ASIAN FILMS AT BIFF 2002: SYNOPSES All information taken from the Brisbane International Film Festival website
Japan
ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU
All About Lily Chou-Chou smartly nails down the absurdity of growing up in Japan's pervasive pop/cyber-culture. Fourteen-year-old Yuichi is miserable. Bullied daily, his only escape is the website he has built, dedicated to his favourite popstar, Lily Choyu-Chou. Through the anonymity of the site, he shares his fears and secrets with a friend he knows only as 'Blue Cat'. Lily Chou-Chou climaxes in a fatal collision between the real and the virtual, a final logging-off of innocence.
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PISTOL OPERA
Japanese master Suzuki Seijun is back with this surreal, boldly theatrical rewrite of his 1967 hit Branded To Kill. Miyuki Minazaki, aka the Stray Cat, is ranked number three by the Killer's Guild. While on a mission, she is shot by a fellow killer, the Teacher. She succeeds in taking him out, and discovers that the top killers in the Guild are engaged in a power struggle. Tangled in a web of betrayal and murder, Miyuki can trust no one.
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A TENDER PLACE
'On 9 October, my then five-year-old daughter Yuka disappeared.' The opening narration of this extraordinary film goes straight to the heart of the matter. Kasumi's daughter goes missing while Kasumi and her family are holidaying with her ex-lover and his wife. Kasumi cannot get over the idea that Yuka is alive somewhere, and keeps returning to the resort each year to look for clues. Utterly engrossing and extremely moving, this is a masterpiece.
Miike @ Midnight
Perhaps the hottest and certainly the most prolific Asian director on the scene today. But Miike Takeshi's films have hardly been seen in this country (Audition screened at BIFF in 1998 and it was one damn fine, creepy film!). The Festival attempts to redress this omission with some favourites from this Japanese gender-bender. Expect violence, fun and the unexpected.
DEAD OR ALIVE
Radical Yakuza thriller that gleefully tramples on all rules of form and structure. Non-stop action featuring sodomy, the world's longest line of coke, a gay knife throwing act in a girlie bar, a murder and a restaurant massacre -and that's just the first reel! Miike's talent for spiking affecting drama with wild and crazy humour has never been sharper as he drags us deliriously to the devastating finale.don't let anyone tell you how it ends!
DEAD OR ALIVE 2
Only Miike Takeshi could come up with a 'sequal' that parodies its predecessor. This time Aikawa Sho and Takeuchi Riki play long-separated boyhood friends who meet up when one assassinates the man the other has been ordered to kill. They decide to retire and return to their home to set up an orphanage. Meanwhile their more recent past is catching up with them and the only question is how they will die.
THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS
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RAINY DOG
Shot entirely in Taiwan, and mostly in Chinese, Rainy Dog is a love letter to Taipei. It's full of hate, murder and revenge but who said love letters have to smell of roses? Aikawa Sho is back as a yakuza in exile, working as a hitman for a triad boss. A former girlfriend dumps a small boy she says is his son with him. Not only the definitive bad parenting movie but the coolest rain-soaked hitman thriller ever.
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Korea
ASAKO IN RUBY SHOES
A wistful melodrama that plays with the myths of romantic love. U-in, who lives in Seoul, is a socially inadequate, sexually frustrated paper-pusher, an embarrassment to his family. His only diversion is the World Wide Web. Aya, in Tokyo, takes a job as a webcam girl to try and earn enough money to escape her family, calling herself 'Asako'. When U-in tries to recreate the girl of his dreams online, he and Aya meet in cyberspace.
THE BUTTERFLY
A woman named Anna arrived in a city affected by lethal acid rain in search of the 'oblivion virus' - a virus rumoured to erase memories. An agency provides two staff to help her: a virus guide who tracks outbreaks and rushes clients to seek infection and a chauffeur, an orphan who is desperate to find some trace of his origins. A powerful dystopian vision of a future where amnesia is salvation.
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ONE FINE SPRING DAY
Anyone who has been through a break-up will relate to this gorgeous, abstract film, starring two of Korea's hottest young talents. Lee Sang-wu is a sound-recordist who specialises in rare, subtle sounds. When radio producer Han Eun-su hires him to record delicate sounds like snow falling on bells, they begin a bumpy love affair. The elusive subtleties of love are sketched in the tiniest gradations in this slow, graceful film with a quietly forceful personality.
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TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKNO Revenge flick meets Robocop in this riot of bizarre, fevered images set to a Saint-Sa'ns-meets acid-techno soundtrack. A schoolgirl prostituting herself for pocket money runs foul of her school teacher, a monstrous ogre who buys her services, makes her pregnant, kills her, and then hires three men to chop her up. A mysterious onlooker takes away the pieces and reconstructs the girl as the ultimate phallic killing machine. But the desire for revenge still burns in her non-mechanical brain...
China
HAPPY TIMES
A bittersweet comedy from the director of Raise the Red Lantern. Zhao is a middle-aged bachelor who thinks he's finally met the woman of his dreams. He leads her to believe he is the owner of a hotel, so she agrees to marry him - begging him to give her blind step-daughter a job in the hotel. To keep up the charade, he sets the girl up as a masseuse in an abandoned warehouse and has his friends pose as clients.
THE ORPHAN OF ANYANG
A realistic depiction of the seamier side of life in China, dosed with wit, humour, and optimism. In desperation, Feng abandons her baby, leaving a note saying that she will pay the person who cares for it. Yu Dagang, a middle-aged, newly unemployed factory worker, finds the baby, and decides to accept the money. He and Feng grow close and form a sort of family, but then Feng's boss, a gangster, discovers he has an incurable disease and would like an heir... 
SEAFOOD
Seafood begins with a young woman arriving at a resort in winter, apparently to commit suicide. She meets a strange, excitable cop who makes it his business to revive her will to live... but their relationship is fraught and edgy. Provocatively written and superbly acted, Seafood delights in taking the viewer by surprise, with twists and unexpected shifts in direction. A superb, idiosyncratic indie feature about the real versus the fake, from novelist Zhu Wen.
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Hong Kong
JULY RHAPSODY
Lam Yui-Kwok is a high school teacher facing a mid-life crisis, daily resisting the advances of one of his pupils. One day his wife tells him that their old school teacher Mr Seng - the father of their eldest son - is dying. Conflicted, she leaves to sort out her feelings. For Lam it is the final straw, and it looks like an affair with his student may be unavoidable. Is history about to repeat itself? Anna Hui's latest film is serene and impressive.
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Taiwan
MILLENNIUM MAMBO
This is brilliantly original filmmaking from Hou Hsiao-hsien about lives and loves in new-millennium Taipei. Growing up too fast, Vicky (beyond sexy) moves to the city and shacks up with a loser on the fringes of the rave scene. His fanatical jealousy drives her crazy, so she escapes to the arms of a gangster who treats her like a best friend. Stunningly washed in neon colours, this is the freshest approach yet to the media generation's coming of age.
MIRROR IMAGE
Lin Tung-ching isn't happy. He's been forced to take over his father's pawnshop. His girlfriend Eiko keeps him company, but she's hung up on the fact his lifeline was erased in an accident. He likes the idea that he's cheating fate, but she's obsessed with finding a way to read his future. Maybe that's why he starts having secret meetings with a female customer... Packed with flaky characters, romantic longings, and droll obsessions, this is a rare pleasure.
A ONE AND A TWO
A funny, deeply touching account of family life in modern Taipei. Everything goes wrong at once for NJ Jian. His computer company is failing, he runs into a lost love at his mother-in-law's wedding reception, his wife goes off to follow a guru, his son is in trouble at school, and his daughter has started dating! Masterfully crafted, with evident warmth for the characters, this worldly and wise vision of life earned Edward Yang the Best Director prize at Cannes.
Thailand
JAN DARA
Born into a wealthy family in Bangkok, Jan grows up so hated by his father that he questions his real parentage. The feeling is mutual - his womanising father forces himself on every woman in the household, and Jan is disgusted. But when fate, and one particular unwanted pregnancy, upsets the balance of power, Jan risks becoming the man he most despises. Based on the most erotic novel in Thai literature. 
Sri Lanka
THIS IS MY MOON
The horrors of the Sri Lankan civil war are given quiet and deep consideration against the backdrop of a simple love story in this highly acclaimed film. A beautiful young Tamil woman meets a deserter from the Sri Lankan army. Mistaking his brief interest in her for a commitment, she follows him home to his village. Her arrival causes enormous ructions in the village, which has been devastated by the war. Honest and effective.
Indonesia
WHISPERING SANDS
A poetic, beautifully filmed family drama set against the backdrop of political conflict. Berlian, a possessive single mother, has struggled to provide for her daughter, Daya (Indonesian teen idol Dian Sastrowardoyo), since her husband left years before. Daya constantly rebels against her mother's strict rules, and in response Berlian becomes ever more protective. Forced to flee from their coastal home, mother and daughter set out across the sands for a peaceful life elsewhere.
H E R O I C * C I N E M A
http://www.heroic-cinema.com