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SFIAAFF: The Year Of The Fish
SFist Mihi kicked it Rotoscope-animated style at the SFIAAFF Friday night.
We love a good Cinderella story and apparently so do a bunch of people on dates. Year of the Fish, a modern interpretation of a 9th century Chinese folk tale played at the Van Ness AMC 1000 on Friday night and the place was lousy with well-groomed couples holding-hands and making kissy faces at each other.
Unfortunately, there's something about placing this Chinese Cinderella tale in a massage parlor in New York's Chinatown that disturbed us in the same way Pretty Woman did. The "stepsisters" in this case are the gals who gonk logs and offer a little anal invasion for tips.
Yu Xian--Cinderella in this tale -- scrubs the floors. Sure, we wanted things to turn out well for Yu Xian, like we did for Julia Roberts but even though she's not actually giving hand-jobs, there were some pretty troubling moments in this movie that had us scratching our heads.
Some freaky immigrant exploitation, promised violence to tender parts, SFIAAFF stalwart Ken Leung, and some queasiness, after the jump.
For instance, Yu Xian's fairy godmother is an old crone by the name of Auntie Yaga who runs a sweatshop in Chinatown and gives Yu Xian a dress made from the sweat, tears and dreams of other people's labor. It was too dark to write down the actual quote but she actually says this when she gives Yu Xian her dress for the big party. Okay, are we supposed to feel good about that? Have fun Yu Xian, screw those other immigrants! Plus she says things like, "Don't come back here or I'll bite your little tits off." Disturbo.
Nor could we suspend our disbelief that Prince Charming, played by Ken Leung—a musician who dates a high-maintenance woman obsessed with Marc Jacobs fashion would actually fall for Yu Xian. Yu Xian is no Julia Roberts and the cultural divide between a New York hipster who just happens to be Asian-American and a desperate immigrant fresh from China was just too unbelievable. One of the unintentionally funniest moments was a montage of Ken Leung running around Chinatown after the big ball trying to find Yu Xian. He's seen holding up his hands as if to say, "she's about this tall." Dude, you're looking for a Chinese girl…in Chinatown. You're going to have to do better than that.
The director David Kaplan and two of the stars from the film were in attendance for a Q and A after the movie but we had to leave because our head hurt and our eyeballs were vibrating. The movie was done in rotoscope (you know, like in Richard Linkletter's films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly). There were moments when the rotoscoping worked and it did lend a fairytale-like quality to Chinatown, but mostly it was distracting and made us feel like barfing.
Year of the Fish plays again on Wednesday at the Opera Plaza in San Francisco and on Sunday at Camera 12 Cinemas in San Jose.