NEW YORK—This particularly fine season continues. Some strong Asian entrants include Secret Sunshine from South Korea, directed by Lee Chang-dong, showing a woman and her young son moving to a new town after the death of the woman's husband. The mild manners underlying the woman's temperament become unpredictable when fate deals a cruel blow. Lead actress Jeon Do-yeon's performance deservedly won the Best Actress award at Cannes this year.
From Japan, Masayuki Suo's I Just Didn't Do It grows more and more engrossing, as a young man, unfairly accused of fondling a young girl on a subway train, fights for his right to be heard accurately. As he goes from hearing to hearing, the possibility of injustice winning out becomes more than probable. An indictment of the justice system—everywhere.
Mambo Girl, a modern Chinese film (Hong Kong 1957) by Yi Wen displays the musical gifts of star Grace Chang. Interspersed within the serious plot of a young woman who makes an unexpected discovery about her family ties are a myriad of mambo and other song-and-dance sequences echoing Hollywood musicals of the '50s. "Mambo Girl" is part of the Chinese Modern: A Tribute to Cathay Studios series showing at the Walter Reade Theater from October l0 to 16.
Stellet Licht (Silent Light) by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas is a somber but engrossing tale of a married man who falls in love with another woman in an isolated farming area in northern Mexico's Mennonite community. Powerful and elemental, it has the feel of early Ingmar Bergman films.
Ira Sachs' Married Life has a similar underlying theme to Stellet Licht, but oh what a difference in treatment in this rollicking serio-comedy. Against the vivid Pacific Northwest backdrop actors Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan try to second-guess the women in their lives (Patricia Clarkson and Rachel McAdams), to diverting and often hilarious effect.
In Brian De Palma's Redacted, we are brought in full force to a fictionalized presentation of a horrifying event in today's Iraq that many believe to have actually occurred. The exciting hand-held camera work creates a feeling of immediacy and reality.
The New York Film Festival runs through October 16th.
Diana Barth covers theater and film for various publications.