NEW YORK CITY—While the highlight at the Asian American International Film Festival held at the Asia Society was the centerpiece film "Dark Matter," starring Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep and Aiden Quinn, another film—with a lesser-known cast—gathered much praise, continuing the buzz about it and the attention it received at Sundance.
"Year of the Fish," written and directed by New York University Film School alum David Kaplan, was welcomed with much fanfare.
Kaplan takes the Chinese "Cinderella"-like tale "Ye Xian," from the eighth-century Tang Dynasty, and transplants it into modern-day New York City Chinatown.
The film stars newcomer An Nguyen as the lead character Ye Xian, a young Chinese woman who is brought to the United States through the underground slave trade to work at a massage parlor in Chinatown.
She promptly refuses to reduce herself to the acts of her fellow workers at the parlor. Consequently, the parlor owner designates her as the cleaning and cooking lady of the house.
Her tribulations are ever increased as she tries to maintain her sense of dignity and self-respect. As she endures these difficulties, a magical fish and an old woman with supernatural powers named Auntie Augga come to play in a "Cinderella"-like conclusion, leading this fairy tale to its happy ending.
Kaplan maintains the magic of this Chinese tale by using the film technique "rotoscoping," which has been seen in recent films such as Richard Linklater's "Waking Life."
Through this technique, live-action film is painted or traced over, frame-by-frame, to dive between the worlds of realism and animation.
This in-between world allows for the story to maintain a strong sense of believability while enabling the spirit of magical fish, for example, to come alive on screen.
As "Year of the Fish" finishes it run through the 2007 Film Festival circuits for the rest of the year, it is certain to garner more praise and generate more buzz.
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