Prototype Issue
Filmic Pearls of the Pacific Rim
By Robin Menken
(page 1 of 2)The 24th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival was presented by Honda, May 1 - May 8, 2008 at five different theaters around town. Formerly the VC FilmFest, it is Southern Cal' largest and most prestigious film festival of its kind, celebrating Asian Pacific Heritage Month with a slate of more than 160 films and videos from both Asian Pacific American and Asian international directors.
Asian American female directors were featured prominently throughout this years fest, kicking off with Oscar® winning director Jessica Yu’s comedy Ping Pong Playa and closing with the Australian director Tony Ayres’ moving drama The Home Song Storiesstarring Joan Chen in a multi-award winning performance.
Ping Pong Playa is a charming, feel-good family comedy, a surprising direction for Yu, director of the award winning doc on outsider artist Henry Darger, In the Realms of the Unreal.
Based on Jimmy Tsai’s character Christopher “C-dub” Wang, who appears in a series of cult web commercials flogging Tsai’s Venom sportswear, Tsai and Lu’s breezy screenplay builds a back story for black talkin’ MBA wannabee C-dub. Genetically challenged, “C-dub” gripes about a lack of Chinese athletic role models, dismissing Yao Ming as a statistical anomaly. Like a Saturday Nite Live sketch turned film, C-dub’s dialogue is based on performance honed jokes. Tsai inhabits his character, his attitudinal philosophical remarks ring true, reminiscent of cynical teens slackers everywhere trying to “keep it real.” His relaxed lived-in perf anchors the film. Waking up to play his morning video-game, he turns the TV on with his toes. He has two great foils: JP Money (Khary Payton) and Felix (who he nicknames “F-Bomb”)his student, new best friend and conscience.
Fired from his mall job, slacker C-dub wastes his days dunking baskets over grammer school kids on the school yard.
His doctor brother, Michael (Roger Fan), reigning Table Tennis Master of the Golden Cock tournament, attracts business to his dad’s (Jim Lau) sporting goods store and his mom’s ( Elizabeth Sung) ping pong class. When a nutty car accident puts mom and Michael out of commission, C’dub is called on to save the family’s franchise. He takes over mom’s class at the Chinese Community Center and trains for the tournament.
At first, ping-pong refugee C-dub phones it in, babysitting his misfit pre-teen herd till nerdy 10-year old Felix (Andrew Vo) starts playing him for lunch money. Soon, like a softer, gentler Jack Black in Rock Academy, C-Dub’s smartening up his loser students with his own brand of life lessons, lecturing about girls and transforming wimpy boy genius Prabakar (Javin Reid) into a ping-pong player his dad can be proud of.
The film is peppered with inside jokes (like Chinese parents taking credit for the world’s most important inventions). I wish that Yu had resisted the Saturday Nite Live-like stereotypes about fat kids. East Indian overachievers and Gay ping pong contenders. Having said that, the characters were all amusing to watch, and cleverly Yu blocks out C-dub’s more x-rated trash talk with the sound of bouncing basketballs. Peter Paige (Queer as Folk’s) plays Gerald, one of two gay, rabid players trying to steal Mom’s students for their own Ping Pong Academy. Smith Cho is charming as love interest Jennifer. Chops’ hip-hop soundtrack is another plus including the goofy “I Love Cereal.”
The festival celebrated a “new wave” of Philippine film making, featuring six films from Filipino directors and two from Filipino-American directors: Ron Morales “Santa Mesa” and Stuntwoman turned writer-director D. Lee Inosanto’s heartwarming “The Sensei”. Inosanto, daughter of Martial Arts legend Dan Inosanto, and godfathered by Bruce Lee, Inosanto grew up in the world of Martial Arts portrayed in the film. Bullied in school, gay teenager McClain Evans ( Mike O’Laskey) learns to defend himself, secretly mentored by female Sensei Karen O’Neil (D. Lee Inosanto). The only female in a clan of Martial Artists, Karen is denied her black belt by her conservative uncle, the owner of the family Martial Arts studio. Karen and McClain bond, fighting various kinds of prejudices in a small town in Wyoming, near the community of Laramie where hate-crime victim Matthew Shepard was murdered. Director Inosanto gets the most out of her cast and is powerfully compelling in the co-starring role of Karen O’Neil. Eschewing special effects, Ron Balicki’s fight choreography (real hand to hand combat) gives the film flare. Mike O’Laskey is particularly graceful in his martial arts scenes.
Afraid of controversy, Jefferson County School Board (the same board that oversees Columbine High School district) rescinded it’s permission to shoot the film in their district. An AP story picked up worldwide gave the film “buzz” before it was completed.
The Philippine slate includes the latest film from Aureaus Solito (“The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros”). Solito’s autobiographical “Philippine Science” shows the four years Solito spent at the government funded Philippine Science High School. Fast-tracked gifted students were trained to take jobs in the science sector. Set in the period of Martial Law in the 1980’s, students struggle with the college level courses and the inner issues of identity and young love, while the seed of the People’s Revolution against the Marcos dictatorship swirls around them.
In “Foster Child” Brillante Mendoza portrays the minutia of daily life in the barrio Santa Mesa, following Miss Bianca (Eugene Domingo), a social worker from a Foster Care Facility that arranges foster parents for babies put up for adoption. As she winds her way through the crowded makeshift alleys, dispensing care-giving wisdom along the way, we meet teenage mothers, local drunks and the poor, loving foster families that offer a bridge for the children who forget them as soon as they are adopted. Children dart everywhere.
Mendoza’s visual schema says it all. Credits blase over a blue sky cityscape of Manila skyscrapers. The camera pans over an immense slum, pickling out the tin roof of the Maglanqui shanty. We observe the last day mestizo orphan John-John (Kier Alonzo) spends with his foster family, the Maglanqui’s. Dado (Dan Alvaro) prepares to go to work, Thelma (Cherry Pie Picache) tries to tidy up the cramped jerrybuilt shack, filled with proud photos of her former foster kids. Older “brother” Gerald (Alwyn Uytingco) helps. Thelma bathes 3-year old John-John in a pail outdoors. Kids play ball around them. Escaping the bath, naked, he joins the game.
Miss Bianca comes to call. She plans to take Thelma and John-John to the hospital to show Thelma the twin girls who will replace John-John in the family’s affections, before delivering him to his new family.
John-John’s entered in a United Nations pageant as his pre-school. Doting Thelma dresses him in his costume. Middle “brother” Yuri (Jiro Manio) takes Bianca and John John to school. The camera pushes through the claustrophobic barrio alleys, escaping to a city street where Yuri keeps his bike and sidecar. The locations grow increasingly middle class and pleasant. At school, asmatic John -John is awarded “most handsome country”. Next Yuri, Thelma and John-John meet Bianca at the foundation, visit the premature twins, and wind up at the luxurious hotel (guarded by Uzi-wielding military police) to turn John-John over to his adoptive parents. The friendly San Franciso based couple, surrounded by three other adopted Asian kids, seem strangely detached. Intimidated by the marble bathroom (as large as her own home) cringing Thelma douses herself and cries for Bianca to help her. After a long dinner, the husband presses money on Thelma, telling her to reach him through Bianca , if she ever needs anything. Rootless and in shock, Thelma wanders lost through the hotel. Melting down in the street, as the wrenching truth hits her, Yuri drags her home. Cherry Pie Picache’s award -winning performance as Thelma anchors this wrenching ‘courtyard-sink’ drama.
Brillante Mendoza’s verite slum drama “Slingshot” (which won the Berlinale’s Caligari Award) plays as a less manipulated “City Of God”. LIke “Foster Child”, also wrttten by Ralston ‘Joel’ Jover, “Slingshot” is another digital “Real Time” film. Developed in Armando ‘Bing’ Lao’s Advanced Scriptwriting Class at the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI). inspired by Neo-Realism and Dogma, “Real Time” relies on continuous takes and “Power of the Place”. The place is the main character. (in this case Manila’s overwhelming slums). The literal main character functions as a representative of the place or system. Ralston ‘Joel’ Jover (“Kubrador”), a Bing Lao protegé working at ABS-CBN, has emerged as the screenwriter of note in this burgeoning movement. Mendoza’s relentless handheld camera features a gallery of thieves (no code of thieves in this bunch), pickpockets, teen bullies, drug addicts, neglected babies, and crooked politicians who bail out criminals to buy their votes. Violent fights develop with the suddeness of summer storms. Mendoza’s memorable characters make their mark in his often chaotic crowded compositions.
Jim Libiran’s tough rap-inspired slum gang pic “Tribu” (Tribe) is set in the notorious Tondo slum. Libiran, a renowned TV Journalist (Head of Production at Phillipine’s ABC-5 ), brings a strong visual sense to his Hip-Hop tragedy. Libiran embedded himself in the Tondo slum, running acting workshops with the gang members and parents who play themselves. Narrated by 10 year old Ebet (Karl Eigger Balingitog) we watch young kids’ chilling initiation into the hip-hop based Thugz Angels. Tagging member of the Thugz Angels cross the territory of a rival gang the Diablos. The two packs circle each other, threatening knives held at eye level, they seem like fighting cocks in a tense ballet. The fights don’t break out till the last moments of the film, as one gang seeks revenge for a murder and the other gang retaliates. Libiran shows concerned parents, clueless to their kids’ gang involvement. Representing a different generation’s answer to crushing poverty, they’ll outlive their kids. We watch a stunning marital fight, played out in the crowded alley, and a group of screeching women mobbing a meter-reading Utilies man. Brief erotic episodes underscore the nihilistic setting in which these kids try to create a stable world- their tribe. As Ebet says” “Only the tough survive. ... Here, a child can be a badass.”
Rounding out the regional spotlight: Joanna Vasquez Arong’s Beijing-based doc “Neo-Lounge” focuses on the partying Euro expats who lose themselves at a swank nightclub. In John Torres multi-screened meta -film “Years When I was Outside As A Child”, the disillusioned son of famous self-help author Rodolfo Torres creates a fragmentary portrait of his journey to self awareness. Live Accompaniment.
‘Chants Of Lotus” produced by film vet Nia diNata, is an omnibus study of the state of women’s lives in Indonesia. Four stories filmed by four women directors take on aids, teen sex, abortion and sex-trafficking. Each film has a different esthetic. In Upi’s “Chant From a Tourist Town”, sun bleached close-ups follow the sad coming of age of teen girls, preyed on by high school cocksmen. The boys shop for Ho’s on the internet and pressure the girls to have sex, deflowering virgins under the athletic field grandstand. A girl, impregnated during a drunken gang-bang refuses to go through with her abortion. Safina (Kirana Larasati), saving herself for the right man, falls in love with a journalist posing as a “college student” . He uses her, prints the story, but she has the last, sad word. In Nia diNata’s “Chant From a Village”, nightclub janitor Esi discovers her live-in lover has been molesting her pre-teen daughter Mesaroh. Local singing star Cicih puts them up. When a shady “manager” promises Ciceh a career-making job in Jakarta, if she will bring Mesaroh with her, Ciceh abandons her band and sneaks out of town with Mesaroh. Too late to stop Mesaroh’s sale to a middle age Taiwanese, Ciceh escapes the sex-trafficking gang and promises to help grieving Esi report the gang to the police. Nia diNata’s a gifted storyteller, establishing her characters with force and economy. The lurid neon-lit night scenes and kitschy club scenes underscore the tragedy.
Liew Seng Tat’s charmimg ” Flowers In the Pocket”, double-winner at the Pusan International Film Festival, tracks the life of a depressed father (abandoned by his wife) and his self-sufficient latch-key kids. Liew’s wryly observed comedy adds dramatic elements as it moves towards a provisional happy ending.
Workaholic father Ah Sui spends all his time working as his mannekin factory, coming home after the boys are asleep. When the boys leave for school at dawn, they cover his face with their blanket, blocking out the light so he can catch few hours sleep. The two brothers, Mah Li Ohm (Wong Zi Jiang) and Mah Li Ahh (Lim Ming Wei) shop, cook and dress themselves, (once they undress and exchange uniforms at the bus-stop).
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