Another Saturday of cinema.....
Innocent is Simon Chung's first full-length film...every director has one....and it shows. The story is of a family who emigrates from Hong Kong to Toronto and then disintigrates. The story swirls around the teenage son and his coming to terms with his gay sexuality. The story plods along in Cantonese and English through a series of disappointments and betrayals until it finally stops. That's pretty much it.
But now for the good stuff. The video contains two bonus shorts from Simon Chung's previous work. Both are set in his native Hong Kong. The first, I'd actually seen many years ago as part of one of those gay video short compilations. "Simon's Beloved" tells the story of two adolescent friends as one faces the reality that he's about to be sent to boarding school in England. The time frame covers less than a 24-hour period, and climaxes on a night spent sleeping on a beach and a fateful kiss.
The second is called, "Life Is Elsewhere" and is a trinity of enigmatic vignettes strung together on the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. Amazing.
Buy the DVD, but buy it for the bonus films.
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