THOMAS PODVIN’S FREELANCE WORK
Freelance writer - translator - Editor

China’s unique landscapes have made it an irresistible draw for foreign co-productions such as Jade Warriors, Shanghai Kiss and Painted Veil; yet when it comes to Chinese directors, very few have been brave enough – or perhaps foolish enough – to produce films abroad. True, the cost is prohibitive, but this hasn’t deterred Guangdong-born Taiwan-based director Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai).

Hou’s most recent film, Flight of the Red Balloon (Le Vol du Ballon Rouge), shot in French with a French cast, was produced by France-based Margo Films and the Musée D’Orsay. The film celebrates the 20th anniversary of the latter, a temple of impressionist and Art Nouveau. The story explores the life of Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), a self-absorbed single mother overwhelmed by the complications of modern existence, and her seven-year-old son, Simon (Simon Iteanu), who is followed around Paris by a mysterious red balloon.

Red Balloon isn’t the first project where Hou has employed the concept of ‘delocalized’ Chinese productions. Indeed, after filming Café Lumière (2003) in Tokyo, he realized he could export his filmmaking style to pretty much anywhere. “During the Café Lumière shoot,” explains Hou, “I gave the [Japanese] actors certain freedoms to do things their own way, and the results were quite pleasing. And so I approached [Red Balloon] the same way.”

Hou usually starts a project by scouting locations to discover characters and eventually writes a script which typically mixes reality with fiction. In Red Balloon, the 60-year-old director blends elements from Albert Lamorisse’s short film Le Ballon Rouge (1956), which offers a French vision of 1950s Paris, and Adam Gopnik’s book Paris to the Moon (2001), a contemporary American take on the French way of life.

Somewhat surprisingly, the result is fresh and free of nostalgia. Hou offers an international eye on Paris; the film is shot in colorful and authentic locations, including the producer’s apartment. “The first day of principal photography,” says producer François Margolin, “Hou came and started to do the washing up in my kitchen. It was his way of getting into the mood and the locale.”

And it worked. Even French critics showered the film with praise when it premiered in the Cannes sideline competition, Un Certain Regard.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
July 2007 issue

This month, Chinese filmmakers and moviegoers celebrated the tenth anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to the motherland. Arguably, very few works on the big screen have come to represent this decade as aptly as Andrew Lau’s and Alan Mak’s trilogy Infernal Affairs (IA), starring Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Kelly Chen. Immensely successful and influential, the film relates the uncertainties of the Hong Kong people (citizens and filmmakers alike) prior to and after the 1997 handover.

“The IA trilogy speaks of the times,” writes Gina Marchetti in her insightful and accessible book, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs – The Trilogy. An Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong, Marchetti has written several volumes on Chinese cinema. In her new book, published this year and edited by the Hong Kong University Press, she explores, among other things, the significance of IA in the last decade. It’s hard to compare the history of the new Special Administrative Region and its cinema with anything that came before. In the period following the handover, the people of Hong Kong have endured much hardship (the SARS outbreak; the Asian financial crisis, the death of superstar Leslie Cheung; rising unemployment and the collapse of the local film industry). Hence, this decade might be termed the era of existential doubts.

“Not all films or film series lend themselves to book-length study,” says Marchetti, who has peeled away IA’s multiple layers to reveal its underlying themes. The deceptively simple plot is much more than a cat and mouse tale about two moles, one a triad member working in the Hong Kong police department and the other a cop passing as a mobster. The film also concerns Hong Kong history, Chinese religion and moral philosophy, global capitalism, the dynamics of the Hong Kong film industry and much more besides.

If the trilogy speaks of the times, its depth also speaks to the audience. After years of avoiding the cinema – in part because of rampant piracy, but also due to the rise of home video and cable TV – the release of IA saw locals once again queuing for tickets. Indeed, box office receipts broke new records (HKD 54 million, HKD 25 million and HKD 30 million, respectively for each of the three films).

In short, IA was soon regarded as a significant cinematic achievement, one that few industry observers had predicted. And that success came at time (2002) when confidence in the industry was very low indeed. Explains Marchetti: “[Infernal Affairs] helped to show that Hong Kong could still produce a film that could make a profit.” Even Hollywood took notice. Last year, the first entry in the series was re-made (and re-set in south Boston) by Martin Scorsese; the resulting film, The Departed, featured a US superstar-studded cast and won multiple Academy Awards. Scorsese’s version grasped the film's universal appeal: the struggle with identity in a complex urban environment. “The experience of Hong Kong as a place [as portrayed in IA] – constantly changing, global, at the cutting edge of economic and social trends – speaks to viewers who live in similarly cosmopolitan, highly competitive, consumer-saturated environments,” says Marchetti.

But many critics of the American version argue that Scorsese failed to capture IA’s depth. Comments Charles Leary, a professor of Hong Kong film history at New York University, “The Departed does not have the epic scope of the IA trilogy and the sense of history in the making.”

That said, Marchetti insists that though many viewers prefer the original, “both films need to be taken seriously.” While IA depicted Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland in the decade following the handover, The Departed has a lot to say about the state of America today and its institutions, especially post-9/11. “If Hong Kong suffered a crisis in its identity and the legitimacy of its key institutions after 1997,” says Marchetti, “then the US suffered a similar crisis after Bush’s response to 9-11 with [for instance] the bankruptcy of its political institutions after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Info on Marchetti's book is available at: http://www.hkupress.org

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
July 2007 issue

Published in a different version in that's Beijing
Chief editor: Oliver Robinson
July 2007 issue