Saturday, May 8, 2021, Delray Beach, Florida


Notes From My Journal

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After reading my comments about this year’s Oscar winners, my friend A.S. wrote to say:

Your blog today motivated me to give you my opinion of the movies this year.

I am so sick of movies that make me want to take my own life. Nomadland! Everything you said was true except it was boring. You wait and wait for something to happen, but it doesn’t.

Black Messiah was terrific, unbelievable! I agree that both supporting actors, which I thought were lead roles, were superb. The happenings in the movie were current events to us. We had sideline views of it all. Mayor Daley, Chicago, Mayor Rizzo, Philadelphia, were fascists that were viewed by many as good leaders at the time, the norm. What a country, huh?

I don’t know if you saw Promising Young Woman. I thought it was as good as the winner, Nomadland, but more entertaining. However, I thought the best movie of the year was Better Days. It was nominated for best foreign film but didn’t win. The maker of Another Round, the winner, lost his daughter just before filming. She was supposed to have a part in the movie. The Academy had to know about it and surely there was a sympathy vote.

I’m just sayin’…

I agree with A.S. on all counts.

And yes, I saw Promising Young Woman and Better Days.

I didn’t like the premise of Promising Young Woman… a revenge film for the MeToo movement. (Of course, we’ve had plenty of revenge films for white males… Charles Bronson and Michael Douglas come to mind…) I thought it was entertaining but not a good movie in the sense that it changed me in any way.

Better Days, though, was very good…

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Better Days (2019)

Directed by Derek Kwok-Cheung Tsang

Starring Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee

K and I watched Better Days. It was one of the foreign movies on her list of Oscar nominations. From the get-go, I knew I would like it. The photography, the sound effects, the music were very smart.

Based on a popular young adult novel (In His Youth, In Her Beauty by Jiu Yuexi), Better Days takes place in a Hong Kong high school. The time is just before college entrance exams. 10 million students will be taking it.

That is in itself sufficient tension for a good story. But the protagonist, a 16-year-old in the equivalent of her senior year, is thrown into a world of vicious bullying and then is saved, sort of, by an encounter with a more sinister world of violence when she stumbles into a chance meeting with a gang member.

This is part Romeo and Juliet, part Bonnie and Clyde, part My Bodyguard. It’s also a social critique – not just of bullying, but also the pressures of the Chinese academic system.

If you want to get a feel for the difference between China and the US, both in terms of the experience of being a student and what it’s like to be part of a centralized government, this will give you a good idea.

It’s a long movie at 2 hours and 15 minutes, but it is one of the best of all the Oscar nominees I saw. Right up there with Judas and the Black Messiah.

Due to the immense popularity of its stars, Jackson Yee and Zhou Dongyu, it was one of the most highly anticipated Chinese films of 2019. (Yee has been in the spotlight in China and Japan since his debut at age 13 as the youngest member of the idol group TFBoys. Idol groups are made up of multitalented singers, dancers, and models. Their fame is generally manufactured and based on their attractiveness and social media/fan influence.)

It became a box office and pop cultural phenomenon in China, and received almost universal praise. But it was not popular with the Chinese government, which only very reluctantly allowed the film to be screened because of the sensitivity of its subject. It was pulled without explanation from the Berlin Film Festival days before it was to be shown. It failed to come out as scheduled in June in Chinese cinemas, before it was finally rolled out on Oct 25.

You can watch the trailer here.

 

Critical Reviews

* “Though not very subtle in presenting its thesis, the story is generally suspenseful and well-told by young HK actor and director Tsang.” (Hollywood Reporter)

* “Three years ago, Tsang made Soul Mate, an enchanting tale about female friendship that offered an engrossing look at modern, urban China. Yet that film isn’t quite adequate preparation for the emotional wallop of Better Days.” (Austin Chronicle)

* “Perceptive and gripping drama from China about pressure and bullying in schools, and one of the best films of 2019.” (Ready Steady Cut)

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Interviewing Matisse, or The Woman Who Died Standing Up

By Lily Tuck

148 pages

Published in 2006 by Harper Perennial

I decided to read Interviewing Matisse because it was a thin book, just 148 pages, and because George Plimpton, who knows a thing or two about fiction, called it a “tour de force.”

The author had an interesting background. She was born in Paris, earned a degree at Radcliffe and at the Sorbonne, and has lived in Switzerland, Thailand, and (during her childhood) Uruguay and Peru. That, and the title, promised some geographic nostalgia and thought-provoking literary references, which Tuck supplied.

What I was not prepared for was the way it was written. Basically, it’s a single, fractured, conversation by Lily, in the first person, and Molly, talking about their good old pal Inez, who has apparently turned up dead in her apartment, standing in her underwear and galoshes, as if she were welcoming the delivery boy who discovered her.

It’s part murder mystery and part social satire. It’s funny, but smiling funny. No guffaws. It does present a vivid picture of how out-of-touch and airheaded people of a certain privileged social class can be.

It’s not a tour de force, but at 148 pages, it’s worth a weekend afternoon.

 

Critical Reviews 

“Most impressive…. Sharp, funny and strangely affecting…. Highly original…. Wonderful satire.” (Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times )

“Sophisticated and funny…. Tuck gives us… with the skill and technique of an unblinking juggler, a heart-stopping struggle.” (Washington Post Book World )

“What great fun this novel is!… A lovely and engaging tour de force. Hooray for Lily Tuck!” (George Plimpton)

 

About Lily Tuck…

Lily Tuck’s novel The News from Paraguay won the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction. Her novel Siam was nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and in her collection, Limbo and Other Places I Have Lived.

“Living in other countries has given me a different perspective as a writer. It has heightened my sense of dislocation and rootlessness…. I think this feeling is reflected in my characters, most of them women whose lives are changed by either a physical displacement or a loss of some kind.” – Lily Tuck

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