New York Asian Film Festival Reviews: ‘Couples,’ ‘You Are The Apple Of My Eye …

“Couples” (Jeong Yong-Ki, 2011)
Based on a 2005 Japanese strike “A Stranger of Mine” (directed by Kenji Uchida), “Couples” is kind of like those Rube Goldberg sequences from Jean-Pierre Jeunet (or maybe a “how Cate Blanchett got injured” method from “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), solely for an whole feature-length using time. The formula are both refreshing and (at 110 minutes) exhausting. The categorical hub, where all a subplots and side-stories emanate from, concerns Yoo-Suk (Kim Joo-Hyuk), former photographer and stream owners of a tiny café, who has sunk all of his income into a code new condo for his mother to be Na-Ri (Lee Si-Young). While out on a date, Na-Ri mysteriously vanishes (that sounds distant some-more ominous than it indeed is). From here things spin out: Yoo-Suk hires a private investigator to lane her down and that private investigator ends adult removing concerned with Na-Ri; Yoo-Suk ventures to a bank and gets held adult in a spoliation (and competence only find intrigue with an darling trade patrolman with a swank incline hair impression played by Lee Yoon-Ji); and we finally get a story of what happened to Na-Ri, and it involves an over-the-hill mafiosi (Gong Hyung-Jin) and a clod of stolen host money. Emphasizing a weird coincidences that beam a bland lives, for a many partial “Couples” is a feeling bagatelle – positively some-more sophisticated, both visually and from a account standpoint, than Americanized regretful anthologies like a unpleasant “Valentine’s Day” and “New Year’s Eve” – though during a certain indicate we stop caring how a interlocking segments of a story snap into place and kind of only wish it to be over with, generally given a approach it’s set adult we start looking for each possibility confront to spin off into a possess regretful subplot (and when it doesn’t, you’re weirdly disappointed). (Sections of a film where couples residence a camera in mistake documentary impression don’t unequivocally work during all.) Still, “Couples” is a whole lot of fun and spasmodic reaches a turn of genuine, heart-swelling magic. What’s more, a film takes on a fascinating additional dimension as a Far East demeanour during a stream mercantile collapse, one in that everybody (even a destroyed romantics out there) is a few bucks short. [B+]

“You Are a Apple Of My Eye” (Giddens Ko, 2011)
Giddens Ko is a Taiwanese novelist, and “You Are a Apple Of My Eye” is his unequivocally initial movie, formed on his autobiographical book that Ko claims is all about a one that got away. As such, it’s both a bittersweet and fortifying affair, filled with furious visible flourishes and a kind of unbridled, enterprising unrestrained that spasmodic borders on manic. The film focuses on Ko Ching-teng (Ko Chen-tung), a spiky haired smart-ass who claims to be defence to a attracts of Shen Chia-yi (Michelle Chen), a lady who each other classmate wants to get with. Of course, given this is a large ole regretful comedy, Shen takes to education Ko and their loyalty blossoms into something more. “You Are a Apple of My Eye” is important for dual reasons – one, a steadfast concentration on a ungainly stretches of a loyalty where zero utterly moves forward, though things change uneasily in a kind of romantic no man’s land (we’ve all been there). The film seems to during initial be an over-caffeinated chronicle of a John Hughes corner (maybe somewhat less-caffeinated than, say, “Scott Pilgrim vs. a World,” though caffeinated only a same) though afterwards takes on additional range as it follows a executive characters as they leave high school, while their feelings sojourn stranded in their high propagandize classrooms. The second thing that sets “You Are a Apple of My Eye” detached is that it is mostly weirdly intimately explicit, in a approach that many American cinema bashful divided from – there’s a impulse when Ko takes partial in a masturbation foe in a behind of a classroom (!), one impression walks around with a permanent construction (the steer of that would acquire a film an involuntary R in a states), there’s another masturbation foe in a college (what is it with a masturbation?), and gobs of pragmatic homosexual sex. It’s only some-more braid that creates “You Are a Apple of My Eye” feel some-more epic and, during a same time, some-more personal. At one indicate a impression says that he circles a whole island of Taiwan with a damaged heart, and afterwards circles it again – it’s a feeling both specific and universal, an simply common ache. “You Are a Apple of My Eye” might drag occasionally, though it contingency be applauded for maintaining a realness in a midst of some truly novelistic sprawl. [A-]

“Honey Pupu” (Chen Hung-I, 2011)
The programming beam describes “Honey Pupu,” from Taiwan, as an “elegiac tinge poem for a internet age.” But we couldn’t unequivocally make heads or tails of a story – that concerns a annihilation of bees, an online discuss room, and a array of puzzling disappearances. At first, notwithstanding a kind of cubist editorial technique employed (it reminded us of some latter-day Godard examination nonetheless mercifully giveaway of “Navajo subtitles”), we consider that a movie’s executive storyline will jelly into something tangible and enchanting – primarily, you’re duped into meditative that it will be about these discuss room members assembly adult for a initial time in genuine life to solve a aforementioned puzzling disappearances. But no. Things continue. Weirdly. There’s clunky voiceover, a computer-generated bee, splashes of eccentric (but nudity-free) sex and lots of shots of immature Taiwanese kids roving on motorcycles unequivocally fast. (The whole film has an unappealingly ornate tone scheme, too – all is expel in delicate yellows or sour-apple greens.) You can tell that Hung-I and a rest of a filmmakers suspicion they were creation something low and probing about a tellurian suggestion and a ways in that record has both connected us and driven us apart. But instead of being profound, it winds adult being pretentious, with truth exchanged for blunt confusion. The expel seems diversion adequate though it’s tough to make out who is contributing what to such a shattered, fragmented collection of scenes. Out of a garland of New York Asian Film Festival cinema we’ve seen so far, this is by distant a many simply skippable and obtuse. [C-]

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