13. Five Flavours Asian Film Festival: Every Balloon Must Burst
The Tibetan creator is looking at the conflict arising from the meeting of customs, beliefs and conservative culture with Chinese one-child policy.
The Tibetan creator is looking at the conflict arising from the meeting of customs, beliefs and conservative culture with Chinese one-child policy.
Bulbul Can Sing talks about the tragedy of lost youth, taken by the conservative society. Adolescence, although it follows its natural path – the first, innocent love affairs, looks, and meetings – is brutally stopped.
Although SABU follows the well trodden paths – a portrait of an emotional killer is nothing new – he does it at the highest level, combining genres at least as efficiently as Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer) and proving that using and playing with old clichés and narrative patterns do not have to be something bad.
Fruit Chan relishes violence in his film. Although he himself claims that his film is not anti-feminist, it’s hard not to get the impression that it is at least offensive. Heroes do not cause sympathy. This is a problem because they deviate from the norm. One is a cripple, the other a fool, the third a nitwit. It is the same different world we have met in the artist’s earlier films. This time, however, it is a world that causes more contempt than compassion or interest.
Why the beneficiary of the system in which men feel like donuts in fat, should be worried about the fate of his heroine – except that the topic will almost certainly act as a bait? Midi Z, however, managed to convince me to his movie.