Silk (Screen Daily Review)

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Silk (Screen Daily Review)

Postby dleedlee » Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:46 pm

Silk


Lee Marshall in Cannes 05 June 2006 04:00

Written and directed by Chao-Pin Su. Taiwan 2006. 118 mins.

Reportedly the most expensive film ever shot in Taiwan at $6m, Silk begins promisingly but ends up as a curiously inert Asian shocker.

Part of the problem is that Silk is not content just to be a horror movie – its schmaltzy love plot and portentous life-after-death psychobabble are presumably designed to broaden the filmÕs audience appeal, but end up diluting its core fright business.

Still, SilkÕs pan-Asian cast should give it a leg up in Hong Kong, mainland China, Korea and Japan, and box office could turn out to be resilient, despite the filmÕs lack of genre backbone. Prospects outside of Asia look dim, however, as Silk is too smooth for niche horror markets and too hokey for the arthouse.

The premise is neat: a secret team with links to the Taiwanese government has succeeded in capturing the ghost of a 13-year-old boy, first noted by a spook-chasing photographer who meets a sticky end after the spirit shows up in one of his exposures. Soon Building 17, the sinister, isolated apartment block where the sighting took place, is cordoned off, and the boyÕs home – a bare room in an apartment on the top floor – becomes a glass-walled ghost-watching observatory, staffed by a team presided over by disabled scientist Hashimoto (Yosuke Eguchi). Against the wishes of his tough but sexy assistant Su Yuen (Barbie Hsu), Hashimoto drafts in local detective and marksman Ye Chi-tung (Chang Chen, a Wong Kar-wai regular), whose razor-sharp eyesight and legendary lip-reading abilities may solve the mystery of who the boy was.

Sentimental chords, highlighted by Peter KamÕs lush score, are struck by YeÕs relationship with girlfriend Du Jia-wei (Karena Lam, wasted here) and his coma-bound mother. But a brewing conflict between Ye and a jealous Su suffers an abrupt end when she becomes the ghost boyÕs second victim: a shame, because pop star Hsu has the presence (and the looks) of a Ziyi Zhang. Once sheÕs out of the picture what tension thereÕs left resides in HachimotoÕs sparring with his ministry boss (who wants to take him off the job) and YeÕs slow uncovering of the ghost boyÕs tear-jerking backstory.

The filmÕs title refers to the strand of silk that ghosts apparently secrete: a device that seems to have been chosen purely for its FX potential. A barely comprehensible tech substructure is founded on the multi-purpose ÒMenger SpongeÓ, a small cube that not only defies gravity, but captures energy and – when sprayed on the eyes in handy aerosol form – allows researchers to see invisible spirit forms.

There is some comfort in the polished look of the exercise, the result of a collaboration between veteran Hong Kong DoP Arthur Wong (Ultraviolet, The Floating Landscape) and equally experienced Japanese production designer Yohei Taneda (Kill Bill). WongÕs work here has a limpid, photographic, Chris Doyle quality, and Taneda excels himself in the design of Building 17, turning a modern apartment block into a creepy haunted house. And the special effects are professional enough. But although there are some gory moments, the film lacks the sheer psychic tension of Asian horror classics.



Production companies

CMC Enterprises, Unit 9 Pictures



International sales

CMC Entertainment

Producer

Ming Tu

Executive Producers

Huang Chin-wen

Jimmy Huang

Cinematography

Arthur Wong

Production design

Yohei Taneda

Editor

Cheung Kai-fai



Music

Peter Kam

Main cast

Chang Chen

Yosuke Eguchi

Karena Lam

Barbie Hsu

Berlin Chen

Chang Chun-ning
???? Better to light a candle than curse the darkness; Measure twice, cut once.
Pinyin to Wade-Giles. Cantonese names file
dleedlee
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