This seems to be the week of the first-half-second-half-films. Didn't like the first half AT ALL, in fact slightly lost my belief in Wong Kar Wai for a while. The second half, however, gains in speed and performance quality (esp. for Norah Jones, who, during the first 15 minutes, I frankly just wanted to grab and put back to where she's good at - behind a piano and a microphone. Later, or as soon as she's not playing with Jude Law - still handsome but definitely aging, not as well as David Strathairn - she improves magically, though). Nothing beats Natalie Portman in '90s, beach-colours outfit playing poker, though. And then, of course, there's Rachel Weisz. All good, but playing a character she's definitely too beautiful for and also, what's her magic hangover cure? Doesn't look a wee bit less stunning the next morning, which even for her I find hard to believe. Why you should go and see the film comes now: The photography by Darius Khondji, replacing Christopher Doyle (Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love) though I wouldn't have noticed. Beautifully shot and edited, with stylised collage-fades. As a whole the story reminds me in many elements of 'Happy Together', with the its main characters looking for love and something else, what it is, we don't know, but it is a pleasure to follow the people searching. Maybe what adds to its oddness is that this is the first English film by WKW and we actually understand, word by word, what people are saying, instead of reading the subtitles while simultaneously taking in all the beautiful footage. Maybe the way he writes
has always been slightly odd, but it got lost in translation...
No comments:
Post a Comment