Farewell My Concubine epitomizes the historical epic: it chronicles the lives of two young Beijing Opera stars — Douzi (Leslie Cheung) and Shitou (Zhang Fengyi) through their highs and lows during the most tumultuous decades in modern Chinese history. We follow them from their scrappy beginnings training under a ruthless troupe master, to their eventual ascension as two highly respected masters of their craft; they also assume new stage names, Chen Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou. Conflict ensues as their life-long friendship and partnership is tried by Xiaolou’s new fiancée, Juxian (Gong Li), just as the political strife from the Sino-Japanese War and Cultural Revolution quickly spell the end of their art form as they know it.

In early October, tickets for a local screening of Farewell My Concubine sold out in a matter of days. In a conversation with Cinema Moderne’s head of programming, Benjamin Pelletier, he said that this is partially due to the admittedly compact nature of their auditorium, but this response also indicates a thriving Montreal audience hungry for more Chinese and Asian film screenings. “The Chinese diaspora are really excited about this,” he said, “I’m really thrilled about that.”

While presenting a few of the film’s screenings, it became apparent to Pelletier that most of the ticket-goers were already very familiar with it, with many having watched the film several times before. It’s clear that for many, Chen’s work has already ascended to “classic” status.

Farewell My Concubine is, incidentally, also a staple in queer Chinese cinema. Dieyi is unabashedly in love and devoted to Xiaolou, which is what drives much of the film’s interpersonal drama. He is played by Leslie Cheung, one of the only openly queer celebrities in 90s Chinese pop culture, who was also one of the most prominent Cantopop and film icons of his generation. For queer viewers in China and in the Chinese diaspora, Farewell My Concubine evokes the treasured experience of seeing themselves represented in a mainstream Chinese movie as a deeply sympathetic, though tragic, hero figure.

 A new uncut 4K restoration of Farewell My Concubine is currently showing in select screenings at Cinema Moderne. 

The post Farewell My Concubine Turns 30 appeared first on The McGill Daily.

A fresh collaboration from graphic novelist superstars Jillian and Mariko Tamaki is certainly cause for celebration. Their previous joint efforts, Skim and This One Summer, have become important and beloved classics in the last few decades of Canadian comics. Though the cousin duo have individually produced some very respectable works (which have won them the Best Writer Eisner, among others) few have aptly matched the unique poignancy and skill found when their strengths unite in a single work.

Their latest project Roaming represents the symbolic final entry in a trilogy of stories collectively exploring the themes of girlhood and coming of age. For working in such a saturated genre, the duo still succeed at breathing true authenticity into their stories. Roaming’s protagonists feel like real people: they’re cringy and gossipy, well-meaning yet selfish and impulsive. They come alive effortlessly the very moment you meet them on the page.

As in This One Summer, the crux of this story concerns the potential rupture of Zee and Dee’s lifelong friendship. Budding feelings between Dee and the new classmate Fiona build towards a profound breaking point. In a breathtaking sequence during the book’s climax, Zoe and Dani are literally transported back in time — mid-conversation — while they gently ruminate over their high school days. For a brief moment, they’re able to relive their old comfortable dynamics through a shared vision of a simpler, brighter past — realizing at once the gravitas of their collective memories and the fragility of their imperfect present. Throughout their five-day trip, tensions crash and convalesce again and again, as our protagonists roam together (or apart) on this voyage they’ve stumbled into. 

Roaming’s vision of New York is smoky and sensorial; readers, just as the characters themselves, are bombarded by a plethora of visual contrasts, by amusing passerby conversations, by greasy pizza and puzzling artwork — by the unique messiness of a bustling city life. Shown through a pleasing color palette of cool peaches and lilacs, the book’s aesthetics are rendered simply but with striking precision and beauty.

For many queer Asian-Americans growing up in the 2000s, the Tamaki cousins’ body of work filled a critical hole in mainstream media. Their stories, almost too real and too brazen at times, were often the only representations we found of ourselves in mainstream comics. Roaming showcases what the Tamakis are best at; quietly heartbreaking stories of Asian-American queerness told with genuineness and care.

Drop whatever dreadful literary fiction nonsense you’re forcing yourself through right now, and visit your local independent bookstore to pick up a copy of Roaming. 

The Tamaki cousins are back and better than ever.

The post  We’ll Always Have New York appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Set in the 1990s, Riceboy Sleeps follows the story of single mother So-Young (Choi Seung-yoon) and her young son Dong-hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang, Ethan Hwang) as they immigrate from their native South Korea to Canada in pursuit of a better life. At face value, Riceboy Sleeps seems to touch on many of the issues that feel all too familiar to those in the diaspora, yet Shim still manages to execute one of the most moving and cathartic meditations on diasporic identities that I have seen in a very long time.

Riceboy Sleeps has the feel and aesthetic of a lived-in memory; So-young and Dong-hyun’s apartment in Vancouver is small, brown, and poorly lit. The confinement of its many walls and narrow hallways are enhanced by a 4:3 aspect ratio. There is something ghost-like about the film’s unique cinematic style; edits are minimal, allowing the camera to linger on scenes in long, generous takes. Alongside the phenomenal acting of the movie’s leads, Riceboy Sleeps’s unique cinematography is key to giving the film its naturalistic, documentary-like feel. Christopher Lew’s impressive camerawork languidly glides about set pieces, like a pair of eyes timidly observing the everyday adventures of small Dong-hyun and his mother. Does this represent the presence of an ancestral spirit – perhaps that of Dong-hyun’s deceased father – watching over its loved ones? Are these the discerning eyes of an adult Dong-hyun, recalling and recreating a past that only now exists within the faded pages of a photo album? 

Most touching and complex of all is the actual mother-son bond between So-Young and Dong-Hyun. I’ve often felt that many Asian diasporic narratives have the tendency to paint immigrant parents in overly reductive roles; they are grade-obsessed, emotionally constipated, conservative, abusive, tyrants – so the stereotypes say. Conveniently, they often serve as the perfect antagonistic force to contrast against the Westernized lead character’s individualism. Shim rejects such cheap characterizations. So-young’s struggle as a single mother working in a factory is directly paralleled with Dong-Hyun’s difficulty fitting in among his peers at school; both face the casual racism and alienation of their respective predominantly white environments. While So-young eventually finds community and support amidst a group of other racialized female co-workers, Dong-Hyun continues to struggle to reconcile his Canadian lifestyle with his Korean roots as he grows into teenagehood. His efforts to assimilate – bleaching his hair blonde, wearing coloured contact lenses – prove futile and hollow. 

Riceboy Sleeps’s breathtaking final sequence begins as So-Young and Dong-Hyun vacation back to South Korea. Andrew Yong Hoon Lee’s original instrumental soundtrack swells with gravitas as the film culminates to its emotional climax; mother and son are finally able to come away with a renewed sense of what “home” means for both of them. Nothing is perfect, but perhaps simply being there together is enough.

The post Mothers and Sons appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Ammonite tells the story of a middle-aged Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), who lives alone with her aging mother in 1840s England. Since excitement over paleontological discoveries has largely fallen out of fashion, Mary and her mother now run a small shop where they sell the numerous artifacts that Mary excavates from her daily excursions amid the cold mud and rocks of the Lyme Regis beaches. A scientist-turned-shopkeeper, her lifelong frustrations have hardened her into a tough, practical woman. 

Cracks start to form in her mask of statuesque detachment when she meets Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), the young wife of Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), an upper class London gentleman. Murchison pays Mary to take Charlotte into her home as a temporary companion, in hopes that the air and open sea will finally cure his wife of what he offhandedly calls her “mild melancholia.” As Mary and Charlotte grow closer, the relationship between these two very different women becomes romantic.

Francis Lee’s queer cinema is distinct in its emotional candor, and its refreshing lack of artifice and sentimentality. In Ammonite, the overwhelming starkness in tone and aesthetics borders on austerity. Though the film contains little dialogue, its long silences are punctuated by rich soundscapes of thrashing winds, birdsong, and the crashing of seawaves. Visually, the film is almost monochromatic; three-quarters into the movie, the viewer feels as though they’ve personally experienced every dismal shade of gray in an Andrew Wyeth painting. 

Despite its visual beauty and sensorial resonance, the film is strangely restrained and frigid. This detachment quickly becomes redundant, especially as there is little warmth to be found between the two main characters. Winslet and Ronan deliver impressive performances as the odd couple at the heart of the movie, but their relationship never develops in any convincing way. I would call this movie a slow-burn romance, except the chemistry between the leads really only registers as tepid at best.

Though the film has been labelled by some as a British version of Céline Sciamma’s queer masterpiece Portrait of a Lady on Fire, it’s rather a coarse and unsubtle rehash of Lee’s own God’s Own Country. Much like Ammonite, Lee’s first film features an emotionally closed-off main character who broods at parties and has abandonment issues. Instead of a young, aimless John Saxby, Ammonite presents a calcified, reclusive Mary Anning. Instead of the back-breaking, isolating drudgery of farming sheep, Ammonite has the back-breaking, isolating drugedy of digging up fossilized dinosaur feces. Above all, this film exposes Lee’s strengths and weaknesses as a director. Not only does he copy-paste most of the archetypes and story beats from his first project, but he also does a poor job of doing so. Lee’s insistence on sticking to his usual formula undercuts Ammonite at almost every turn. 

There’s still lots to enjoy in Ammonite. Thanks to its carefully crafted atmosphere and the actors’ solid performances, the film tentatively succeeds as a middling period romance. Lee’s project also features a stellar score by Dustin O’Halloran and Volker Bertelmann – the fact that it is severely underutilized says nothing of its quality. 

I also admire how Lee chooses to present queer love in a totally unglamorized, unromanticized way. A beautiful comparison can be drawn between the main characters and the artifacts Mary specializes in excavating. Women in the nineteenth century were routinely robbed of all agency or personhood, especially as they entered marriage. Similarly, when fossils are discovered and evaluated, they are given a new name, and put behind glass cases, to be eternally objectified and gawked at in a museum. Mary and Charlotte recognize each other’s buried potential, which has been exploited or outright ignored under the suffocating constraints of their patriarchal society. In seeing and in allowing themselves to be seen for who they truly are, the lovers find some semblance of fulfillment and freedom. 

Overall, Lee makes an earnest and considered effort to revitalize Mary Anning’s legacy, and while the film’s concepts and players are sound, its execution falls short. This only adds to viewers’ disappointment – Ammonite could have been great, but it never lives up to its full potential.

The post ‘Ammonite’ is Francis Lee’s Sophomore Slump appeared first on The McGill Daily.