More peeks at Cannes Film Festival entries as the glorious cinephile wet dream-come-true nears its latest iteration.
First up is a scene dug up by Quiet Earth from the next film by Bruno Dumont, “Hors Satan” (formerly titled “L’empire“), which follows a homeless religious man and the local farm girl who feeds him. Sounds precious, right? Not so fast — apparently this man murders and partakes in miracles! Typical Dumont territory. We covered it in our “18 Foreign Films of 2011” piece, mentioning our bated breath in regards to the finished product. While “The Life of Jesus” was great, everything since has been rather middling, with some staff members out for blood after sitting through “Twentynine Palms.” That said, “Hadewijch” (which we’ll always forget how to pronounce) was a great and better-late-than-never return to form. Even though the new clip is short, it still showcases Dumont’s knack for simple-yet-strong camera work and tense pacing. The dialogue-free scene isn’t enough to tell if his previous outing was a fluke for not, but it definitely gives us some hope.
“Wu Xia” comes from popular Chinese filmmaker Peter Chan, who was part of the omnibus sequal “3 Extremes II” and responsible for the greatest movie title in existence, “He Ain’t Heavy… He’s My Father.” We’re not too familiar with his work, but earlier this year Kim Ji-woon cited his 1996 film “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” as inspiration for his next self-written feature. A remake of the Shaw Brothers’ “The One Armed Swordsmen,” the update centers on Liu Jin-xi (Donnie Yen, “Ip Man“) whose quiet life shatters when a detective comes to town. Twitch Film shares the trailer, and it’s a highly stylized martial arts pic, complete with slow-mo swings to the jaw, teeth flying to the camera, roof running, and inside-body shots. It looks exactly how you’d think, and though the trailer is in Chinese, it’s the action that counts. And it has certainly impressed the folks over at The Weinstein Company who announced today that they’ve picked up the film. No release date has been set but there’s the official synopsis:
In the late Qing Dynasty, Liu (Donnie Yen) is a papermaker, leading a simple life with his wife Ayu (Tang Wei) and their two sons. Into their remote village comes Detective Xu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who is investigating the deaths of two bandits during a robbery. Xu quickly realizes that the incident in question was no ordinary botched robbery – and his dogged inquiry threatens to dredge up the dark secrets of Liu’s buried past, threatening not only Liu and his family, but the entire village.