OFFICE aka DESIGN FOR LIVING - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Eleven

Here at the blog previously known as MOVIE REVIEWS FOR GREEDY CAPITALIST BASTARDS we greet every new film about our profession with bated breath and are usually disappointed.  MARGIN CALL is the only film that has truly depicted the reality of finance on the eve of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.  Sadly, Johnnie To's new 3D musical about Hong Kong high finance joins the long list of movies which, like that hack mess WALL STREET 2, have pretensions above their station.

This film has been adapted by legendary Hong Kong actress and writer Sylvia Chang from her stage play Design For Living.  But in bringing it to the screen this very much becomes a Johnnie To production. Which isn't to say it's full of bullets and action but that it is played on a scale and with a precision that is really impressive. To begin with, he's constructed a massive set that depicts the head quarters of the trading company at the heart of the film, but also the local bar where the office workers hang out, the apartments of the key players, and even the metro car that they come to work in.  There are no walls but lots of impressive neon structures and staircases complete with a giant clock in the centre.  Everyone can see everything and gossips about everyone, and yet there are secrets deep and dark.

Sadly, Johnnie To's stylish design and fluid camera can't detract from the  twin problems at the heart of this film. First of all, the musical numbers suck. The music is some kind of light rock-n-roll pastiche that you might hear in a hotel elevator and the singing not much better. There are no great melodies and no memorable lyrics, although I'm willing to concede that this might be down to an indifferent translator.  The lyrics merely describe the rather obvious and superficial emotions and plot rather than hinting at something more complex and profound.  And I have to say that this is true of the plot in general.

The basic idea is that Mr Ho (Chow Yun-Fat) owns a trading company that's run by CEO Madame Chang (Sylvia Chang).  She's sleeping with him but also flirting with CFO David, who's cooking the books with some stock market bets using the company balance sheet. Like all gamblers, he thinks he'll be able to sell out in time, but then the Global Financial Crisis happens and he can only sell at a loss. Meanwhile his deputy Sophie is wondering where the 2007 accounts are.  The second major plot is that Madame Chang has discovered that Mr Ho is going to stiff her out of her ownership rights when the company goes public and therefore its trying to broker a secret deal for a US cosmetics brand, despite its declining sales. And caught up in all this at the bottom rung is naive assistant Lee Xiang and the owner's daughter, masquerading as entry-level graduate, Kat. 

All of this plot machination is played entirely on the surface and with zero subtlety.  Mrs Chang and Mr Ho are big fat evil capitalist bastards, CFO David is a simple-minded stock trader, and every relationship is either a sleazy affair or a naive coup de foudre.  The corporate politics is lifted out of Dynasty or Dallas in the 1980s. There's no real interest in the character motivations. Everyone is caught up in consumer fetishism but why not investigate the insecurity that binds everyone to that? 

The resulting film looks great but sounds awful and quickly lost my interest despite its great pedigree. One to avoid.

OFFICE aka DESIGN FOR LIVING has a running time of 117 minutes.  The movie was released in China, Hong Kong and Singapore in September.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 8 - LET THE BULLETS FLY

LET THE BULLETS FLY is an utterly ridiculous, hilarious, cartoonish movie of the kind that made KUNG FU HUSTLE so superb, but without the latter film's heart. Written and directed by Wen Jiang (THE SUN ALSO RISES), it is set in 1920s provincial China, where the tax revenues of small towns are fought over by provincial governors and brutal mafiosi drug runners. The movie is a kind of action flick come comedy of errors.  Chow Yun-Fat looks like he's having a ball in the roll of Master Huang - the local drug lord defending his territory against the new governor, played by Wen Jiang.  That governor is an imposter, really a gangster, but the real meat of the story is whether either that gangster or indeed Master Huang is really the legendary and feared gangster Pocky Zhang. And why on earth is the governor, who came to the town to milk it of its cash, turning Robin Hood?!  

The movie unfolds in a series of beautifully choreographed tricks and fight scenes as each guy tries to get the better of the other, culminating in the final show-down and revelation. There are lots of laughs, plenty of ridiculousness and a superb supporting performance by Carina Lau as the governor's wife - willing to do anything to support her own position. The only fault is that it's probably too long at over two hours - there's only so much zaniness one can take in one sitting.

LET THE BULLETS FLY opened in China in 2010, in Hong Kong and Singapore earlier this year, and played London 2011.

You can tell they started filming PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END without a finished script

Unlike director Gore Verbinski, I am going to keep my review of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END short, structured and to the point.

Positive aspects:
1. Handsome production values;
2. Plentiful funny sight gags;
3. Occasional witty dialogue;
4. Admirably restrained handling of the Keith Richards cameo;
5. Acc. to Nik, an ending that "twisted and turned so much, and was so laughably stupid", it was rather fun.

Negative aspects:
1. A labyrinthine plot that is near impossible to follow and therefore to care about;
2. A plot so full of random shit and plot lines that the film-makers don't have time to take each strand to fruition;
3. Johnny Depp slipping into self-parody;
4. All other actors wooden or on auto-pilot;
5. Chow Yun-Fat's incomprehensible English;
6. Misplaced political allegory in opening scenes and in Keira Knightley's absurd "I have a dream" speech near the end;
7. A bloated, indulgent run-time;
8. Markedly less light-hearted and funny than the original movie;
9. Absurdity of Jerry Bruckheimer peddling a movie wherein the audience has to sympathise with renegade freedom-loving pirates (who are bound by an iron-clad Pirate Code, by the way) as opposed to the capitalistic, "big business" Hollywood studio, I mean, East India Company!

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END is on global release.

APPENDIX: An email exchange.

Bina007: You're remarkably positive about your experience given how shite it was.

Nikolai: Well, you see, somehow the film retained a charm. Probably because it was so unpolished. It was like being at a dress rehearsal. You don't expect the play to be good, and you feel for the actors personally when they get their lines wrong and shit. You think, awww, Johnny Depp, you're making it up as you go along aren't you? And then at the end of the film, and I mean the last 5 - 10 minutes, they'd almost recaptured what made the first one great! And it's like - fuck - why couldn't the last 2.4 hours have been like this? And what happened in dead man's chest? Why did they have to embellish a simple formula that worked with all this dumb-assed CGI and stupid baddies and unbelievably intricate plots sub-plots double-plots and wank. So yeah, I had some sympathy for the film - in the same way as I have sympathy for a lame beggar trying to walk down the street to get to a better begging station. Capiche?

THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER/MAN CHENG JIN DAI HUNAG JIN JIA - murder, incest, coups, cleavage

After RAISE THE RED LANTERN, HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, audiences expect certain things from a Zhang Yimou film. Namely, plots that are concerned with sexual oppression, rich production design, saturated colours, impressive camera-work and wire-fu action sequences. How does THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER stand up against this list?

First, not enough can be said about the rich colours, textures and detail of the production design. The sets and costumes all emphasise the decadent luxury and claustrophia of the 9th century Chinese court. Gong Li's Empress is weighed down by golden jewelry, elaborate head-dresses and richly embroidered robes. The thematic material also fits well with the rest of Zhang Yimou's oeuvre. The oppression of women is clear, from the restrictive bodices and outer garments to the Empress' inability to refuse taking her medicine. However, the oppression is spread to every member of society who serves the Emperor (Chow Yun Fat). In an absolute monarchy, we can see the comodification and objectification of the individual at every level of society. The impressive opening sequence of the film sees the female servants getting dressed as identikit automata, but even the royal Princes have to bow to their father when addressing him. The camera-work and sound-design emphasise the claustrophobia of court life. In scene after scene we see the Empress walking through maze-like hallucinogenic-coloured corridors.

Second, the action is of the highly stylised wire-fu variety than Zhang Yumou made famous. But there is less of it in this film than in Hero, for instance. Aside from a small sword sequence in the opening half hour, and a quick sequence with some flying assassins around half way through, martial arts fans have to wait for an enthralling battle sequence near the end of the film for a true martial arts fix. It was all too little for Doctor007 - a true wire-fu fanatic.

But I did not miss the lack of back-to-back action sequences in THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. I liked the emphasis on, and juxtaposition between, the melodramatic Spanish revenge-style plot and the stylised, subtle, classical Chinese acting. In the opulent Tang court, a mighty Emperor sits. He has three sons. The first was born of the Emperor's beloved first-wife, now deceased. He is a callow young man who is having an incestuous affair with his stepmother, the Empress consort, and an abortive affair with the Imperial Doctor's daughter. The second son and third sons were born of the Empress-Consort. The elder of the two has just returned from exile, and will be forced to make a bid for the throne to protect his mother. The third and youngest son is largely ignored. The irony is that while the second son is forced to stage a coup, his father actually intends to make him the Crown Prince. And when all the fighting is done, the movie slips quietly away with an ambiguous ending. This has attracted some criticism, but I rather liked it. It's as if to say, look at this plotting - all this murder and revenge - what was it worth? What did it change? Fantastic stuff.

THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER went on release in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the US in 2006. It opened in Thailand, the Philippines, Greece, France, Poland, Mexico, Turkey, the Netherlands, Colombia and Argentina earlier this year. It is currently on release in Belgium and the UK and opens in Australia, Germany and Spain at the end of April. It opens in Italy on May 25th, in Brazil on June 15th, in Finland on September 7th and in Japan on October 13th 2007. It is also available on Region 1 DVD.