Moonlight

tuesday, september 1,  10:30 a.m. 

 

a Chinese movie .. Moonlight ...  lots of antiphonic singing of folk songs ..

well, the subtitles called it antiphonic .. choral, responsive singing .. in this case, of folk songs .. a young woman goes to where her foster father had collected folk songs 40 years earlier .. the film jumps back and forth between the 2 time periods .. well, more back than forth, though we always immediately know we're back in the present because the cell phone is immediately set to good use .. how there'd be a cell tower there isn't clear ..

the landscape against which the love story plays out is exquisite (as ever in chinese films) ..the acting always strikes me as, well, acting .. and i'm too much of a cynic to believe that people, even in china, and even 40 years ago, would sing while they worked .. but though the meaning of the lyrics was only as clear as the bizarre subtitles, the singing itself was lovely .. and i felt perfectly content to be sitting there

this evening, it'll be a japanese film .. about 3 couples aged sixty-ish ...

 

cinemoo in montreal