Summary: Critics have been very positive in their reviews of Song From the Southern Seas, which they say can be read as an allegory for post Soviet relations between Russian and the republics, as a meditation on race in modern life, or as a straight ahead family drama from the Great Steppe. Regardless of how you view it, they say it works wonderfully on all these levels.
The story involves the birth of two babies, and the reactions that center around their appearance. When a baby is born to a Russian couple living in Kazakhstan, the father thinks the child looks more like his neighbor and friend, a Kazakh with distinctly Asian features. At about the same time, the neighbor and his wife also have a child, who has an uncharacteristic head of hair of a distinctly reddish color. Immediately, this neighbor, too, becomes suspicious, and the spiral of speculation mounts, resulting in a humorous, briskly paced film of plots and subplots. Enhancing the film are a collection of Central Asian folk melodies that are part of the sound track.
The director, Marat Sarulu, studied at the Moscow Cinema Academy. He is co–writer of the internationally successful feature film, Beshkempir and currently works as a writer and director. Song from the Southern Seas is his third feature film.
The second film,Getting Home, tells the story of a middle aged Chinese construction worker who struggles to return a fellow worker's deceased body to his family for proper burial. Directed by Zhang Yang, the film takes the audience on an unusual travel odyssey that brings viewers face to face with all sorts of manners and social classes.
British critic Simon Field says of the film: "Crossing much of southern China and ending near the Three Gorges Dam, this is a quirky road movie with a cleverly restrained central performance with a series of engaging cameos by well known Chinese actors, . . the film celebrates ordinary Chinese living far from the ‘economic miracle,’ and Getting Home is perhaps his greatest achievement in this vein, offering a gentle, heart warming and often ironic vision of provincial China.”
Getting Home is Yang’s fifth feature film. He was born in Beijing, China, and graduated from the Central Theatre Academy in 1992. He then directed a theatrical production of Kiss of the Spider Woman and went on to direct more than 20 underground music videos. His first feature film,Spicy Love Soup, swept the domestic Chinese awards and his second feature, Shower, won the FIPRESCI prize at the Toronto International Film Festival.
|