hollywood blockbusters but they usually fall into the same traps as their American counterparts. A non-interesting scenario which is a pretext to 'in your face' scenes and special effects. Musa was the Korean and Chinese blockbuster of the Festival. Subtleness was sacrificed for effectiveness in this rather plain war epic movie. The action wasn't cleverly shot, a hand held camera, some slow motion effect and a tight framing wouldn't make an art house movie full of sub textual topics. It's been said that it was a way to show violence as it is. Well, in The Blade by Tsui Hark, the violence is shown as it is supposed to be, and believe me, it has another look! In another hand, it could have been a great entertaining and light movie. But it wasn't even near it. Every single character was a cliché. Even Zhang Ziyi couldn't save the movie since her acting was a set of gimmicks; she pulled a long face during most of the movie.

The exploitation feature
The exploitation film was a teen-orientated comedy Waterboys, a Japanese flick clearly derived from manga. Nothing's wrong so far. It deals with a group of schoolboys who have to learn synchronised swimming for their school festival. Jokes are very numerous but most of the time not funny for an over 14 year-old audience. Comical situations and characters are finally too typical to make you escape from your boredom.

Movies under influence.
Here we are talking about the Rule Of The Game and four-time winner Failan.
The Rule Of The Game's director Ho Ping never really managed to overtake his influences and inspirations. Between Tarantino and the Cohen bros. this slow-ish action comedy is similar to dozens. Once again, the plot is obvious and doesn't really lead to any surprise. It has however received the award for Best Script.
The first part of Korean feature Failan can be easily assimilated to Takeshi Kitano's work but it is somehow sloppier. The second part is a love story between two persons who never really met. Choi Min Shick (Shiri) is a second rate gangster who got married only for money with Failan (HK actress Cecilia Cheung). He's a nobody. She is a typical Chinese woman, far too typical. Characters are rather common and the film direction is not very original, but in the end Failan is a pleasant story to watch and it was the first good thing to look at the festival. Choi Min Shik deserved however the Best Actor award (which he received from the festival) for his deep and touching performance.

Two movies have eventually proposed a kind of cinema we've been looking for and eventually we've found in the Far East film industries. There are Metropolis and A Woman's Work (aka Travail).
Metropolis is an animated feature from Japan. The team behind this one is full of prestigious craftsmen. The movie was indeed directed by Japanimation master Rin Taro, it was written by Katsuhiro 'Akira' Otomo from a comic book originally created by 'Manga Daddy' Osamu Tezuka. Metropolis mixes a style of imageries from the 30's cartoons with computer generated effects with much gusto. How strange it was to contemplate in an animated movie what we were all expected to find in a live feature, i.e. a real conception of the Cinema, a search for new aesthetic compositions, an original framing, and true feelings coming out of each piece of celluloid. All these things that made us drift to Asian cinema are in Metropolis.

Another film was very surprising in the context of the festival, A Woman's Work. It was directed by Kentaro Otami and featured already topnotch star Asaka Seto and underground director Shinya Testuo Tsukamoto. It deals basically with a professional Japanese chess player Asami (Asaka) who has relationship problems with her husband (Tsukamoto) and she loses therefore all the matches she does. The plot is cleverly written and constitutes the movie main asset with the characters all portrayed by very convincing actors. It's a bit like watching a stage play on a big screen. It has that refreshing touch and originality (even for a rather conventional plot summary) that lack from other movies seen so far in Deauville. As for the camera work and the music, I am not that sure. The cameraman could have used a tripod to shoot lengthy dialogue scenes and he could have given up the unnecessary hand held camera job. The music was sometimes really too much as well. But after all we weren't looking for the perfect thing and were really happy to look at something that is not rated for " under 18 years old only".

Indeed after so many great movies shown the year before (Time And Tide, JSA, The Foul King, Bangkok Dangerous) the quaility of the movies screened at the fourth edition of the Deauville Film Festival were somehow very disturbing. The saddest thing was that it wasn't due to a poor film selection from the festival but to a poor film industry all over Asia.
This trend was really obvious at the Udine Film Festival in 2001 where tons of tearjerkers and other foul movies were shown. After the Asian crisis (economic and artistic), it's like no country believes anymore in its own market and feels the urge to sell abroad. The worst drawback to this new state of things is that now moviemakers from HK or Korea for instance think that they have to please international audience and therefore they feel that they have to format their movies for international considerations. They may lose they identity and originality in the process, but that's surely another issue for a new article.

Written by Thomas and Laurent Henry, March 2002.
We are grateful to the Deauville Film Festival press attachés people for their professionalism and their help throughout the festival.

And the winner is...

Best director
M. Song Hae-sung for in Failan
Audience Award to
Failan
Best Movie
Failan (Korea)
Best Actor
Choi Min-shik in Failan

Best Actress
Dian Sastrowordoyo in Whispering Sands (Indonesia )

Best Cinematography
Henry Chung for Peony Pavilion (Hong Kong )

Best Script
Kuo Cheng for The Rule of the Game (Taiwan )

Best Movies shot in DV
Gips by Akihiko Shiota (Japan )
And Tokyo Trash Baby by Ryuichi Hiroki (Japan )

 

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Three Babes in Deauville...
Original pictures are © HK Cinemagic.

Karen Mok	Dian Sastrowordoyo	Asaka Seto
Karen is famous for her performance in Fallen Angels by Wong Kar Wai and the numerous films in which she co-starred with Stephen Chow. She is a gifted actress and a very successfull singer	Dian is a young Indonesian actress. She got the Best Actress Award for her performance in Whispering Sand. It's her second movie after a short feature and she has already shot another Indonesian blockbuster.	Asaka Seto is a star in Japan. Not only she plays in movies (Woman's Work, Bullets Of Love), in TV series but she sings as well. She is one of the big name of tomorrow's Japanese entertainment industry.

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Interesting guests:

Those who'll make it:

China
Director Lou JIAN, Father
Producer Cao, Father

Hong Kong
Actress Karen MOK, All the way
Karen Mok manager Carol LIAO
Director YonFAN, Peony Pavillon
Director Kenneth BI, A small miracle

Taiwan
Director Ho PING, Rules of the game

Korea
Director SONG Hae-sung, Failan
Actor JOO Jin-mo, Musa
Director JUNG Woo-sung, Musa
KIM Dong-Ho, the President of the Pusan Film Festival
Yi Hye-jung, KOFIC

Japan
Director SON Jae-goun, The man who watched too much
Director Kentaro OTAMI, Woman’s Work
Actress Asaka SETO, Woman’s Work
Director Akihiko SHIOTA, Gips
Director Ryuichi HIROKI, Tokyo Trash Baby

Philippines
Director Joël LAMANGAN, Deathrow

Indonesia
Director Nan T.ACHNAS, Whispering Sands
Actress Dian SASTROWARDOYO, Whispering Sands

Malaysia
Director Amir MUHAMMAD, Lips to Lips

Singapore
Director Vincent WONG, Hype

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Programme

Tributes to
Shin Sang Ok (South Korea)
Queen Minbee
Phantom Queen
Eunuch
Vanished

To Johnnie To Kei-fung (Hong Kong)
Full Time Killer
Lifeline
Help !!!
Running Out of Time

COMPETITION
Fathers, Lou Jian, China, 2001
Failan, Song Hae-sung, Korea, 2001
Peony Pavilion, Yonfan, Hong Kong, 2001
Whispering Sands, Nan T. Achnas, Indonesia, 2001
A Woman's Work, Kentaro Otani, Japan, 2001
Deathrow, Joel Lamangan, Philippines, 2000
The Rule of the Game, Ho Ping, Taiwan, 2001

Tribute to the Madhouse studios
Madhouse no monogatari : Story of Madhouse
Madhouse Programme Ichi: programme 1:  Manie Manie
Madhouse Programme Ni: programme 2: DNA Sights 999,9 Fireforce

PROGRAMME for youngs
Robot Palta, Japan
Mon petit diable, Gopi Desai, India-Canada, 2000
The Village Of My Dreams, Yoichi Higashi, Japan, 1995

Written by Thomas, Feb 2002.
Special thanks to Jeremy Segay and the Deauville Film Festival www.asiafilm-deauville.org

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