Chinese ingenue Zhang Ziyi is already an award-winning veteran of acclaimed films, including "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," which made her a cult favorite around the world. As the star of Zhang Yimou's long-awaited "House of Flying Daggers," in a special screening out of competition, she is the fragile-looking but steely blind revolutionary in a Tang Dynasty fantasy/action epic.
Director Zhang, best known for "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Red Sorghum," comes late to the martial arts genre (he previously made only one attempt, "Hero"). In any case, "House of Flying Daggers" features astonishing set pieces that rival the work of the late Hong Kong pioneer King Hu, makes it seem like he's been waiting to strut his stuff until other directors had exhausted their powers in the genre. Zhang, the man who launched the career of Gong Li, has a talent for showcasing his actresses, and Zhang Ziyi excels in a role that calls for a dancer's grace combined with acrobatic prowess and seductive wiles.
Less successful in a showcasing role is European favorite Isild Le Besco, the star of Benoit Jacquot's "A Tout de Suite" ("Right Now"), screening in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival. A pouting nymphette with a statuesque figure and a waist-length blond mane, she is exceptionally blank as the upper-class college girl who goes on the run to Morocco with her new boyfriend, a bank robber. In conceiving of the character as a woman rendered almost catatonic by adversity and eventual abandonment, Jacquot didn't do Le Besco any favors, and her already limited range as an actress is reduced to the occasional trembling of her sexy upper lip.
This is the year of the political film, and some of the most intriguing are by master directors. Senegal's Ousmane Sembene is represented by the film "Moolaade" ("Protection"), his first movie in five years. There's been an outcry by critics and trade publications because it was screened in the festival's Un Certain Regard section, rather than the main competition. (Un Certain Regard is often devoted to screening first-time films, experimental techniques and progressive trends showing up in the work of established directors but not yet recognized in mainstream cinema.)
Acknowledged as one of this year's standout films, "Moolaade" tells the story of one woman's resistance to her village tradition of female circumcision, referred to as "purification," by giving asylum to four little girls who hope to escape the ritual. Sembene's message is not a didactic rant, but a complex, emotional tale of heroism and family dynamics featuring a riveting performance by Fatoumata Coulibaly as the mother who takes on the entire male power structure of her village to save the girls.
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