I managed to miss the TIFF screening for Locarno premiered Hotel by the River (our Nicholas Bell has been on a steady pace of covering every single Hong Sang-Soo entry on the site – here is his review) but caught up with it here in Pingyao. An effortless, melancholic film that doesn’t feel more appropriate in black-and-white is about reflection not as an individual, but as a group. Later in the day, I would meet up with another South Korean master filmmaker in Lee Chang-Dong – who was in attendance to offered a Masterclass for Burning(unfortunately no English translation). The interview was over before it began and a bit sloppy in terms of getting my question across as originally intended, but Chang-Dong (who remembered my random street hello during TIFF and appears to have a fondness for Quebec) was nonetheless thoughtful in his response.
I later assisted in a screening of Sundance winner Cathy Yan’s Dead Pigs. Jia Zhangke was on hand to present the film (he executive produced the film) along with the film’s producers and a pair of its stars. Here is video of the presentation.
I pulled the plug on the day with another New Generation China section offering in Yuan Qing‘s Three Adventures of Brooke (Venice’s Giornate degli Autori Competition title) – a title that our Tommaso Tocci gave a rave review for, which meant I was naturally to check this Rohmerian smattered triptych. I’ll be revisiting the film tomorrow with the filmmaker, but being a fan of this type of exercise (Hong Sang-soo’s In Another Country is a fine comparison) this doesn’t dwell on the what could have been but rather, the endless amount of possibilities depending on where your compass is pointed (here figuratively and spiritually) and the accompanying openness one allows for with a momentary drawback (in this case a flat tire in a foreign village backdrop in a pocket of Malaysia). When all the connections get catalogue and compounded, we come away feeling with a rather profound discourse on life, death and honesty.
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
