Movie Review: “Ricky”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

Francois Ozon is probably best described as a French art house director. He specialises in playing games with genres, and also – as an openly gay director – playing with themes of sexual identity.

He’d made a couple of films that had been well received in France before coming to broader international attention with “Eight Women” a musical murder mystery that starred female icons of the French cinema like Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, and Emmanuelle Béart.

“Eight Women” was made in an artificial looking studio set, with costume and production design reminiscent of 1950s Hollywood melodramas. It was in part a nod to the work of director Douglas Sirk. As a fan of Sirk, I’d hoped I was going to enjoy it, but it was the first time I had an inkling that I wasn’t likely to get as much out of Ozon as do many of his fans.

2003’s “Swimming Pool” was a psychological drama between two women that became a thriller after one of them apparently murdered a local waiter. Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier starred, with Rampling playing a middle-aged writer of murder mysteries. Many critics loved this one. I thought it mostly okay, but hated the supposed “twist” ending.

The following year Ozon directed the movie “5×2”, which told the story of a relationship between a man and a woman in five scenes from crucial moments in their life together and in reverse. It was an exercise in style that seemed to be more about gay relationships than the heterosexual one that was nominally its subject.

In 2005 Ozon completed “Time To Leave”, an extremely frank film about Romain, a 31-year-old gay fashion photographer, who finds out he is terminally ill and has only three months to live. It’s perhaps my favourite Ozon film, mostly because he realizes throughout that people with terminal diseases can still remain deeply flawed, still treat the people around them appallingly. Romain is mostly a self-centered individual who does find some level of transcendence before his death, and not where anyone would expect him to find it.

His latest film “Ricky” is, I suppose, best described as a magical realist fable about a baby who grows wings and learns how to fly. As soon as you hear that you can imagine how cute and whimsical it would be if made in Hollywood. Ozon, however, treats the fantastical subject in a realistic way.

The movie opens in an almost cine-verite style, in a long take, as a harassed single mother Katie (Alexandra Lamy) speaks to a social worker about how the man she was living with has left her and she can’t cope with her seven-year old daughter and her infant child on her own.

Then it moves back in time. Katie lives on a council estate in the Seine-et-Marne region, east of Paris. She works in a factory and is apparently making a go of raising her 7-year-old daughter Lisa (Melusine Mayance). Every day, she drives her daughter to school on her scooter, puts in a shift at the factory, picks up the girl again, and goes home.

Things are set to change when Katie falls for Spanish co-worker, Paco (Sergi Lopez, who we last saw in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”).

Lisa resents the new man coming into their life, and that sense of resentment is increased when Katie realizes she is pregnant.

The baby Ricky (Arthur Peyret), is particularly fractious and difficult at first.

Once Katie returns to work, Paco works night shifts and looks after the child in the day time. After noticing bruises on the baby’s back, near his shoulder blades, Katie accuses Paco of abusing him while she has been working. He is so hurt by this, he decides to leave the relationship.

The bruises worsen and turn into lumps. Then some growths that look like featherless chicken wings begin to protrude. One day the child is missing from his crib and Katie and Lisa eventually see that somehow he has made his way on top of a wardrobe.

It becomes apparent that the child is developing wings. Not the white wings of an angel, but proper birdlike wings. He can actually fly.

On a trip to the supermarket one day. The boy flies up to the ceiling lights. The secret is out. The media descend on Katie and Lisa’s home, and Paco returns to try to build a family again.

The movie, based on an English short story by Rose Tremain, sometimes seems to be heading in a David Lynch or David Croenberg direction, but Ozon really isn’t interested in deep psychological horror. Throughout he focuses much more on the intricacies of the relationships between the characters, sometimes to the exclusion of examining how they cope with the fantastic or even freaky nature of the child.

That’s what’s puzzling about Ozon. He’s invariably capable of finding interesting moments in a film, but at other time it’s easy to feel frustrated by how he handles other elements. There is one scene where the members of the news media just walk away, presumably because he does not want them in the scene any longer, that is just downright clumsy.

Most of the performances are very good though. Alexadnra Lamy is better known for her comedy rules in France but convinces completely as the beleagured single mother. The baby Ricky himself (Arthur Peyret) completely manages to steal some scenes, particularly when left to his own devices. To me, “Ricky” again shows the unevenness that characterises so many of Ozon’s films.

Mostly the screenplay focuses on coming to terms with the compromises of any familial relationship. It’s particularly interesting in how it handles the sense of rejection faced by Lisa when first the father, and then the baby comes along. But it does somehow fizzle towards the end.

Character and situation give way to the drive to be allegorical. It may lose many members of the audience as Ozon moves further away from reality. But it is interesting to see how Ozon sets this in a working class world, and in a grubby moden milieu.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that it’s almost always difficult to translate a sense of literary magical realism into film. And it’s not a problem that Ozon has managed to solve.

In the Show – 7th July 2009

Fancy a good whinge? Want to moan about how bad the world is treating you? Perhaps you could sing about it instead, as one group of local citizens are doing. They have joined Hong Kong’s “Complaints Choir”. The idea was originated by two artists in Finland, but it was in May 2005, in Birmingham, England, that the world’s first Complaints Choir was formed. As singing ability is not a necessity, and as members can join freely to voice their dissatisfactions, the concept of a Complaints Choir has spread across the globe. People in Germany, Russia, the United States, Canada, Hungary, Israel, and Singapore have all formed their own Complaints Choirs, singing out their daily annoyances, and their social and political demands, in chorus.

The first “Ice Age” movie introduced us, in computer-animated form to Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth, Diego the sabre-toothed tiger, and – of course – Scrat the squirrel and the acorn that is his heart’s desire. Well, there was a second “Ice Age” movie, and now there ’ s a third: “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”, and it’s in 3D. Gary Pollard is in our studio to tell us more.

When most people think of street dance in recent years, the most likely one to come to mind is break dance. But there are other pop-oriented street dance forms, and two of them, popping and locking, are becoming increasingly popular in Hong Kong. They both emerged from the funk movement during the 1970s in California. The emphasis is on technique, and dancers sometimes gather together in “battles” to see who has the best moves.

In our studio, Rick Lau talks to us about his cabaret show “My Queer Valentine”, a show dedicated to songs by gay songwriters.

Movie Review: “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

Many reviewers have not been so kind to “Ice Age 3” otherwise known as “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”. I enjoyed it, even though I can concede that they have some good points. It is, after all, pretty much a retread of the earlier ones, but then it’s essentially, animation or not, a sit-com. And sit-coms do tend to be pretty much the same characters doing remarkably similar things in every episode.  I didn’t really expect it to break new ground in terms of the script writing. I just wanted my favourite characters, most particularly Sid the Sloth, voiced by Jon Lequizamo, to be true to their form.

What I will advise people though is that they will enjoy “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” much more if they go to see it in 3D. Generally I am ambivalent about 3D in movies, finding that there’s something about the fairground attraction element of it that tends to detract from involvement in the story. With this film, it is the single best reason to see it. Visually, it’s one of the most engaging 3D movies I’ve seen. There were many moments in which I wanted the action to freeze, so I could examine the scene in more detail.

That meant that I was concentrating on the visuals when many of the people around me were laughing at the jokes, and gags, but the jokes and gags were fine too. I think many going to see it will have their own characters. For me it’s Sid and Scrat (still voiced by the director of the first Ice Age film and the producer of this one, Chris Wedge). I have never found Manny (Ray Romano), or his lady mammoth friend Ellie (Queen Latifah) particularly engaging. Nor, after the first movie where he was something of a threat, did I find Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Dennis Leary) particularly interesting.

In this third episode Manny is waiting for Ellie to have their child. Diego seems to be slowing down a bit, maybe because of age, or maybe he’s becoming too much of a pack animal. Sid is beginning to feel that the unlikely herd (which also includes possums Eddie (Josh Peck) and Crash (Seann William Scott), won’t be same once Manny has his own family to look after, so he sets off to find a family of his own.

What he finds is three dinosaur eggs, which he decided to nurture until they are hatched. As he’s the first thing they see when they are born, they decide that he must be their mother. It’s an imprinting that’s made all the more tentative by the fact that they also seem to think he, and some of his other animal friends, actually taste good.

Of course the real mother turns up from her own land, an underground lost world where these supposedly extinct creatures are alive and well – to get her kids back. In the process she takes Sid back with her.

Manny, Ellie, Diego and the two possum “brothers” follow her into the lost world to rescue their friend. To retrieve him, the group has to ravel through areas with names like the Chasm of Death and Plates of Woe. The lost underground world gives the 3D animators a chance to ring the changes from the rest of the series. Now they can deal with a dense tropical climate and a jungle environment that owes much to “”The Lost World,” “King Kong” and “The Land Before Time.”

In this land, for which they are woefully unprepared, they meet a new character who seems to have wandered in from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” He’s Buck, a swashbuckling weasel, voiced as if channeling Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, by British actor Simon Pegg.

Buck’s been here a long time, and even has a touch of the obsessiveness of Captain Ahab about him. He’s long been locked in battle with a giant dinosaur called Rudy. Buck is frankly a bit nuts.

Still, as they all travel through this new and threatening land, director Carlos Saldanha has the chance to make the most of the 3D animation. As with the first two movies, height is often used as a threat. Here the characters seem to frequently find themselves hanging over bubbling lava lakes, or heading to the edge of a lava waterfall. A flight scene on the back of pterodactyl like creatures, provides an opportunity for particularly dazzling swooping and flying effects as they pass through narrow ravines and swirl in the air, all in 3D.

As so often with recent animated movies, the main theme of the story is family, even if it’s a family of choice rather than a family of birth. But it isn’t worth thinking too deeply about the attempts to be warmhearted. Scrat the squirrel is of course here again, searching for his beloved acorn, but this time he’s facing competition and a love interest in the form of a lady squirrel.

But above everything else, my recommendation is that you see this one for the visuals. Computer animation is developing so fact that even between episodes one and two of the Ice Age saga you could see a new sophistication in the imagery. Even when Shrek 2 came out people were saying it was a major step forward from the first Shrek because his the characters’ skin had texture.

Gradually computers have got better at rendering scales, fur, bark and hair. Manny in Ice Age 3 has – unsurprisingly for a woolly mammoth – hair going in every direction. And each hair is rendered in 3D. When a snow flake falls in this movie, you can be amazed at the fact that it’s a fully rounded snow flake. “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” takes no short cuts in getting the maximum effect into every shot.

On the other hand it works well because they don’t go for the cheap effects, poking three dimensional objects into the auditorium every few minutes. Here there 3D just draws you into the scene. You would like to enter it to walk around. This movie didn’t claim to be anything more than an entertainment, but it’s one of the first movies I’ve seen that gave me a sense that someone could find a way to use 3D movie making in a film with more serious artistic intent. So yes, script wise and character wise it is more of the same. If that’s what you are looking for or expecting , with more stunning visuals than ever, you’ll be happy. I was.

In the Show: 30th June 2009

On this week’s show

From the middle of May until the middle of June, Singapore was holding its annual Arts festival. Featuring more than 600 performances and activities, the festival might have been taking place during an economic downturn but was a success all the same, having sold 92% of tickets. Over the three decades since it began, Singapore’s arts scene has come of age. A decade ago, the city had 6,000 cultural events a year. Now there are 27,000. Over that same decade, the participation rate has also increased, from one in ten Singaporeans attending at least one arts activity a year then, to one in three now. The number of arts groups has doubled, from 400 to 800. But performing artists still face the spectre of censorship.

The Transformer toys were released into the hands of eager children in 1984. The manufacturer, Hasbro, hired two writers to come up with a backstory for its creations. The Transformers come from the planet Cybertron. They are split into good guys and bad guys: the heroic Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, and the evil Decepticons, led by Megatron. They became the subject of comics, animated TV series, and an animated movie. Two years ago, there was a first live-action movie, directed by Michael Bay. Now he’s back with “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. Gary Pollard reviews it.

Henry and Roger Chung are two brothers who are just about to release their first CD. Henry is known in Hong Kong as an accomplished blues harmonica player. Their first album is music with a Christian flavour, but it features many of Hong Kong’s best musicians, and a variety of musical styles.

To see a streaming video of the show, please click here

Movie Review – “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

A review of a movie like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” may be superfluous. What critical criteria can you honestly hope to apply to a movie that is based on a set of Hasbro toys?

There had been marketing of toys based on movies before, but this began with a toy that was a neat concept, and that people were determined to turn into as many franchises as possible.

In a coincidence that George Orwell could not have imagined, the toys hit the store shelves in 1984. They are plastic robots that can be twisted and rearranged to become vehicles, assorted devices, or animals. There’s even one Transformer that turns into the Death Star from “Star Wars”.

In order to make the toys make sense, Hasbro hired a couple of writers to come up with a story that would give kids some clues on how to play with them. In that story the Transformers come from the planet Cybertron. They are split into good guys and bad guys: the heroic Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, and the evil Decepticons, led by Megatron.

Marvel Comics introduced one version of the Transformers story. A cartoon TV series for kids introduced another slightly different one. They varied in the details, but essentially both included the Transformers coming to Earth for one reason or another and waging war with one another on our planet.

The concept has gone through a lot of incarnations since then, finally making it to the big screen in what we might laughably call live-action form in 2007.

Directed by Michael Bay it was more of a collection of promotional concepts than it was a movie. Hasbro made deals with dozens of companies, introduced a viral marketing campaign, arranged for comic book prequels to be released, as well as new toys and books, The company also arranged as much product placement in the movie as it could, most notably with GM and eBay.

To the dismay of those who believe cinema is a great art form, it grossed roughly US$708 million worldwide, making it the thirtieth most successful film ever and the fifth most successful of 2007. And it is trash. Everything in it is product. And that includes most of the actors.

But, of course, it made a ton of money, even if many came out of it feeling cheated, so a sequel arrives in the form of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen “

Being in a bit of a hurry, I went to a fast food restaurant before entering the cinema. There was a child of about eight there with his favourite Transformer toy, obviously planning to take it into the cinema. That eight year old kid deserved a better movie than this. While I was watching the film, another child next to me was clearly getting bored. And yet it was people of his age it was all aimed at.

As “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was being prepared there was a writers strike in Hollywood. Of course, that doesn’t need to have posed any obstacles here because there is barely anything involving any layer of craft or skill in the writing. Ehren Kruger, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci did the cut and paste job that passes for story creation here.

“Revenge of the Fallen” begins two years after Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and the Autobots have saved the human race from those evil Decepticons. With a title like “Revenge of the Fallen” you can be sure that while the Decepticons may be down they are not out.

Sam is concentrating on his first day at college. His girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox) is concentrating on getting into the tightest shorts and tee-shirt she can find. As I said, everything here is product, and Fox is packaged as sex bomb. This is apparent from the very first shot of her. In the first movie she had her body suggestively arched as she looked under the hood of a car. In this one she is crouched over the seat of a bicycle, hot panted derriere pointed to the lens. When we see her in close-up her lips are so covered in red gloss it looks as if the make-up department dripped red candle wax on them. It’s as if Michael Bay thinks that all you have to do to create a sex-bomb product is shoot her in the style of Maxim, or some other not so high quality men’s magazine.

In terms of the robot story, well there’s a bad robot under the sea. His buddies want to bring him back to life. There’s a good robot who gets defeated in a fight and apparently killed. Sam Witwicky wants to bring him back to life. To do that he needs a shard of something or other. But the bad robots also want the shard so they can smash up our pyramids and find the machine underneath which will basically switch our sun off. Oh, none of this matters for an instance.

There aren’t any human characters you can care about, so everyone plays their role for laughs. It’s one of those movies that so unsure of its ability to create any emotion it just sends emotion up.

There is lots of noise, a smidgeon of coarseness, two racially dubious robots who talk to each other in jive talk, a reappearance by John Turturro as Agent Simmons, lots of swirling gleaming metal, loud music from Steve Jablonsky that seems to be taking steroids so it can sound like Hans Zimmer having a fit.

Here’s a question. What’s more boring than those kung fu films with fights that feel like they are dragging on for half an hour at a time? The answer is: a movie in which computer generated robots bash each other for what seems like half an hour at a time. And they have plenty of time to do it. You have to sit through two hours and twenty seven minutes of this garbage.

Teen fan boys will defend it, although they will probably regret it once they grow hair on their upper lip. Bay should be made to apologise to the kids out there who probably could imagine better stories themselves while playing with their own Transformers. It’s all big, dumb and clumsy, and that’s about all it is. It’s also apparently pretty much all Michael Bay is capable of.

In the Show – 23rd June 2009

Like other businesses in a sluggish economy, commercial galleries are adapting to tougher times, often by reducing the number of exhibitions or extending exhibition periods. As people are spending more carefully, especially on non-necessities, it’s a good time for more affordable art, like what’s come to be known as “urban art” or street art. May Wong, a designer who has been based in the United States for ten years, recently returned to Hong Kong to start Apostrophe Gallery to promote street art.

In contrast to the fledgling Apostrophe Gallery, the Schoeni Gallery has been selling art since 1992. Now in her late twenties, Nicole Schoeni took the reins five years ago. The gallery has long focused on pioneering contemporary Chinese art in Hong Kong, but Nicole has taken it into some new areas. Launched last year, “Adapta” is a project dedicated to urban art. The first exhibition in this project was a solo exhibition by the British stencil graffiti artist, Banksy.

For dedicated followers of fashion, the name of Coco Chanel is almost legendary. Beginning her design career in an age of corsets, bustieres, frills and laces, she introduced simplicity and easy clothing that allowed women to move and breath more freely. Coco Chanel’s fashion philosophy does make an appearance in the movie “Coco Before Chanel”. But the film, as its title suggests, mostly concentrates on her formative years. But are her those years likely to mean much to the non fashionista? With us in the studio to discuss this is our very own non fashionista and movie reviewer Gary Pollard.

Also in our studio are the internationally renowned Hong Kong cellist Trey Lee and fellow musicians. They are here to perform for us, and to talk about the inaugural Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival that’s being held from Thursday to Sunday this week.

To see a streaming video of the show, please click here.

Movie Review – “Coco Before Chanel”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

Movie biographies can be tricky. With entirely fictitious stories, the entire structure revolves around specific aims. Stories have a well-established form.

Life isn’t like that. In biographies there aren’t many ways to control the direction of the story, at least if you’re staying close to reality. One of the few is that you can decide where you jump in and where you jump out of the life. Even then, much depends on whether the audience is walking into the cinema with a pre-existing interest in the central character.

For the first twenty minutes of the French-language “Coco Before Chanel” you could be forgiven for thinking you had strayed into “La Vie En Rose”, the biography of Edith Piaf. Gabrielle Chanel (she only later came to be known as Coco) had a poor upbringing, and – like Piaf initially wanted to be a music hall singer.

Also, as with the Piaf movie, if you know how to read between the lines, Chanel was a tough woman who knew how to guard herself well.  Director Anne Fontaine and co-writer Christopher Hampton have decided to focus on Chanel’s formative years, many of which involved little commitment to fashion. The movie is after all called “Coco Before Chanel”.

She lived a long and eventful life. Born, an illegitimatel child, into poverty in rural France in 1883 she died at 87, still working.

The movie begins with Gabrielle and her sister Adrienne being abandoned by their traveling salesman father at the door of a convent orphanage after their mother’s death. He did not return.

By the time she has become an adult (now played by Audrey Tautou), Gabrielle and Adrienne (Marie Gillain) are supporting themselves as seamstresses and by singing in bars at night   Her nickname came from she song she sang in one of those bars “Who’s Seen Coco in the Trocadero”.

She is cynical about affection, having already decided that the best part of romance is sex, and saying that it’s a pity you need a man for that. Her sister appears to have a warmer character, and is already the mistress of a rich man. Coco doesn’t approve of that, but she does want to escape from poverty. Her chance comes when a wealthy playboy and horse breeder Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde) takes an interest in her.

They have an affair. She thinks that he can introduce her to music hall owners and boost her career as a singer, but she does not impress them. After a while he decides he wants to return to Paris. He feels little remorse at leaving her, reasoning that she knew exactly what kind of relationship this was to be. However, he reckons without her determination. She turns up at his estate and turns a short-term stay into a long term one.

She’s not really in love with Etienne, but she doesn‘t being hidden away or regarded merely as his mistress. Knowing that he loves horses, she teaches herself to ride. She also helps some of the women who hang around the estate with their clothes. In an age of frills, feathers, and suffocating corsets she develops an androgynous, easy to wear style of clothes. She doesn’t really take a philosophical or politically motivated approach to it but she creates clothes that are loose enough to allow a woman to lead a more active life.

Initially Coco sees Etienne’s former mistress the comic actress Emilienne (Ennanuelle Devos) as a rival, but as she makes her a straw hat, and devises costumes for her they become closer friends.

Coco knows by now that her relationship with Etienne isn’t really going anywhere, and tries to escape from it. When she beings to develop an interest in an English businessman Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola) she resists it at first. When their relationship does develop, and she finds herself in a love triangle, we soon sense that it will not last long. Sometimes, in this regard, things are just a little too telegraphed.

Tautou, whi has in many movies been asked to rely on her charm, does the opposite here. She hardly even smiles for much of the movie. She is – one suspects – tough as nails. For all that though we can see that she often does feel humiliated and rejected.

This is director Anne Fontaine’s first period film, and is of course helped by being able to bring in some of Chanel’s own design. Production designer Olivier Radot and costume designer Catherine Leterrier create sumptuous environments in which the characters can move. Cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne uses the wide screen format and mostly soft naturalistic lighting to bring the milieu to life.

Fontaine is rather good at keeping the fashion and design in the movie almost as an undercurrent, rarely talked about but just something Coco does. We see the sources of her inspiration and her love for black and white in the costumes of the nuns in the orphanage, in the stripes of fishermen’s shirts. The movie never falls into the biopic trap of having the artist try to put his or her art into words. But the observant viewer can get all the clues.

For all that though, some will still find the story lacking in narrative drive, and will also likely find the ending cursory. For me, having little to no interest in Coco Chanel and not finding the relationships remarkable, it was an easy enough hour and three-quarters in the cinema. But it still doesn’t really overcome the limitations of the screen biography.

For some reason, there’s another movie about Chanel coming out this year, this one concentrating on her relationship with the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It apparently has not escaped the problems of the biopic either. Critics were less than overwhelmed at the Cannes Film Festival.

After the commercial and critical success of “La Vie En Rose” the French film industry has decided that romantic biographies of talented females may be a winning ticket. But you do need more than a biography and nice clothes and production design to give a movie a real sense of life lived.

Maybe you need a little more passion than Chanel is here shown as being able to muster.  Famous people’s lives are not always great dramas after all.

In the Show: 17th June 2009

In Hong Kong this year, to mark World Refugee Day on June 20^th, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has organised fund-raising concerts, a refugee run and a film festival to remind the public of the problems refugees face throughout the world.

Starting this Sunday and running for a week, the Refugee Film Festival features six films telling different stories of the plight of these millions of people. We talk to a representative of the UNHCR about the movies on show, and about their work.

In contrast to those movies, “Duplicity” is not aiming to be anything but entertaining. Directed and written by Tony Gilroy who previously wrote the screenplays for the Bourne trilogy and directed Michael Clayton, it’s a romantic comedy that harkens back to the screwball comedies of the thirties. It’s about two former rival spies who have now joined forces to make money in corporate spying. Or have they? In the fact that neither they nor we are entirely sure of the answer to that question lies much of the movie’s fun. Our reviewer Gary Pollard, who was a big admirer of “Michael Clayton” was a little disappointed by this one.

Yu Dan, a professor at China’s Beijing Normal University, is now a household name in mainland China. Her best-seller, “Confucius from the Heart: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World” has sold more than 10 million copies.  Now it’s been translated and published in English. The foreign rights have been sold to 19 countries. But while it’s popular with the public, academics accuse her of presenting a watered-down, and just plain wrong, version of the sage’s wisdom.

In our studio tonight representatives of Concerto Da Camera tell us about their annual concert. Director, bassoonist and organiser Karen Yeung introduces violinist Wilson Chu, accordionist Ouyang Fang, and dancers Edith and Kamong of “Let’s Tango” to perform Carlos Gardel’s “Por Una Cabeza”.

Movie Review – “Duplicity”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

Tony Gilroy was the screenwriter of “The Bourne Identity”, “The Bourne Supremacy”, and “The Bourne Ultimatum”, which re-energised what had become a rather tired genre so successfully that their new excitement energy even carried over into the rehash of the James Bond movies in “Casino Royale”.

Two years ago, his first time at the helm, Gilroy wrote and directed “Michael Clayton” which, as a thriller with a serious undertone, harked back to the thoughtful thrillers of the 1970s such as “The Parallax View”, “Klute” and “All the Presidents’ Men”. I found “Michael Clayton” an extremely well constructed screenplay and a very assured movie for a first-time director.

Now Gilroy’s made his second movie: “Duplicity”. He seems, as always, to have a willingness to stretch his audience a little, which is a rare thing in Hollywood. In fact, one of the main criticisms some have of “Duplicity” is that it’s a bit too cerebral for them. It does demand a little concentration at time, but overall I found it a little slight after “Michael Clayton”, partly because it’s much more in a romantic comedy mould.

Like “Mr and Mrs Smith” it’s a romantic spy vs spy movie. Unlike that film it’s much less reliant on action and more reliant on characterization and subterfuge. It begins in 2003 in Dubai, when MI6 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owen) tries to pick up CIA operative Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts). We soon discover that not everything between these two is going to be strictly as it seems.

Even before the title credits are over, we see another opposition. Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti) two rival giants of the cosmetic industry, begin fighting on the rain-slicked tarmac of an airport, their long time rivalry having boiled over now that they have come face to face. The extreme slow-motion of this, capturing their bumbling aggression, as well as the shocked faces of their retinue, signals that we are not meant to take this entirely seriously

Five years later, after the Dubai encounter, in 2008, Ray is working for Garsik’s company, Omnikrom, He has given up the political spy business for the more rewarding world of corporate spying. He is on his way to Grand Central Station to meet a double agent who is working for Tully’s Burkett & Randle. On the way to that meeting he sees Claire, and begins to suspect that something is wrong. When he approaches her and reprimands her for having slept with him, drugged him and stolen his property, she says that she doesn’t know him. Their conversation here gets repeated twice more as the movie goes on, in different contexts.

It turns out that she is the double agent from whom he is supposed to collect a package. In a conversation that seems more aimed at confusing the audience than at the logic of this scene, she says he’s such an amateur she won’t give it to him. He persuades her to do so.

The article he’s retrieved is a hand-written speech that Tully is going to give to his company, suggesting that they have a groundbreaking new product about to roll off the line. Of course, Giamatti’s Richard Garsik will stop at nothing to find out what this new product is.

I don’t want to give away too many of the twists and turns in store, but I will say that it becomes apparent Ray and Claire are not necessarily as antagonistic as they seem to be. In fact, for much of the film they are ostensibly working together. They have perhaps fallen in love, but there is a problem when two spies fall in love with someone as duplicitous as themselves. How can they ever come to trust one another? Who is playing whom? At different points of the movie the answer to that question varies. And there may even be another change in the balance in store in the last few minutes.

For some of those twists and turns to work, and perhaps to disguise a plot hole or two, Gilroy gives us the information only when he wants to. That means that the movie jumps backwards and forwards through time frequently, as captions tell us we’re now viewing an event “2 Years Ago,” “10 Days Earlier,” and so on. It also jumps from place to place. Apart from New York and Dubai, they end up in London, Miami, Rome, Switzerland, the Bahamas, Cleveland, and San Diego.

It’s always a game. A game they play between each other. A game they play with the audience. And a game others may be playing with them. It is an intelligent movie, although possibly not quite as intelligent as it thinks it us. For me, the eventual resolution was almost a deus-ex-machina involving another revelation about character I didn’t quite believe in. Unfortunatly, another thing I didn’t quite believe in, which is a mainspring  of the story, is the passionate romance between Julia Roberts’ and Clive Owen’s characters.

There are twists and double twists, moments where emotion might seem about to get the best of the characters’ plans. Other moments where the characters’ plans look as if they may permanently scar those emotions. In the romantic rivalry of the two chief protagonists, this movie harks back to the screwball comedies of the 1930’s. It might even have been better served by Harlow and Gable, or Tracy and Hepburn.

Gilroy is a strong writer of dialogue though, and the actors are given lines that remind you of the scriptwriter Ben Hecht, urbane and snappy. Costumes and sets are elegant. Cinematographer Robert Elswit is able to capture the gloss Gilroy needs. Unlike “Michael Clayton” “Duplicity” doesn’t really refer to the world outside itself. In choosing to set it in the world of cosmetics and beauty preparations Gilroy is essentially signalling to us that nothing about this is meant to go beyond the superficial.

And therein, for me, lies a slight disappointment. Sometimes it’s nice even if your escapism has a solid foundation. With that solid foundation the stakes in Claire and Ray’s ability to trust one another or not would have seemed higher. It’s a well-made escapist entertainment that at least tries not to insult your intelligence. Many will enjoy it just for that. I just wished it had all mattered just a little bit more.

In the Show – 9th June 2009

Last week’s commemoration of the June 4^th 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square gave rise to a number of art exhibitions and activities in Hong Kong. It also reignited discussion of the relationship between art and politics.

From the French Revolution, to Goya’s “Third of May”, to the propaganda art of Communist China, the relationship of art and politics has been sometimes complementary, sometimes antagonistic.

In his Nobel speech, “Art, Truth and Politics” the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, British playwright Harold Pinter spoke of the need to “distinguish between the search for truth in art and the avoidance of truth in politics.” We talk to veteran members of the arts scene on how they see that relationship, particularly with respect to dealing with such incidents as the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Is art even relevant in the face of political atrocity?

In the mid-1960s cowboy series dominated American television screens. A producer called Gene Roddenberry came up with an idea that he billed to network chiefs as “Wagon Train” in outer space. Well, “Star Trek” was not exactly “Wagon Train” but it was a highly successful science fiction series about the lives of those aboard the Starship Enterprise who each week would “boldly go where no man had gone before”. Now filmmaker JJ Abrams has boldly gone back to the beginning of the “Star Trek” story. Reviewer Gary Pollard tells us more.

Performing in our studio tonight is the young French guitarist Thibault Cauvin. He’s trying to interpret the classical guitar in a way that will excite the interest of younger audiences. In tonight’’s show he plays “Rocktypicovin” a piece written by his father Philippe Cauvin.

To see a streaming video of the whole show, please click here.