AT FILMART

REVIEWS
Reviews edited by mark Adams mark.adams@screendaily.com
HKIFF IN bRIEF
Woman In A Septic Tank
Young Cinema Competition. Dir: Marlon
Rivera. Phil. 2011. 90mins
Filipino director Marlon Rivera’s freewheeling
mockumentary about film-making in his
country is a engagingly oddball jaunt
through the slums of Manila and the homes
of mega-rich performers. While at times it is
scattershot in terms of the targets, there is a
lot of fun to be had along the way — especially
the wonderful performance by comedienne
Eugene Domingo. The film blends
outlandish comedy with musical numbers
and has a little drama on the side. Initially a
touch confusing, it finds its feet as the story
draws on and ends on a real high.
Mark Adams
CONTACT QUANTUm FILmS jvalonso@
yahoo.com
About The Pink Sky
Young Cinema Competition. Dir/scr: Keiichi
Kobayashi. Jap. 2011. 113mins
That old favourite the ‘coming-of-age’ story
is dusted off to impressive effect in the entertainingly
raw About The Pink Sky (Momoiro
Sora O), charting the efforts of quirky high
schooler Izumi (Ai Ikeda) to reunite a wallet
she finds containing ¥300,000 (in the region
of $4,000) to its rightful owner. Presented in
black and white — but with a smart burst of
colour at the closing credits — it is a thoroughly
watchable and engaging indie Japanese
film, driven by a confident and
charismatic lead performance.
Mark Adams
CONTACT mICHAELGION PROdUCTIONS
harada@michaelgion.jp
The Look
Gala Premiere. Dir: Angelina Maccarone. Fr.
2011. 94mins
Part biographical documentary and part a
series of musings on life and art, this watchable
film about actress Charlotte Rampling is
a fascinating set of discussions between her
and a series of photographers, writers and
film-makers. It will intrigue those who are
fans of her work and should appeal to festivals
and niche arts broadcasters. For those,
however, out for a look at her life and career,
The Look might be rather unsatisfying given
it features a series of head-to-head chats (or
musings) rather than a plethora of film clips
and gushing praise.
Mark Adams
CONTACT mK2 www.mk2-catalogue.film
n 10 Screen International at Filmart March 19, 2012
Love In The buff
Reviewed by edmund Lee
With 2010’s Love In A Puff, writer-director Pang
Ho-cheung scored an unlikely triumph with a
chain-smoking and chatty rom-com, almost
through audience word-of-mouth alone. Latching
on to its rapport with the audience, Love In The
Buff is a Hong Kong-China co-production that
partly forgoes its prequel’s quintessentially Hong
Kong setting but makes up for this with its callous
yet laugh-out-loud humour. The profanities also
remain.
The film opens the Hong Kong International
Film Festival with its world premiere on March 21,
before going on general release concurrently in
late-March in Hong Kong, mainland China and
various cities worldwide.
Starting off with an absurdly funny short story
included presumably just to parallel the original’s
narrative structure, Love In The Buff quickly delves
back into the relationship between cosmetic salesgirl
Cherie (Miriam Yeung) and advertising executive
Jimmy (Shawn Yue), which began at the end of
Puff with a mutual vow to quit smoking.
Jimmy turns out to be an immature workaholic
who has an eye for beauties — all beauties — and
Cherie a fed-up girlfriend who decides to move
back to her mother. He jumps at his first job offer
from China and the two’s affair fizzles out.
The action then shifts to Beijing, where Jimmy
hits it off with a gorgeous air hostess (Mimi Yang)
Ace Attorney
Reviewed by Mark Adams
Manga meets video-gaming in the colourful, funny
and thoroughly entertaining Ace Attorney
(Gyakuten Saiban), a fantasy courtroom romp
that sees always-busy Japanese director Takashi
Miike show-off his appreciation for broad movie
entertainment, and makes a nice contrast to
his more recent heavyweight festival outings
such as 13 Assassins and Hara-Kiri: Death Of A
Samurai.
Miike has never been one to rest on his laurels
— his speedy follow-up to Hara-Kiri was Ninja
Kids!!! — and his career has been based on variety
rather sticking to one genre. A filmography that
includes films as varied as Audition, Ichi The Killer,
Zebraman and Sukiyaki Western Django speaks
volumes about his interest in keeping things fresh
and flexible.
Ace Attorney is based on the popular Nintendo
game (known as Gyakuten Saiban in Japan) set in
2016, in which players take on the role of defence
attorney in a futuristic courtroom setting.
Clumsy young lawyer Phoenix Wright (Hiroki
Narimiya) finds himself caught up in a complex
series of court cases which all seem to be linked to
a 15-year-old mystery known as the DL-6 case.
When his boss Mia Fey (Rei Dan) is killed, Phoenix
is called up to defend Mia’s young sister Maya
(Mirei Kiritani), and finds himself up against
WORLD pReMIeRe
OpeNINg NIgHt FILM
HK-Chi. 2012. 112mins
director pang Ho-cheung
Production company
Making Film
International sales Media
Asia Distribution, www.
mediaasia.com
Producers pang
Ho-cheung, Subi Liang
Executive producer John
Chong, Shi Dongming
Screenplay pang
Ho-cheung, Luk Yee Sum,
based on characters
created by pang
Cinematography Jason
kwan
Editor Wenders Li
Production designer
Lok-Lam Ho
music Alan Wong, Janet
Yung
main cast Miriam Yeung,
Shawn Yue, Mimi Yang, Xu
Zheng
MARket
Jap. 2012. 135mins
director takashi Miike
Production company/
sales company Nippon
television Network
Corporation, www.ntv.co.jp
Producer Okuda Seiji
Screenplay takeshi Iida,
Sachiko Oguchi, based on
the Nintendo game
Cinematography
Masakazu Oka
Editor kenji Yamashita
music koji endo
main cast Hiroki Narimiya,
takumi Saitoh, Mirei
kiritani, Akiyoshi Nakao,
Shunsuke Daito, kimiko Yo,
Ryo Ishibashi, Rei Dan,
Fumiyo kohinata
SCReenInGS, PAGe 18
and moves in with her. Cherie will also move north
— and finds a new admirer (Xu Zheng) — when her
employer closes its Hong Kong business six months
later. Their story settles into a pattern in which they
repeatedly exchange text messages and meet up for
romantic rendezvous behind the back of each other’s
partner — a cycle the film dares its protagonists
to break out from to find their happy ending.
Though there are, as in the first film, naughty
usages of Chinese slang that prove impossible to
translate for English subtitles, and the movie’s three
memorable cameos — of pop culture mainstays
Ekin Cheng, Linda Wong and Huang Xiaoming —
may not come across as funny for a foreign audience,
Love In The Buff is still a relentlessly
entertaining romance that should please more than
a few viewers from any culture. The video that runs
alongside this worthy sequel’s end credits, which
documents Jimmy’s efforts to win back Cherie, has
to be seen to be believed.
super-cool prosecutor Miles Edgeworth (Takumi
Saitoh), who had been a friend at school.
Amazingly Phoenix wins the case, but things
become even more complicated when Miles is
accused of murder, and Phoenix is the only one who
will defend him. He is assisted by Maya, along with
schoolfriend Larry Butz (Akiyoshi Nakao) and plodding
detective Dick Gumshoe (Shunsuke Daito).
Together they tackle a complex case that also
involves a white parrot called Polly and a giant
inflatable Silver Samurai superhero character. Phoenix
also has to face legendary prosecutor von Karma
(Ryo Ishibashi), undefeated in court in 40 years.
The actual courtroom battles are punctuated
with the counsel’s ability to drag-down vast computer-generated
screens to make their legal — or
otherwise — points, and Takashi Miike has a lot of
fun with his larger-than-life characters as they battle
for truth and justice.