NYAFF- Wai Ka-fai's Written By (Revised yet again)
http://subwaycinema.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=119&Itemid=93

Today was my first trip to the New York Asian Film Festival. As anyone reading this LJ knows I've been playing along at home.having gone through a large number of films from my collection.

This was the first time I was at the IFC Center either now as the IFC or before when it was the Waverly, long time home of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.. It has nice cushy seats and they recline nicely. I think the marathon of Thursday will be okay. The staff of the festival seemed nice, I got a bunch of hand outs of other films in the film festival. We were handed a sheet to fill out if we wanted to try and win stuff and a rating sheet for the audience award. The crowd was probably about 25 to 30 people which is probably counter to what it was like last weekend when the director was in attendance

The world premiere of Written By was the opening night film of the NYAFF. I really wanted to go see it but I just couldn't swing it on either of the first two play dates with the director. I was kind of happy when I read a less then positive review for the film but changed my mind and decided to go to the third screening when I read some positive comments and saw the trailer. I should have listened to the first review.

The plot of the film has a family trying to get over the death of the father and husband after a terrible car accident that left the daughter blind. Ten years on and the past is still not put to rest the daughter, Melody, decides to write a novel where the father survived the accident but was blinded, and where his family all died. This begins to bring the family around and soon the father of the story is writing a novel of his own where he died and the family lived. The story spins out from there as we follow the story in various levels. There is a great deal of whimsy at times since in the story world there are ghosts and an after life.

I'm hard pressed to say something about the film, but I think the easiest thing to say is that the film is a mess.(I've revised this and the IMDB version several times now and its just too messed up a movie to be completely explainable) Director Wai Ka-fai has made a multi tiered film that becomes needlessly complicated..For much of the film its not really clear as to which incarnation of the story we are watching. It becomes clear at the end, but before that things jump from story to story to story for a reason that really eluded me. The problem with the film is not really the jumping from thing to thing thats the problem its just that things get so knotted that by the end its not really clear as to what the point of it all is. In the end the point of the film seems to be that we all need, in this case writing, though I suspect it may include believing in ghosts and such.as a bridge to acceptance and getting by in life. I don't know if all of what proceeded the ending really adds up to what the film is about, since the end kind of comes across as a WTF moment where you're left going "thats it?"

I know I wasn't the only one who was bewildered by the film since I noticed what appeared to be several walk outs and a general feeling of what did we just see in the audience once the credits began to roll. (One guy was snoring in his seat across the aisle from me.). A discussion of the film by three or four of us in the lobby after the film, including one guy from the Festival, concluded it was probably the directors weakest film, which I think was a polite way of saying we didn't have a clue about the film we had just seen. We all said that the most interesting thing was the Queen of the Underworld character who brings people into their next lives via a trolley car. I, like everyone else I talked to wants to see if there is really such a figure.

The film itself is for the most part very well made. Except for some of the worst, and I do mean worst, acting like a blind person in the history of film, the performances are all excellent(but the blind behavior is embarrassing and laughably bad- I can't stress this enough.) What really disappoints me about the film is that there are more than a handful of times when the film hits its stride, most of them having to do with the whimsical or fantastical elements of the story. There is also a moment later in the film when two of the characters break down emotionally that sends the film to the level where the film should have been operating all along. Regrettably the moments are only that, several minute stretches where the film seems to pull it all together.

I've been told that director Wai Ka-fai went through 12 or so versions of the film before reaching this one which he said is the one that works best. I would hate to see the other cuts. That said I would love to see a different version of the film and would gladly see the film again if it was recut, though to be honest I don't think the film will ever fully work.

A real interesting misfire from one of the more intriguing minds in Chinese cinema.

4 out of 10 for the moments that work. Probably is really a 3.
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An addendum
I was honestly disconnected at times because what was going on on screen and I found it more interesting to deal with the stuff stuck between my teeth then what was on the screen.