Day: November 13, 2014

By Joe Bendel. Cheng Tung was once a fisherman in Aberdeen Harbor, but he now works as a Taoist priest, specializing in the “Breaking Hell” ceremony. Unfortunately, the patriarch cannot break the Hell of his own family. Resentments will be nursed and neuroses will run wild in Pang Ho-cheung’s Aberdeen, which screens during the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series.

All the Chengs have their own problems, particularly little Chloe. She is dealing with bullies at school and her ailing chameleon, Greenie. Her parents are outwardly supportive and engaged, but her father Cheng Wai-tao has come to privately doubt whether he truly is her father. She just doesn’t seem cute enough to be the daughter of the super-slick motivational speaker and his actress-model wife, Cici. At least, she was an actress-model. Gigs have become scarce and getting scarcer, as she proceeds to get steadily older.

Meanwhile, Chloe’s uncle Yau Kin-cheung is having a reckless affair with his much younger but increasingly codependent nurse, while his oblivious wife (Wai-tao’s older sister) struggles with her unresolvable mother issues. Unfortunately, Cheng Tung is not allowed to exercise much authority. Offended by his relationship with a bar hostess, his son has almost completely frozen the old man out.

For HK cinema fans who primarily know Pang for his naughty screwball comedy Vulgaria and the gory satire Dream Home, the sensitive family drama of Aberdeen will be quite a revelation. While there are distinctive fantastical interludes, particularly the Kaiju Greenie rampaging through the scale model streets of Hong Kong, it is still thoroughly grounded and often quite subtle. On paper, the beached whale that becomes a focal point for the Chengs and the unexploded WWII ordinance discovered near Yau’s flat sound like face-palmingly heavy handed symbolism, yet Pang never overplays them.

Regardless what her father says, young Lee Man-kwai’s Chloe is all kinds of cute and she anchors the film very effectively. However, it is Gigi Leung who really lands the knock-out punch as Cici. There have been a number of films about actresses struggling to maintain their careers as time flies, one of the most notable being Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria. Yet, as great as Juliette Binoche is in that film, the audience never comes to know and understand her character as we do Leung’s Cici. She has a few key scenes that will just cut your legs out from under you. She also looks great, as does Dada Chan who appears in an extended cameo playing a character much like her pre-Vulgaria persona, probably as a thank you to Pang for her award-winning breakout role.

It is rather remarkable how many interconnected relationships Pang and his all-star cast are able to fully flesh out. Surprisingly potent but never overbearing, Pang’s Aberdeen captures the messiness of life with honesty and affection. Highly recommended, it screens this Sunday (11/16) as part of the SFFS’s Hong Kong Cinema series.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on November 13th, 2014 at 1:51pm.

By Joe Bendel. Ashok Sharma once had grand ambitions of winning a Nobel Prize. Father of the Year, not so much. He came up empty on both counts. Sharma will try to reconnect with his grown architect son, but another face from his past will complicate matters in Mahesh Pailoor’s Brahmin Bulls, which opens this Friday in New York.

Sharma lives in Boston, but he doesn’t seem like such a bad guy. Nevertheless, Sid Sharma considers himself more of the heir to Richard Neutra than his father’s son. Unfortunately, that is not what clients are looking for, thereby causing him stress in his firm. (Frankly, he probably ought to feel a little heat, since it looks like he plays tennis all day and gets smashed in hipster bars every night). Dr. Sharma will use an academic conference as a pretext for visiting his more-or-less estranged son, but he might have an additional ulterior motive. It turns out his former mistress, Helen West, will be one of the conference speakers.

As viewers might expect, the reunion starts out massively awkward, but steadily thaws before getting predictably uncomfortable again. However, Pailoor skips the clichéd old world vs. new world clash of cultures. Frankly, the senior Sharma is just as westernized and modernized as his soon-to-be divorced son, if not more so. In fact, one of the most intriguing aspect of this film is the treatment of his arranged marriage (to Sid’s late mother, whom he cheated on). Obviously, it was a difficult marriage and he justly blames himself for the worst of it, but it is not like it was his idea in the first place. Indeed, it is rather complicated.

There is an awful lot of standard issue father-son melodrama in Brahmin (tennis, the game that pulled them apart might just bring them back together). Still, distinguished screen actor Roshan Seth (Nehru in Gandhi and villain Chattar Lal in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) is refreshingly dignified and understated as Dr. Sharma. He and Sendhil Ramamurthy play off each other rather well, as father and son. For comic relief, Michael Lerner is a lot of fun hamming it up as his formerly hard-partying academic colleague, while Mary Steenburgen also hits the right note of graceful resignation as West. On the other hand, Sid’s office and social network seems to be populated with an awful lot of boring characters.

Be that as it may, you have to give credit to a film that loudly proclaims it love for Neutra’s houses. Even if Brahmin follows a formulaic narrative, it is far less manipulative and sentimental than its themes would suggest. There is nothing particularly special about its technical package, but at least the admirably restrained Pailoor keeps it moving along, so it goes down relatively smoothly overall. No cause for fireworks, but those looking for emerging talent might want to check it out, because Pailoor could well be building towards bigger and better things with subsequent films. It opens tomorrow (11/14) in New York at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on November 13th, 2014 at 1:49pm.