Staggeringly beautiful/insufferably slow. A period piece from Hong Kong director Yonfan, his first animated work, made in a beguiling style all his own mixing various hand-drawn techniques (cut-outs for multi-plane dimension effects, matting real smoke & fire onto flat animated images, a rangy palette of ultra-saturated color to moody b&w), particularly ravishing in overhead shots with shifting perspectives (every staircase an adventure) and in blissful cinematic recreations of three Simone Signoret films: ROOM AT THE TOP/’59; AMOURS CÉLÈBRES/’61; SHIP OF FOOLS/’65; the first & last rendered as if charcoal sketches out of the Vincent Van Gogh playbook. All going on in 1967 Hong Kong, as students take to the streets in Mao jackets to support Communist China. Yet a far more livable city than today. And where a matched pair of university students play ‘air’ tennis before showering off their physical perfection under watchful eyes. (They seem used to it.) One of the two, Ziming, our main protagonist, off to tutor English to maturing high schooler Meiling, but finding more of a connection to youthful mother Mrs. Yu, later his movie date. The look, story & changing times all fascinating, plus hosts of amusing side characters. But be forewarned, the action moves as if underwater, sometimes to grand romantic effect (think Kar-Wai Wong at half-speed), sometimes not. And while you may wish you were more fully pulled into Yonfan’s orbit, even at remove, it’s a singular achievement.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Signoret’s ROOM AT THE TOP and SHIP OF FOOLS hardly live up to the aura Yonfan confers on them, but SHIP does boast an unusual look that helps counter Stanley Kramer’s typically coarse megging. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/ship-of-fools-1965.html
OR: *Release your understandable impatience with Bob & Ray in their famous Slow Talkers of America bit from this old TONIGHT SHOW clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2g_TCYuIAM
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