BROTHERS JEAN-PIERRE and Luc Dardenne's L'Enfant might have waltzed away with the Cannes Film Festival's prestigious Palme d'Or, but the fact that some of the limelight was shared by mainland director Wang Xiaoshuai reflected the general perception that Asian films, performers and producers are big news.
Wang's Shanghai Dreams - which traces the movement of workers from Shanghai to Guizhou in the 1960s - picked up the Cannes Jury Award and the director said it was a special moment for him, coming in the year that China celebrates 100 years of cinema. 'I hope that in the next 100 years we will have more freedom to make the films we want,' he said.
The annual Hong Kong night was held on Carlton Beach and attracted about 800 guests, among them jury member John Woo who caught up with friends Tony Leung Ka-fai and Simon Yam Tat-wah - in town to promote Johnnie To Kei-fung's triad thriller Election which was in the running for the festival's top prize. The party held at the same venue to celebrate the 100th birthday was a muted affair - with organisers promising bigger and better things when the festival circuit takes in Venice in August.
Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi - much loved in France - was on hand over the fortnight to present Princess Raccoon, a role that clearly helped prepare her for her part in the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha. The film, with a note in the press kit from Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann, has pretensions to be a Japanese Moulin Rouge, but ultimately it's a cultural mishmash that doesn't work.
A traditional Japanese play with song elements and told as a kind of fairy tale, Princess Raccoon has Zhang singing in a variety of styles from western operetta to rap. That might be OK, except that in this Japanese production Seijin Suzuki - the ageing cult director from the 1960s - appeared to have crafted a film for his domestic market.
This year there were more Asian films in the various Cannes sections than ever. According to Variety European bureau chief and Asian film specialist, Derek Elley, most appealing were the South Korean entries: Kim Jee-woon's gangland genre film A Bittersweet Life, and Im Sang-soo's The President's Last Bang, a black comedy about the assassination of general Park Chung-hee 20 years ago by his own intelligence chief.
