Film about Shanghai highlighted at Berlin film festival
The 60th Berlin Film Festival began yesterday with a focus on Chinese cinema, and particularly, Shanghai - director Wang Quan'an lead the opening ceremony with a special screening of his new film "Apart Together (团圆 Tuan Yuan)"
It is a story about "a reunion of a family that separated years ago," festival director Dieter Kosslick told Xinhua. Because 2010 is the 20th anniversary of Germany's reunification, he said the film is "very symbolic to us, and we really like it."
Says the Hollywood Reporter:
Wang Quan'an's fifth film "Apart Together" is another variation of his recurrent set-up of one woman flirting with two husbands (or boyfriends), torn between obligation and love (or attraction). Small in scope but tightly structured, gracefully acted and directed, it opens up deep historical wounds and generational traumas created by China's civil war, but does not press on them, exploring instead more universal human dilemmas lightened by scrumptious culinary episodes.Generally engaging but moving at an even-keeled, slightly flat pace, it probably cannot repeat the international market buzz of Wang's Golden Bear winner "Tuya's Marriage," but should still get respectable fest-play and niche release.
Here's a sneak peek below. Luckily, while the commentary of this news piece doesn't come with subtitles, the scenes do:
Contemporary and renowned Chinese director, Zhang Yimou, will also make an appearance in the festival with his new film "Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop，" also simply known as "A Simple Noodle Story."
Although Zhang won the first Golden Bear for Chinese filmmakers in 1988 with his directoral debut, "Red Sorghum", his new film has been an utter disaster. "Woman, A Gun and a Noddle Shop," was voted as one of the worst films in China last year. Zhang himself was anointed with the inaugural Golden Broom award for Most Disappointing Director, the Chinese version of Hollywood's Golden Raspberry.
Whether Berlin audiences will agree is yet to be determined.
