Cyugoku no Chojin
Japan,
1997, 118 min
Shown in 1998
CREDITS
- dir
-
Takashi Miike
- prod
-
Toshiaki Nakazawa
- scr
-
Masa Nakamura
- cam
-
Hideo Yamamoto
- editor
-
Taiji Shimamura
- cast
-
Masahiro Motoko, Renji Ishibashi, Mako , Wang Li Li
- source
-
Sedic International Inc./Cinema de Cinema, 2-15-16 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0012, Japan. FAX: 81-3-5469-9379
- premiere
-
North American Premiere
OTHER
In a quirky new twist on buddy movies, an uptight salaryman with a laptop computer, an irritable yakuza hit man with a hair-trigger temper and a guide with an exceedingly poor memory wander through rural China in search of jade and a mythical village. Sent by his company to investigate a rare strain of the fabled green stone, the white-collared Wada blunders helplessly from one disaster to another, “helped” along by Uiji, the testosterone-fueled gangster who’s along to monitor the proceedings. Led by their preternaturally calm guide Shen, they face raging storms, roads that become rivers, remarkably hungry sheep, some rather potent mushrooms, a van unnervingly unattached to its parts and a boatman suspiciously over-attached to his six giant turtles. None of this, however, prepares them for their eventual destination, a village isolated from any political or cultural changes, where only mystery and myth exist, and where a blue-eyed Chinese girl teaches children to fly. Promising young director Takashi Miike, originally known for his innovative yakuza films, has surprisingly, and lovingly, combined anthropology documentaries with gangster flicks and created an endearingly loopy tale of slapstick comedy, magical realism and tender fantasy where the image of people burdened with fake wings, running to embrace the sky, remains the stuff that dreams, and film, are made of.
—Jason Sanders
FACTOID #188
According to an item in the 1969 Halloween edition of the Hollywood Reporter, Swedish director Bo Widerberg cancelled a Festival tribute at the last minute with a cryptic telegram from Stockholm that read, ’Sorry impossible to come. Must stay in bed.’
