China Film Journal

We came across some interesting tidbits in the news today. First off, Yu Lik-wai (余力為) the Hong Kong director/cinematographer that lensed most of Jia Zhangke’s movies, will be starting principal shooting on his new film Plastic City 《塑料城市》. This film is a 2006 Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum alumni, and will begin shooting in Sao Paolo, Brazil — a location which intrigues us very , very much. We didn’t find out what the movie was about, but it’s been said that it will involve actors Anthong Wong (黄秋生) and Huang Yi (黄奕), and Japanese actor Joe Odagiri (小田切讓) — reports say that the film is a Chinese/Japanese co-production.

The other piece of news that we found interesting was that another HAF alum, the Taiwanese actor/director Lee Kangsheng (李康生), is screening his movie at the film festival in Hong Kong. The movie is called Help Me Eros (幫幫我愛神), was directed by and stars Lee Kangsheng, and was produced and art directed by his long-time collaborator and mentor, Tsai Mingliang (蔡明亮). They say the film features a lot of brooding, melancholy, alienation, and graphic sex — which is not surprising, given the two guys behind it. Should be a good one. We’ll be looking out for it on the DVD shelves in Shanghai soon.

First of all, NO, I wasn’t downloading porn. I was actually looking for information about Taiwanese films, and what search result pops out other than 台湾情色电影拍摄现场记录／组图 (Taiwan sex film production stills). These pictures were given with no explanation in writing whatsoever—and on a health website no less. The funny thing is that more than half of the pictures they show are not really from Taiwanese porns, but are stills from arthouse director Tsai Ming-liang’s ouevre, and although it’s been awhile since we’ve seen his films, we believe that the shots in the article are from The Wayward Cloud, which is the last film in a loose trilogy: What Time Is It There?, The Skywalk is Gone, and ending with The Wayward Cloud. His films have gotten more sexually explicit of late—they’ve always had some weird (e.g. son and father) sex, but in his earlier films it was a bit more oblique, no spread legs pointing at the ceiling business. But things changed when, at the end of Skywalk, we find that Lee Kangsheng’s character, Xiao Kang, no longer peddles watches and has instead gone into the commercial penetration business (the last scene is him “auditioning” for his new job in a very un-Boogie Nights but typically Tsai-style scene). So, make a film about a porn star, and you’d expect people to be gettin’ jiggy widit at some point in the movie. OK. This is sexually explicit arthouse fare, not your average seqing movie. What is the point of such inaccurate and misleading postings, and for a health site no less?

If you’re scratching your head and wondering who Tsai Ming-liang is, put on your thinking cap and read what Darren Hughes has to say on Senses of Cinema.