The principle behind this new Pacific Wave is straightforward. “I respect my audience, so I don’t want to show them things they won’t understand,” says Zhang Yimou, whose latest picture, “House of Flying Daggers,” screened out of competition at Cannes. “And the story must be simple. If it’s too complicated, there is no room for emotional depth and visual esthetics.” Our pick of the season’s best:
‘2046’ Directed by Wong Kar-wai (China) Set in the late 1960s, “2046” picks up darkly where Wong’s highly acclaimed “In the Mood for Love” left off: Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) has left his paramour (Maggie Cheung) and has been laid off from his newspaper job. He lives in a seedy Hong Kong hotel, writing science fiction, drinking and seducing upmarket call girls. As in “In the Mood,” the women are gorgeously done up, the banter is pointed and the emotions are as taut as silk thread.
‘House of Flying Daggers’ Directed by Zhang Yimou (China) Zhang’s lush ninth-century martial-arts thriller follows the paths of two Army captains, Leo (Andy Lau Tak Wah) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), as they use Mei (Zhang Ziyi)–a blind dancer and possible spy–to track down a rebel force called the House of Flying Daggers. Zhang sets loyalty against love to create an arch melodrama with boffo kung fu battles and eye-popping settings. The acrobatic bamboo-forest combat scene even beats the one in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
‘Tropical Malady’ Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) This existential tone poem tells the story of Keng (Banlop Lomnoi), a young Thai soldier who develops a close, sexually charged relationship with Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), a country boy. Soon Keng enters a supernatural world of shamans and talking monkeys where he tries to untangle all that is happening to him. Meditative and with little dialogue, “Tropical Malady” lets the viewer do the same.
‘Old Boy’ Directed by Park Chan-wook (South Korea) In this bloody thriller, an ornery womanizer named Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-shik) is kidnapped and locked in a makeshift prison for an unknown reason, and then sees on the TV news the brutal murder of his wife and daughter. Fifteen years later he is released with a wallet full of cash and a lot of questions and anger. Oh seeks to comprehend his plight as well as inflict revenge on his captors in this moving, entertaining drama.
‘Nobody Knows’ Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda (Japan) A quietly powerful film based on a true story about four half siblings who are abandoned by their crazy mother and cared for by the eldest, 12-year-old Akira (Yuya Yagira). In documentary style, Koreeda captures the children’s love for each other in the face of poverty and misery, until they venture out into the world.
