dMYD DVD
Starring Faye Wong
Y
What’s ‘Pure Cinema’? Mainlining Frank Capra? Vast sacks of dirty money? Chun-King Express? Let’s settle on that one; the film’s two stories and there’s a scene in the second one, the softly lit daytime tale that counters the jagged light-trails of the preceding section, it’s set in love-lorn Officer 633’s empty flat. But it’s not empty. There’s a girl there who works at a food stall and she’s whirling around the room, depositing goldfish, putting up stickers, flying toy planes. She’s bringing little lumps of joy to the Officer’s life without him knowing, by breaking into his house and doing good things. Seven years before Amelie. That scene’s Pure Cinema, forsaking definition, running laps around criticism and jumping around in your stomach like a sherbet creature on a trampoline. It’s beautiful.
Two stories of light and dark, fractured narratives leaping about with a hand-held camera and scrappy scraps of dialogue; it’s not the easiest film to follow. The stories don’t intermingle like the similarly style-affected Tarantino of the time but serve as differing views of love, wondering and escaping, separate and separately shot, alien and disjointed. The visuals are so striking that they’ll drag your eyes away from the subtitles, the soundtrack at times overbearing and repetitive. But you’ll leave with a strange appreciation of The Mamas and The Papas and a wonderful craving for Pineapple. And that’s Pure Cinema.
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