Siao Yu Siao Yu had Ang Lee's name on it, and that's all I ever need to be interested in a film. For this particular movie, Lee co-wrote the movie with Sylvia Chang, the director. I had yet to see a Chang film and was eager to check this one out.
The movie is about Siao Yu, a young girl (19 or 20?) who lives in America and needs a green card. To get one, her and her boyfriend Giang Wei scheme to marry her to a down on his luck writer named Mario Moretti, played by Daniel J. Travanti. Moretti has gotten in gambling debt with the mob (Big Pussy in a small role!) and takes on this marriage plot when Siao Yu and Giang Wei shell out $10,000. Moretti and Siao Yu are forced to live with each other to keep up appearances for immigration.
Giang Wei and Moretti's ex-wife float in and out of the movie, sometimes being helpful, but usually being jealous and antagonistic. These supporting characters just seem to be there to add a little bit of difficulty to Siao Yu's plight, and just aren't all that great in my opinion. Fortunately the leads are wonderful enough to carry this thing on through. Travanti in particular carries a Gene Hackman like demeanor through the movie which I rather liked.
One guesses the path of the movie reasonably early on. It's one of the types where two very different people that are having some hard times come together and form a nice friendship as they learn from one another. It shortly begins to feel like a father daughter sort of thing as Siao Yu's boyfriend gets more and more emotionally abusive.
A nice little movie that I liked quite a bit. Nothing too inventive, but really well executed with some very good performances. A lot of fun watching these characters grow.
vs
Happy End I had never even heard of director Ji-Woo Jung, so this was a match up of new discoveries for me.
The movie is about a cuckolded husband named Ki Min, played by Min-sik Choi (the lead of
Oldboy) and his wife, Bora, played by Do-yeon Jeon.
Ki Min has gotten into a rut of laziness. He is unemployed and spends his time reading in a used bookstore. Bora, on the other hand, is the principal (?) of a school and obviously resents her husband's lack of effort. When we start the film we understand that the affair has lasted quite a while as we observe the distance between the two of them.
There are good performances in this film and some wonderfully shot sex scenes, but other than that the movie just didn't leave me all that enthusiastic about it. I guess I just didn't really understand what the film was going for in it's third act, and worse, didn't really care. I feel like it was trying to be provocative and edgy....like it was trying to say big important things. I just think it misses the mark.
The Verdict
Siao Yu isn't one of the better films I've seen in this thing, and
Happy End is far from being one of the worst. Still, this was a reasonably easy decision for me.
Siao Yu moves forward.