At the World Cinema Showcase 2006, TIM WONG previews three of interest: Millennium Actress, an astonishing ode to Japanese cinema and the dreamscape of film; Sha Po Lang, a rugged, back-to-basics martial arts revival from Hong Kong; and The Child, the second Cannes-winning entry from filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Millennium Actress
A Miyazaki for the thinking adult, Satoshi Kon is an animator of rare and complex pedigree; a director largely uninterested in making films about giant robots, moving castles, or busty saucer-eyed babes. Shackled in distribution limbo, his latest alternative to the fantasia of Studio Ghibli might just be the first great anime of its kind since Grave of the Firefiles, and debuts here about five years too late (better than never). Delve into Kon's back catalogue, and you'll uncover a penchant for mature stories teeming with “real world” human drama: namely, psycho-thriller Perfect Blue, a subversive critique of media, gender and spectacle in the disorienting traditions of Repulsion and Mulholland Drive; and Tokyo Godfathers, a deft urban riff on John Ford's Three Godfathers that gets serious about homelessness and boasts a transsexual in the John Wayne role(!). Millennium Actress, the most impressive of Kon’s feature film trifecta, illuminates a forgotten star actress of a bygone studio era; now in her seventies, she recounts her personal and professional life as if one. As her story is coaxed forth by an earnest documentary crew, Kon allows illusion and reality to merge, forging an inseparable milieu between the multiple films within his film. This is ambitious, at times precarious stuff – overtly to the point that it becomes plainly obvious why Kon employs animation as his pallet of choice (all his films to date would work equally, albeit not as profoundly, as live action) – and yet holds it together through forthright emotion and a considerable thwack of pathos. Beautifully animated, this is also a romantic film; a romance that comes, in part, from the sincere rendering of a (brief) Japanese film history, with nods to Kurosawa, Ozu and even 2001. True to form, Kon makes good on his rationale for working in animation; with Millennium Actress, the potential for the medium has never felt so endless.

Sha Po Lang
What’s become of Hong Kong cinema? Several things, really: Canto-pop, The Twins, Lunar Year comedies, the cinema of Wong Jing. Jackie Chan moved to Hollywood. Jet Li and John Woo followed suit. Tsui Hark stopped directing movies (until just recently). Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui simply passed away. Bazooka-ed by Hollywood aggressors since the late nineties, the industry’s counterpunch to win back audiences has been not to beat ‘em, but join ‘em. The result? Cantonese movies are now glossier, fluffier, stupider, and crappier than ever before. Aside from the periodic Johnnie To film and the alchemy of Stephen Chow, this once-dynamic brand of Eastern commercial cinema now wallows as a footnote to Asia’s reigning industry tearaway, South Korea. New Hong Kong martial arts thriller Sha Po Lang strives to buck this trend, and while far be it from me to suggest that one movie can save a whole lot of face, it’s a belated step in the right direction. Tossing the non-popstar trio of Simon Yam, Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung (in renaissance mode as ferocious triad kingpin Po) into a familiar gangland scenario popularised by Infernal Affairs, the gist here is firmly on out-and-out thuggery. Easy on the politics of underworld etiquette, director Wilson Yip is at pains to spell out a-c-t-i-o-n in no uncertain terms: violence is frequent, the martial arts proficient, and the tempo thick and fast. This is no Ong-Bak – insurers and agents simply don’t allow for the irresponsibility of Jackie Chan anymore – but is a serious throwback to the heydays of Hong Kong recklessness. A long time coming, SPL also boasts the first on-screen melee between martial arts legends Yen and Hung. Their inevitable fight to the death is raw, imperfect, and unlike anything choreographed before – meaning this isn’t just about reviving Hong Kong action cinema, but making it progressive too.

The Child
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne aren’t afraid to burrow their way to the bottom of the socio-economic pile; their fascination with youngsters in peril about as frequent as their preoccupation with the backs of people’s heads. Their latest, The Child, is formatted identically to Rosetta and The Son – scoreless, taut, and perforated by a wandering over-the-shoulder point of view. Such repetitive filmmaking has copped flak from certain depressed corners; blindly, considering these were probably the same critics gunning for Broken Flowers to reign supreme at Cannes. As one writer duly rebutted, why are we so quick to beat up on the Goodfellas-Casino/Rushmore-Tenenbaums revisitations, and yet champion the sameness of Hitchcock, Ford, and Hawks? What's most compelling about the Dardenne's films is that without fail, they draw you into the plight at hand, and don’t let go. Expertly, The Child is pivoted on a single, rash judgement in haste – a petty bottom dwelling thief who chooses to sell his baby son, only to regret the decision soon after. It’s a monumental fuck up, but one that human beings are entirely prone too. And he pays for of it: he’s outcast by his girlfriend, thugs demand his money, and he botches a handbag raid that escalates, into of all things, a chase scene(!). It ends on a note of timely humanism. What the Dardennes address here isn’t too dissimilar from The Ax – Costa-Gavras satirising what the brothers have gone to via realism – and yet there’s forgiveness, redemption, and a much stronger message vis-à-vis capitalism at work: that those on the lower rungs will be exploited, mistreated and often forced into the unthinkable. Appropriately, it won the Palm d’Or. Returns belatedly from the NZ International Film Festivals.