The BBC Four World Cinema awards took place on Thursday night for the best foreign language film to have been released in cinemas in the UK and three Asian films were in the nominations.
House of Flying Daggers led the Asian charge, making it into the 2005 selection due to its later release in the UK than in Asia. The Zhang Yimou fairy tale drew good reviews from the jury, who loved the Echo Dance scenes at the start of the film.
2046 from legendary director Wong Kar Wai was also nominated, but the jury weren’t as impressed. Slow moving and repetitive in parts, they weren’t all wowed as they watched through the film. They loved the robot women though! And of course, in both films, Zhang Ziyi.
The dark horse for the awards had to be the Thai entry, Tropical Malady. Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, it’s a story of two parts, the first a gay love story, and the second half, the hunting of a shaman in the rainforest. The jury gave mixed reviews for this one, not quite sure what to make of it.
Spain and France were represented respectively by The Sea Inside, a story about a quadriplegic who wishes to end his own life, and Look At Me, the story about the relationship between a father and his daughter.
But they were all trumped by the controversial movie, Downfall, which told the story of the last days of World War II and is probably the first film to really break the taboo of telling what Adolf Hitler did as it was based on books by those close to him.
It serves as no real surprise that House of Flying Daggers and 2046 didn’t win, although I did hope that one of them did. But to be honest, my own views are that the two films had too many flaws in them, and really I’d have been very surprised if they had won.
But for Asia to have three nominations out of six goes to show that there is good stuff coming out of Asian cinema. I continue to hope that it will continue.
Links:
BBC NEWS: Downfall Wins BBC World Film Gong
BBC Four World Cinema Awards