The pop-star leads from Hou’s first feature, Cute Girl, are reunited in the director’s follow-up, a brisk work of bubble-gum romance that begins to experiment with the rules of the genre. This time, Taiwanese singing sensation Feng Fei-fei plays Hsing-hui, a trendy photographer visiting a seaside village in Penghu with her successful boss/fiancé. When she happens upon a flute-playing medic blinded in an ambulance crash (Kenny Bee), sparks fly, songs are sung, and she’s left with the tough decision of who to say “I do” to. Despite the eye-rolling premise, Hou infuses the film with enough formal ingenuity (long takes, telephoto lenses, on-location shooting) that a case can be made for its auteurial significance.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
An ageing American cartoonists, Joey Wellman, makes a visit to Paris to attend an exhibition of his work. He plans to meet up with his daughter, Elsie, who is studying at the Sorbonne, but she has little respect for her father and fails to keep the rendez-vous. By chance, Wellman meets and is befriended by a celebrated academic, Christian Gauthier, an admirer of his work and, ironically, the man whom Welmman’s daughter has desperately been trying to meet for the past few months. Although he is feeling increasingly uneasy with French culture, Wellman reluctantly agrees to accept an invitation to spend the weekend with Gauthier and his entourage…
During the First World War, a Canadian soldier, devastated by the recent death of his fiancee, arrives at the frozen Russian city of Archangel. While billeted with a local family, he is astonished to discover a woman that may or may not be the lover he thought lost. Unfortunately, she is suffering from amnesia and remembers nothing of their former passion. A rival suitor, claiming to be her husband and who may also be suffering from amnesia, is equally unsuccessful at winning her affection. The melancholy story plays itself out against the madness of the Great War.
In 1650, a group of Brazilian slaves revolt and escape from their sugar plantation to the depths of the jungle, where they join other runaways. Under the leadership of Ganga Bumba, the men are able to carve out a place to live, repelling attempts by their Portuguese masters to recapture them. The community is further strengthened by the return of Zumbi, kidnapped from them as a child, who comes back to command their military.
The film takes place decades after the Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom for the control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It tells of Fabián Stratas, a magician and stand-up comedian from Buenos Aires, who saves his money from weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs, and uses a hidden camera to document a week-long trip to the Falkland Islands, which he calls “Fuckland”. He plans to impregnate an islander, reasoning that if only 500 Argentines did the same each year, the islands would soon be overrun with half-Argentines, and he would be the head of a “sexual invasion.”
Satyajit Ray’s short film Two shows an encounter between a child of a rich family and a street child, through the rich kid’s window. The film is made without any dialogue and displays attempts of One-upmanship between kids in their successive display of their toys. The film portrays the childlike rivalry with the help of world of noise and that of music.
In this exciting action film, a young Indy driver endeavors to emulate his famous father, and restore his dad’s good reputation after he was killed in a racing in an accident caused by ruthless racketeers who made it look as if the veteran driver was drunk. The young son is assisted by trucker and racing aficionado Blake who helps him defeat the crooks that are trying to kill him too.
Flamboyant Zani grew up and works in the zoo. He loves animals so much that he steals animal furs from the women who wear them. Zani coaxes young beautiful Eve, an orphan, to escape her caretakers while on a group visit to the zoo. Dr. Grunbaum, the zoo director, is forced to organize a search party to capture both Zani and Eve. Zani proves too elusive and harbors Eve in a bear cave. However, when evil zookeeper Heinie discovers them, he draws the authorities’ attention to their hideout…