great movies

I've just spent too much money on films this week. But what am I supposed to do. It's the Hawaii International Film Festival. Sure the movies shown here cost more than normal commercially released films but that's usually because they're much better and three out of the four movies I've watched were.

The first movie I watched in this movie festival was 4:30 by Royston Tan. I know, watching a Singapore Movie in Hawaii? But in all honesty, it was free and I am Singaporean and so I went to watch it because of that mainly and also because I thought that Royston would be there and he was supposed to but didn't show in the end. That was good because if he did I'd be trying to market myself more than anything else. You know like, "Hey, if you need an handsome leading man to sweep the girls off their feet, here's my card. Or, if you need a really good actor for a really difficult role and you can't find the right guy, you could call me too."

Since he didn't show, I also did not have to pretend to enjoy his movie too much. I'm not saying that it wasn't a good movie. It was alright but I'm happy I didn't pay US$9 to watch it because if I did, I would have probably hated it. Also, I wrote in the introduction that 3 of the movies I caught were great and well, this one just wasn't one of them.

Somehow there is a new wave in Singapore theatre that seems like the next big film from home will be a silent movie. I mean "Be With Me" by Eric Khoo had very little words said but it more than made up for it by having a few great stories and very creative ways of telling the stories. 4:30 goes one better with a script probably consisting of about 300 words. I'm not kidding. In one scene, a teacher asks the protagonist to read an essay and that was 150 words long. That was half the script right there.

The visuals were pretty well done though. I'm a word-phile and I like words so that might be one reason I am judging this movie badly. The shots were well done and the emotional range of the actors was extraordinary. However, my major gripe with the movie is the fact that it comes off as a touch pretentious. It seems to think of itself as an arthouse movie and so it just spends a lot of time on still scenes where nothing happens. Yes, this does add to the artistic element of the film but in my opinion, it was way overdone. The pacing of the movie suffered greatly because of this. In all honesty, some people just walked out of the cinema after a while. My overall judgement of it was that it was a good effort but it really did become tedious very quickly.

The next movie I watched was called "Paper Dolls" and was a documentary about crossdressing Filipino caregivers in Israel. I watched it with my friend Yael from Kalo. She's a Filipino-Israeli hapa and so the movie caught her imagination. It really struck a chord with her because she could actually relate to the characters in the movie. It was great fun to watch and was warm and engaging all the way through. We get to see another view of life in Israel. It was not all violence and Arab-hating but just like any other country with it's own problems.

It focuses on a few caregivers who do really serve their employers really well. One of them gets so close to 'her' employers that 'she' says that 'she' is not a mere employer but more of a loyal daughter taking care of him. At night however, these caregivers don wigs and costumes and form a troupe of performers who call themselves the Paper Dolls. Their bad lip-synching reminds one of Ashley Simpson but the spirit and joy they attain from performing reminds one of Lisa Simpson. Their body shape unfortunately and dance mistakes are very like Homer Simpson crossdressed as Jessica and through it all, they had the spunk and rebeliousness of our dear Bart Simpson.

It was a great study of prejudices and how it is difficult to get rid of them especially in a place where tradition and decorum is so engrained like Israel. It speaks about judging people for what they look like on the outside and not for who they are on the inside. The thing I enjoyed most about the film was probably the film stock which was a documentary film stock which gives the whole thing a certain graininess that spoke so much about the harshness of life for these immigrants, strangers in a strange land.

After that movie, Yael and myself snuck into another movie called "Eve and the Fire-horse" and that was pretty sweet too. It was a movie about two young second generation Chinese girls in Canada. I think it was shot in Vancouver. It was such a sweet movie and the two young girls was fantastic actresses. It was a captivating movie about how children react to religion and how they understand such complex matters.

The scene of the movie is a shot where we see Jesus dance a waltz with Buddha. The director said after the movie that she was afraid that it would anger a lot of people but she said that all the comments about that scene bar one were positive. My gripe with that scene was the fact that Jesus had a belly. He was the fattest Jesus ever. Maybe it was intentional as maybe that's what the little girl might have thought since the family had placed the crucifix together with statues of Buddha and all the offerings. The little girls asks if Jesus and Buddha are friends and very wisely says that they should be since they say the same things pretty much. Reminded me of a little fact I heard once before that there was a period of time that Buddha was actually a Catholic Saint. Cool huh?

Anyway, the movie was full of wit and had many moments which left many members of the audience laughing out their popcorn. There were also many parts of the movie that just tugged at your heartstrings so had that you thought the cord might break. It made me think of home and how we manage a touch on syncretism in our beliefs because of our cultural understandings. It would probably not do very well in the US though it really took off in San Francisco (what a shocker! hahaha) but it might do well in Singapore although I doubt it will ever get to our shores. It was just really low budget so I really do hope it does well.

As for the last movie I want to talk about I think I shall save it for the next post because this one might just be a little too long. By the way, the last movie is also probably the best movie I've seen all year. It was also the first Hindi movie I've ever watched in a cinema. Probably one of the first Hindi movies I've seen all the way through too. I'll share more with you soon.