Melbourne International Film Festival, 'A Touch of Sin'

♪ If I'm not beside you, I'm inside you ♪ 
- Pharrell Williams

Last Friday night, fabulous film studies student Benson Li, who now sports a slick metro-sexual mohawk ala Gok Wan, attended the Melbourne International Film Festival with me.  We talked, we walked, then got swept among a marching crowd of protesters (Refugee Action Collective) outside Flinders Street Station.  I forgot the exact words they were chanting but it was something about Rudd being a tightarse bitch on asylum seeker policies.  And some random guy singing: "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DOWN DOWN, DOWN WITH RUDD."  #facepalm

Endearingly, we spotted a guy just ahead of us busking along Swanston Street in a BUNNY SUIT  playing a guitar.  He had a cardboard sign with FUNKY BUNNY written across it. The contrast between that dude - bouncing his head and ears all insouciant like, and all the backpack totin', beanie-sportin' hippies shouting mean things about K.Rudd was pretty damn swaggy.  I mean quaint.

So we continued on to the cinema and watched the new Jia Zhangke film - A Touch of Sin.  I was the one who really pushed for this because the movie aims to depict the corruption, vindictiveness and amorality of contemporary Chinese society through a series of interwoven stories - something raight down my sinophilic alley.  Also, the film-festival darling and  at times Chinese underground director, Jia directed A Still Life, a movie my Asian Studies lecturer told us to take a look at last semester.

And judging by the quality of work in A Touch of Sin, I'd say...

I <3 Jia Zhangke.

The movie was not only visually impressive (dat colour) but the stories themselves were simultaneously morbid as fuck and captivating enough to leave you wanting much more after 133 minutes.  Four stories - four everyday people - victims of China's malicious social landscape.  They have families.  Friends.  Children.  Lovers.  But are ultimately driven to a social abyss filled with sex work, robbery, murder and suicide.

What I really enjoyed was:
1. All the stories reflect true events that have happened in China e.g. the highly controversial 2011 high speed bullet train crash in Wenzhou which killed 40 and was a result of shoddy infrastructure, which in turn was a result of heinous state corruption; the practice of rich men having mistresses; factory worker suicides (the film subtly hinted at Apple's Foxconn factories in China)

2.  If you look past Jia's deliberate but kind of random wuxia spin on the film, the stories felt really authentic.  The film moved slowly but every second was a deep and fascinating exploration into this one person's shitty life - and it reminds you that all those people suffering in China right now and working themselves to death trying to support themselves or their families aren't just statistical figures or CNN news stories but real people with crushes, dreams and ideals just like us...as platitudinous as that sounds.

I really liked this film but it's not even considered Jia's best so perhaps I should get around to watching Still Life and 24 City.

Ok I cannot be fucked typing anymore so I'm going to end by saying we later met two young film industry experts and had dinner with them at where else but Rice Paper Vietnamese Restaurant, then we had a massively esoteric debate about auteurs and why Jack (the new guy) hates Daniel Day-Lewis, Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and just about everyone else you like.  He works at all the upcoming film festivals in Melbourne so yay CONNEXIONS!!!

I am also listening to Luxurious by Gwen Stefani right now.

Sexy as hell.