Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Didi’s Dreams [Didi’s Dream]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Taiwan/China 2017)

Just in time for summer, Didi’s Dreams [吃吃的愛] is the cinematic equivalent of a glass of lemonade: cool, refreshing, and sweet with a slightly tart afterburn, it’s a real treat on a hot day. Too bad its North American run is an extremely limited one.

An intentionally fluffy melodrama, the story follows the misadventures of its titular character, Didi (Dee Hsu), a hungry young twenty-something wannabe actress. Determined to catch her big break, she auditions for anything: a probiotic commercial, a model on a QVC-type shopping network, an extra in a zombie flick, a female wrestler. She’s not exactly picky, calculated, or disciplined about getting there—she just wants to be famous. To her credit—and the dismay of many a producer and director—she’s earnest in her efforts.

Didi’s boyfriend, Xiao-kou (Scar Kim), literally rolls along with her, carting her around on his scooter. He proves to be her rock when she receives devastating news from her doctor (Chuan-cheng Tao).

Didi has a sister, Lingling (Lin Chi-lin), who also happens to be an actress—a famous one like Didi aims to be. Some bad blood between them after their mother died, shown mainly through flashbacks, caused a falling out. As a result, they haven’t spoken in years. A scandal, a TV talk show, and a twist of fate (or maybe just a publicity stunt) bring them together—cast as sisters in a major motion picture.

While all this goes on, Didi has a recurring dream about Chunmei (also played by Hsu), her psychic alterego who runs an interplanetary noodle shop in, um, outer space. Her clientele is a creature cantina of sorts. Chunmei can’t seem to get over losing her love, and it’s affecting her broth. One particular customer, an astronaut (Zifeng Li), holds her attention. While not immediately clear, a connection to Didi comes through as the story progresses.

Director Kevin Tsai keeps it mostly light here, serving up a tangy mix of comedy, tragedy, and fantasy in a wink-wink soap opera way—more Telemundo than Dynasty. Tsai and Ming-Yi Liao’s screenplay is not at all deep, but it’s packed with surprises despite a few sappy clichés. I like where the narrative goes.

Visually, Didi’s Dreams is a colorful stunner, loaded with cute faces, vivid imagery, snazzy sets, and cool costumes. Jing-Pin Yu’s cinematography glistens; it’s slick without going overboard. I can’t imagine enjoying this film as much without it. It all looks great on the big screen—my favorite scenes are at the noodle shop and that probiotic commercial.

Yes, there are flaws. However, the whole thing is put together so well, I easily forgave them. I could’ve done without the remake of “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s over the closing credits, but the analogy is apt. Didi’s Dreams is a fun little sparkler that caught me off guard.

With Jin Shijia, David Chao, William Shen, Vincent Liang, Bruce Chen, Junior Han, Gigi Lin, Vila Fan, Yu-Lin Shen, Hank Chen, Tender Huang, Riva Chang, Berry Wen-i Kuo

Production: Cheng Cheng Films

Distribution: Le Vision Pictures, Atom Cinema, Kbro HK Limited

91 minutes
Not rated

(ShowPlace ICON) B-

http://www.chengchengfilm.com/didis-dreams-1/

Amélie [Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(France/Germany 2001)

“I like to look for things no one else catches.”

—Amélie Poulain

The Associate Board of Chicago International Film Festival presented a special screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, a sumptuous, romantic fantasy of a film that looks as good as it feels. I’ve seen it many times. It’s unrealistic, maybe even a bit silly; yet, it always leaves me smiling. I couldn’t pass up the chance to see it again.

Young Amélie Poulain (Flora Guiet) has a lonely childhood: her odd parents are overreactive, overprotective, and emotionally distant, preferring to rearrange the contents of their toolbox and purse than pay much attention to her. It’s so bad that her heart races when her father, Raphaël (Rufus), a physican, touches her during her annual checkup—a narrator (André Dussollier) explains that all she wants is a hug.

Her father misdiagnoses Amélie with a heart condition. As a result, she’s kept inside from the world and homeschooled by her mother, Amandine (Lorella Cravotta), a rather hysterical woman with a nervous tic in her eye. Amélie retreats into her imagination to deal with it all. Her home environment is so stifling, it makes her pet goldfish, Blubber, jump out of its bowl in multiple suicide attempts. A separate suicide at Notre-Dame, this one successful, changes Amélie’s life, leaving her father to raise her alone without any siblings, which her mother apparently wanted for her. C’est la vie.

Fast forward to 1997: grown up Amélie (Audrey Tautou) is a stylish but shy waitress at a café in the 18th Arrondissement of Paris—artsy Montmartre. While home alone (as usual) in her flat one evening—August 31, 1997—a TV news report of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s fatal car accident jolts Amélie, causing a chain reaction that leads her directly to a rusty box of a boy’s trinkets from the 1950s hidden in her bathroom wall. She discerns the identity of the family who lived in her flat back then and devises an elaborate scheme to reunite the boy, now an older man (Maurice Bénichot), with his “treasures” while staying completely anonymous and out of view. It works, bringing happiness to him and in the process to Amélie.

Thrilled with her accomplishment, she decides that her life’s work will be making others happy—in her own amusingly roundabout, always off to the side way. Amélie, you see, prefers to be invisible. She describes what she sees to a blind man (Jean Darie), kidnaps her father’s garden gnome to inspire him to travel, mails a bunch of fake love letters to her landlord (Yolande Moreau) whose husband abandoned her decades ago, and fixes up a hypochondriac coworker (Isabelle Nanty) with a volatile café patron (Dominique Pinon) who just got dumped.

Amélie’s covert approach goes swimmingly for others, but not so much for her own happiness—something she discovers once she encounters Nino Quincampoix (Mathieu Kassovitz), a handsome and quirky stranger who works at a porn shop and collects discarded photos from a photo booth at Gare de l’Est. Amélie can’t bring herself to show herself to Nino, let alone speak to him through a door. Can her neighbor, “the Glass Man” (Serge Merlin), talk some sense into her?

Everything about Amélie dazzles. Just like earlier films Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, Amélie is a treat, showcasing Jeunet’s distinct buoyantly surreal visual and narrative style. He’s more sophisticated here, though. He throws in offbeat narrative sidebars that tell about his characters. With wide shots, unexpected angles, a pallet of vividly dark colors, and a mix of elements from different decades, he concocts an idealized version of Paris that highlights all that makes it romantic and dreamy. It works well with Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography, which has a cool sepiatone air to it. My favorite shot is the one of Amélie literally dissolving into a puddle of water.

Tatou is wonderfully mischievous, emulating both Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Tinkerbell. You can’t help but fall for her as she turns the mundane into magnifique. Kassovitz, who comes off as a weirdo at first, capably metamorphoses Nino into a go-getter who turns out to be a great match for Amélie. Plus, he’s easy on the eyes.

122 minutes
Rated R

(Public Chicago) A

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.miramax.com/movie/amelie/

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1961)

“You musn’t give your heart to a wild thing. The more you do, the stronger they get, until they’re strong enough to run into the woods or fly into a tree. And then to a higher tree, and then to the sky.”

—Holly Golightly

So, “Audrey Hepburn is having breakfast at Tiffany’s”?! Why, yes, I would love to join her!

When Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies, and Paramount Pictures invited me to “fall in love again” for a special 55th anniversary screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in a select theater near me, well, I couldn’t say no. Until now, I’ve only seen it on my television or computer screen.

I admit, I’m a sucker for this film—even though it’s not the kind of thing I usually go for, and Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi was a terrible idea even if many films of the era did the same thing to get a big name involved. Whatever. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like this film. Directed by Blake Edwards and adapted for the screen by George Axelrod, Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a fine midcentury fairy tale. Set in Manhattan, Holly Golightly (Hepburn) leads a life full of the very trappings I imagined myself having as an adult: a cool apartment in a big city, great clothes, wicked accessories, lots of fashionable friends and acquaintances, wild parties, drinks all the time, travel plans, and generally risqué fun and fabulousness. I have some of them.

What’s brilliant about this story, though—and probably why it appeals to me—is its dark side. Nothing here is what it seems: what we see is a ruse—to use the words of O.J. Berman (Martin Balsam), Holly is a phony. Her life is phony. She puts on an act. It’s more than simply running away from her past, represented by ex-husband Doc (Buddy Ebsen) and his references to her former self, Lulamae. She’s not the naïve eccentric she would have everyone believe she is. She’s also not the high society sophisticate she presents, either: the apostrophe ‘s’ she adds to the name of her ideal escape (the store is called “Tiffany & Co.”) gives her away. Frankly, she’s not even true call girl material, however downplayed that part of her personality is (we’re only told that she gets fifty bucks for the powder room).

Like her dark sunglasses and the Halloween mask she steals from the five and dime with fellow phony Paul Varjak (George Peppard), Holly’s working a facade she hides behind. Holly is a product of Lulamae’s imagination; she left behind her life in Tulip, Texas, for a bigger, more exciting one. The problem is, she doesn’t seem to know exactly what she wants, bouncing carefreely from one half-baked plan to another. She’s afraid to commit to anything because doing so puts her in a vulnerable position. Why else would one call her cat, “Cat” (Orangie)? Oh, the poor slob without a name!

At the end of the story, Cat represents something different. Holly throws him out of the cab into the rain in a “bad” neighborhood. She realizes that she wants to belong somewhere, to someone. Ummm…Paul? I know Truman Capote wrote a different ending, and I tend to disdain a neat, happy Hollywood ending; but here, it’s perfect. I can’t see a better way to end this story. Sorry, Mr. Capote.

Three more things: Patricia Neal is fantastic as stylish girl “2E.” Henry Mancini’s score is the cherry on the top of this sundae—mmmmm! If I ever have two dogs, I’m naming them Sally Tomato (Alan Reed, who went on to be the voice of Fred Flintstone) and Mr. O’Shaunessy (Joseph J. Greene).

In 2012, the United States Library of Congress deemed Breakfast at Tiffany’s “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

114 minutes
Not rated

(Evanston Century) A

Fathom Events