Screen Machine

Review: MIFF ‘10: Adrift, Little Sparrows

Adrift

Dir. Bui Thac Chuyen

Many of our readers will be familiar with the recent debate that sprung up this year amongst such eminent film critics and bloggers as Steven Shaviro, Nick James, Harry Tuttle and Screen Machine’s own recent contributor Adrian Martin, over so-called “slow cinema”. More recently, the level of this debate took a sharp dive, with the entry into the fray of MIFF’s own Richard Moore, who snarled: “Going around the world and sitting in all these cinemas, whether it’s in Gothenburg or Rotterdam or wherever, sometimes you begin to wonder – particularly with the new move towards slow, contemplative cinema, of which I’m not a great fan – have you forgotten the audience?”

Adrift, the second feature film from Vietnamese director Bui Thac Chuyen, is precisely the kind of film that gets attacked by the anti-slow cinema warriors. A plot that meanders between characters whose names and whose relationships to one another we don’t learn until long after they’ve been introduced; a camera that drifts with no clear motivation across a room or a cityscape; an investigation of social reality that is not explained with a neat voiceover or concluding set of explanatory titles that tell us what we have learnt – all these elements fall under the banner of so-called slow cinema. And indeed, one can readily see the influence of such ‘masters of slow’ as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, and perhaps even Vietnam’s own Tranh Anh Hung, on Chuyen’s film – and the fact that he doesn’t come with their name recognition, and is clearly not at their level of mastery, is likely to make the attacks on his very interesting film all the more vicious.

Adrift is a film about a marriage between two young virgins, Hai and Duyen, and their inability to achieve emotional or sexual union in a life that is still controlled by external forces both real and psychological (forces of family, of commerce, and of custom). It paints the gritty life of modern Hanoi in exorbitantly beautiful colours, attending closely to the pleasures and pains of the flesh and the physical closeness of the people living in these tightly packed urban communities (though these sections are contrasted with scenes featuring Duyen’s mysterious poet friend Cam, whose spacious, quiet room is full of books and nothing else). It is a film full of beautiful images (including two unforgettably intimate shots filmed from under a bedspread) that may not ultimately achieve the kind of economy, power and precision of the films of some of the ‘slow masters,’ but it should be praised nonetheless, for its patience, its care, its intelligence – and its slowness.

- Conall Cash

Little Sparrows

Dir. Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen

This is a women’s film, although anyone who loves their mother dearly will sob in the aisles as much as the next chick. Susan is the mother of three grown daughters, and is dying of breast cancer. She is impossibly full of love and understanding, and has not much anger at all about the fact that she’s facing death.

Her three daughters, on the other hand, are all messed up. The narrative takes a sort of triptych structure whereby each segment is introduced by one of the daughters, and then explores her own special brand of self-loathing. Susan clearly sees their pain and confusion, and the three parts finish with her connection and healing words to each daughter. I’m crying just thinking about it.

Susan’s character might infuriate some with all her holy martyrdom, but I think she is a beautiful portrayal of one of those rare people who die too young, and do it with real grace.

This film may go under the radar with Aussie audiences, but the film has been picked up by French arthouse film distributor Umedia, who see the dramatic sophistication of Little Sparrows and will hopefully help garner Camille Chen some recognition as a talented and promising writer/director.

- Maggie Scott

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