HIFF
Mrs. Zhang, played by Carol Cheng, center, tends to
the lives of others in her noodle shop.
Patrons shop for hope
in ‘My Noodle Shop’This is the first in a series of reviews of the five feature films nominated for the Hawaii International Film Festival Maile Awards. One film will be reviewed each day through Friday. The winner, along with the Golden Maile for documentary films, will be announced at a HIFF awards ceremony Nov. 12. Tickets to the awards ceremony are $50. Call 528-HIFF for more information.
By Burl Burlingame
Star-BulletinMy Noodle Shop
WHEN disasters occur in Hollywood movies, they're over the top -- ocean liners turning turtle, lava spewing in Los Angeles, asteroids pulverizing the planet. These film force us to empathize with the survivors and non-survivors. How would we react when faced with an inversion of the stream of everyday life? Would we survive? Would we fold?
It's a gimmick, sure, a darn good one. Besides, it's often an excuse to slather on special effects. But the point should be the inner effect of the disaster, not the visual, visceral kick of the event itself.
For the dispirited folks who gather in Mrs. Zhang's two-bit Taipei noodle shop, the disaster has already happened. Former residents of Guilin, China, they've been displaced by Mao's armies in the late '40s, and have fled to Taiwan. It's not an asteroid, but it might as well have been. They've given up everything, lost everyone. They're making do in a "smelly mess" notable only "for earthquakes and typhoons." They're bummed.
Mrs. Zhang is sharp-tongued and grasping and getting brittle around the edges. Her family once had a fabulous, famous restaurant, she had been beautiful, her handsome husband was one of Chiang's army officers, and he rode, no kidding, a white horse.
Or did he?
Flashbacks to times in Guilin are unbearably golden. It's a place that grows rosier in reminiscence. The horse also figures in Mrs. Zhang's nightmares.
Also frequenting the shop is Mr. Lu, a gentle, booky type Mrs. Zhang once had a crush on, plus the former mayor and the principle landowner of Guilin, two proud men whose power have been snatched away. They've come to rely on her, a burden that nettles the prickly Mrs. Zhang.
Director Yang Xie's humidly claustrophobic vision of Taipei is as gritty and oppressive as the images of Guilin are fairy-tale airy. The story unfolds in bits of conversation and revealing circumstance, like the layers of a bitter onion. Although Chinese films can be overtly weepy, "My Rice Noodle Shop" is more smartly sentimental than mawkish.
Tech credits are resolute throughout. Cinematography by Jong Lin is impressive, coping equally with the breathtaking vistas of Guilin and the dank noodle shop interior. The screenplay, by Xie with Cindy Yang, is based on the novel "Blossom Bridge" by Kenneth Pai Hsien-Yung.
The real backbone of the film, however, is the extraordinary Carol Cheng as Mrs. Zhang. It's not a glamour role. Cheng sweeps through age realistically, becoming tighter-wound as she simultaneously unravels, and she's wan and fuzzy and edgy.
Cheng's star-power is absolutely absorbing. It's as good a performance as you're going to see from anyone this year, from either side of the Pacific.
Now showing
What: "My Noodle Shop"
4:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at the Palace Theatre on the Big Island
