Qiu yue (1992)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Clara Law

Writer:

Eddie Ling-Ching Fong (writer)

Release Date:

7 October 1993 (Netherlands)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

Twentysomething Japanese tourist, Tokio, comes to Hong Kong looking for good cusine. He does all that the tourist is expected to do...

Plot Keywords:

Hong Kong

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Masatoshi Nagase	...	Tokio
Pui-Wai Li	...	Li Pui Wai
Choi Siu Wan	...	Granny
Maki Kiuchi	...	Miki
Suen Ching Hung	...	Wai's Boyfriend
Sung Lap Young	...	Wai's Father
Tsang Yuet Guen	...	Wai's Mother
Chu Kit Ming	...	Wai's Brother
Ang Ching Yee	...	Student
Yue Sui Ting	...	Student
Ngai Wai Man	...	Detective
Lee Yee Ping	...	Hotel Woman

Also Known As:

Autumn Moon (Hong Kong: English title)
Chau yuet (Hong Kong: Cantonese title)

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

Hong Kong | Japan

Language:

Cantonese | Japanese | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:L | Sweden:11

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Company:

Eizo Tanteisha

Movie Connections:

References Bambi (1942)

A Quiet, Small and Affecting Gem

This is my favorite Asian film and perhaps my favorite film amongst a select group of others. It only recently {Late 07} became available on DVD and I have only just now got round to watching it-- for the first time in over 10 years since I first viewed it on late night TV. The first viewing was some sleep addled night when it seared itself onto my cerebellum with striking resonance and jutted out as a film that I immediately took to. I'm pleased to report it's lost none of its power for me and in fact I am even more moved and touched by it now. It's often hard to describe how such small, little known pictures can strike such a cord.

I suppose the most resonant element is that simply it is a minute, spare, human picture and while it espouses larger universal themes of migration, identity, nationality and generations, it remains true to a core individual spirit of the characters and their displacement and cultural mesh as they wrestle with their place in a world in constant flux. But not only that, they wrestle with their own discord and disharmony amidst personal situations which they ultimately wish to not define who they are. The Hong Kong backdrop lends the film power by echoing the sparsity and hollowness that one feels in weightlessness and rootlessness, a perpetual upheaval that sadly strips away our identities. Further irony can even be attached with the story of Hong Kong itself, it's own history. Hong Kong appears alone, isolated and empty to match the feelings of the characters, simple, elegant, spare and affecting, it's a sharply alienating vision.

There's a pervasive sense of the individual adrift and astray from an anchor that states who we are, where we come from and who we should be. The central characters here are still exploring this and redefining and searching for an identity that doesn't limit or confine their spirit, no matter what their situation dictates must be their next move-- they struggle for an assertion of their true selves. I suppose, to cut short here, this gels with me not only because I have my own sort of mesh in background and displacement growing up in different countries and constantly being uprooted but moreover because like these characters I have that constant ache, that search and that parallel of still being over just has been.

But for all this thematic talk Autumn Moon never forgets to be a simple, singular film about two souls who touch each others lives in an inexorable manner that neither will soon forget. Upon end with the celebrations of the August Moon we are left with a subtle reminder of this. It's funny how sometimes the smallest of pictures can come along and touch you and seem to say the kinds of things you've felt and do so so poignantly and concisely that it just marks some kind of definition of who you are and what moves you. Often with these very touching personal films it becomes hard to elaborate just what so deeply touches you, moving into the realm of emotion without words, thoughts just a transcendent, unspoken purity in appreciation, more physical and spiritual.

I think there is a shared sensibility in this picture with such films as Lost in Translation for example and to a lesser extent American Beauty. They both share a sensibility that suggests identity within a world in constant flux and characters that wrestle with the confines of their own personal and national identity within the boundaries set out in the film. Both films offer up characters that are dislocated not so much physically but more importantly emotionally-- this dissatisfaction and cultural limbo and ennui is offset against their immediate geographical position. This in a sense determines their immediate decision making process but there's always that overall, all encompassing humanistic base level thought process that drives them to the conclusion that these destinies we arrive at through geographical standing, while not determining who we are, are boundaries we adhere to not out of familiarity but out of a sense of cultural and sociological unrest. Meaning that while we are dissatisfied with notions of migration and upheaval they are a necessary evil of an ever changing world which always seeks to confine, compartmentalize and define us before we have a chance to find out who we really are.