Hell on Frisco Bay (2005-2008 archive)

It's a busy week for me. There are only a few days until the March 21 Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Blog-a-Thon I'm hosting here, and tonight the Hong Sang-soo film in question screens at 9:30 PM at the AMC 1000 Van Ness here in Frisco. The 25th SF International Asian American Film Festival is now underway, and between working, writing, other commitments, and conflicts built into the festival program, there's no way I can possibly see all the films I want to there. That's why I decided to break down and view a few on screener DVDs graciously provided by the festival. I watched three festival films on screeners last year and though I didn't try to hide it I wasn't exactly upfront about it either, which I regret. Since then I've only grown more frustrated by writing which seems to pretend that the difference between going to a cinema and watching a DVD at home is not worth mentioning, and more thankful for the exceptions (like this). For me the difference can be enormous, at least with a large portion of the films I most want to see. I consider a screener an option of last resort, used only when I'm all but certain I won't have another reasonable chance to see a film I desperately want to.

It certainly wasn't the way to see Lee Jun-ik's King and the Clown, by any definition a pageant too grand for my living room. It follows a twosome of ribald namsadang performers from the streets of Seoul to the court of King Yonsan, who has a surprising reaction to their mockery of his regime. The film's political and sexual themes intrigued me, but I never really connected on a plot-character level on this first viewing.

I'm terribly frustrated that prior commitments will keep me from the Castro Theatre this Sunday afternoon, where I'll miss out not only on the second chance King and the Clown deserves, but also Pavement Butterfly. I rarely watch silent films at home now that I've been spoiled by the many opportunities to see them in Frisco theatres with live musical accompaniment, like the one Robert Israel will be providing for this 1929 Anna May Wong vehicle from her career peak in Europe. Having never heard of the film before I popped the disc in my player with low expectations but was completely enthralled. Not so much by the story which, as you might guess from the film's title (Street Angel with an Asian twist), is a fairly standard sub-Borzage melodrama: a fan dancer afflicted by a lecherous would-be blackmailer finds a refuge in an artist's loft but it proves to be a temporary one when the truth about her past isn't revealed. And the video transfer I watched was of a rather poor quality. But what I could see of Richard Eichberg's direction, his moody depiction of Paris decadence and dingy backalleys, and most especially Wong's performance as the dancer, were plenty to make me forget the usual home-viewing limitations and distractions, even without any music or other soundtrack at all.

Unlike the 2004 SFIAAFF presentation Piccadilly in which she's second-billed but steals the show, Anna May Wong is the central character in Pavement Butterfly. After seeing it there can be no trace of doubt that she had the star quality to carry a film, if only the pan-European film market hadn't fragmented at the coming of talking pictures, or if only Hollywood had been more enlightened. It's worth mentioning that Wong's Chinese ancestry, while noted, is not particularly important to her role in the film, at least not at a superficial level of analysis (though those who want to follow the film's subtextual perspective on miscegenation will find it fruitful to so do). And though her beauty, her Asian-American identity, her star persona (to the degree it was allowed to blossom) and her acting ability all get tangled up with each other in the entity we call her "performance", I really think it takes a kind of genius to play a scene like the one midway through the picture where she's forced at knifepoint to lie to the man she's fallen in love with, and make it not only credible but heartbreaking. I'd love to see the other four collaborations between Wong and Eichberg someday.

Like Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry, So Yong Kim's In Between Days is an intimate portrait of young love that shares its title with a classic Cure song. It's an assured debut with an astonishing lead performance (first-timer Ji-Seon Kim as Aimie, a Toronto immigrant struggling to navigate the messy, conflicted emotions of her intensifying crush on a friend) and a sense of space's impact on character. But otherwise they're completely different films- honest!

Grace Lee's American Zombie (pictured at the top of this post) is another truly International Asian American production (financed in South Korea, made in Los Angeles) and, like In Between Days it was handsomely shot on DV. Though the festival publicity department has not asked me to adhere to a word count on this particular film, I'm having trouble thinking of anything useful to say about it that doesn't, in some small way at least, betray the unexpected delights the film has in store. I'll just say that, while it may not be a masterpiece, this look into a marginalized subculture is a fascinating and structurally unique curio. It certainly must be the first in-depth exploration of documentary filmmaking ethics that also at various points feels like a comedy, an exploitation film, and a post 9/11 political commentary. Come back after you've seen it (it plays tonight at the Pacific Film Archive and tomorrow at the AMC 1000 Van Ness, both times with filmmakers expected to appear in person) and we can discuss it in more detail in the comments section below.

In the meantime, more SFIAAFF coverage has been collected by David Hudson at Greencine Daily.