The film’s the thing at 27th annual festival

A John Cusack indie film about the widower of a Marine is a last-minute sub

It should be a festival of small pleasures this time around as the 27th Annual Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival opens Thursday, presenting an interesting batch of guests and films for its 2007 fall edition.

Already there's has been a unforeseen change, too late to make the program guide. Anderson Le, director of programming and avowed "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fan, was looking forward to seeing one of his pet events come to life, the audience-participation extravaganza "The Buffy Musical: Once More with Singing!" Unfortunately, however, 20th Century Fox has pulled the license for theatrical exhibition for all of its TV shows.

So in its place HIFF will screen "Grace Is Gone," the John Cusack indie drama that was one of the buzz-worthy entries at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Cusack plays the father of two girls and husband to a Marine stationed in Iraq. When he learns that his wife has been killed in combat, he can't bring himself to tell the his young daughters. Instead, he takes them on a field trip that inevitably ends with Grace's funeral.

With the help of writer-director James Strouse, Cusack wanted to make a film that showed how the conflicts in the Middle East directly affect Americans back home, reacting in particular to the Bush administration's policy of banning footage of caskets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Grace" screens in place of the Buffy musical at 9 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Dole Cannery multiplex.

The festival's executive director, Chuck Boller, was hoping that Cusack could attend, but he's shooting another movie and won't be able to.

Instead, HIFF's celebrity quotient will be filled by Joan Chen and Lee Jun-ki. Chen is arriving from her home in San Francisco to receive the festival's Achievement in Acting award as well as appear at the screening of her Australian-made film, "The Home Song Stories," a feature nominee for the Halekulani Golden Orchid award (see review at left).

Festival organizers hope that the young Lee Jun-ki will draw the kind of attention that greeted Korean heartthrob Shin Hyeon-joon, who brought giddy fans from here and abroad to last year's festival.

Lee will receive the festival's Rising Star award; his film, "May 18," is nominated for a Golden Orchid. Lee will appear at the screening of his film, at 8 p.m. Friday at the Hawaii Theatre. The movie will play again 9 p.m. Saturday at the Dole Cannery multiplex.

Lee's appearance came about after a meeting with his representative at the swanky Ritz Carlton in Shanghai during the city's own film festival in June. It made for a curious but ultimately successful meeting, as the back-and-forth went: HIFF group speaks in English to a translator, who translates the words into Japanese for Lee's rep's translator, who then re-re-translates everything into Korean.

Also, Asian Amercan filmmaker Justin Lin, who brought his career-making indie film "Better Luck Tomorrow" to the festival in '02, returns as a member of the studio system, having helmed "Annapolis" and "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" last year. He's coming with his latest project, "Finishing the Game," a mockumentary that follows a motley group of Bruce Lee wannabes back in 1973, when the real Lee unexpectedly died, leaving an unfinished movie behind (7:15 p.m. Oct. 23, Dole Cannery).

Lin, along with a select group of filmmakers, will also be making special school visits during the festival.

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Golden Orchid Feature Film Nominees

'The Drummer (Gu Zhan)'

8 p.m. Oct. 23 and 9:30 p.m. Oct. 24, Dole Cannery multiplex

When the screeners for the festival were meted out for review, the logic in handing me this one was, "You're a drummer, here's a movie about a drummer."

The synopsis read like a comedy, so I wasn't prepared for the serious, tense drama as director Kenneth Bi skillfully set up the story of brash rock drummer, Sid, who flees Hong Kong when a powerful gang leader, Stephen Ma (Kenneth Tsang), demands that both of Sid's hands be cut off in retaliation for sleeping with Ma's wife.

Sid is played by Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie Chan, as a typical rebellious and reactive young man for whom the Taiwan countryside is a prison. He's prevented from escaping by his father's right-hand man, Chiu (Roy Cheung), who combats his own boredom in adult education classes geared toward positive thinking and goal-setting.

Like Sid, I found myself somewhat impatient to move on. "Where's the drumming?" I thought.

Bi has the audacity to introduce a spiritual element to an otherwise stock gangster film when Sid awakens one morning and follows the sound of distant drumming into the mountains, where he encounters the Zen Drummers, who pound out rhythms on taiko.

He aims to join the troupe, in part because of his attraction to one of its members, Hong Dou (Angelica Lee). He informs its leader, Lan Jie, that he has talent, to which she responds, "We have no use for talent. Here, we strive to drum without drumming," which draws laughter from the youth.

He is nevertheless invited to join and is immersed, for the first time, in a disciplined way of life, in which his first "drum lessons" include hiking down the mountain for gasoline and heading to the river to fill a sack with 40 fist-size stones that become his burden to bear throughout his training.

The film is well paced and edited, and although there are moments of humor, the viewer cannot help but know this idyll cannot last while Ma still has a score to settle with the drummer.

For those who drum, the film will force you to consider the reasons you drum, and the way you go about it.

'The Home Song Stories'

7 p.m. Sunday, Hawaii Theatre

Help your mother get strong." An impressionable boy hears that from a woman adrift in life. But how much can someone so young do so much? It's the emotional dilemma in a powerful story that writer-director Tony Ayres tells with devastating results in this film based on his own life.

The combination of Ayres' script, cinematographer Nigel Bruck's superb wide-screen camerawork, and an excellent cast led by Joan Chen make "The Home Song Stories" an unforgettable film.

For its first half, it's Chen's luminous performance that carries the audience. She plays Rose, a Hong Kong nightclub singer yearning to find a man's love to anchor her aimless life, even after marrying an Australian sailor who takes her back to his country.

To Rose's two children, the boy Tom (Joel Lok) and older daughter May (Irene Chen), the man is just another in a long line of "uncles" that Rose has hooked up with throughout her life.

It's when Rose realizes that living by her wits and fading sex appeal is not enough, and ends up hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt, that the film's focus shifts to show how her nomadic and seemingly amoral lifestyle has affected her children.

Fine performances by Qi Yuwu (as a younger kitchen cook who becomes the next man in her life), Chen and especially Lok help round out this ultimately haunting story of a writer who looks back on his family life and still regrets not helping his mother enough.

"Foster Child"

1:30 p.m. Sunday and noon next Monday, Dole Cannery multiplex

Thelma is a professional mom. Her job, literally, is to be a foster mother to child after child, for which her family receives some financial support.

On this day she is to turn over 3-year-old John-John to his adoptive parents, who'll take him to San Francisco. Thelma, her husband and two teenage sons have cared for the boy since he was 2 months old -- they are clearly attached -- but this is the conclusion they all signed on for.

Thelma's husband is upset; the older boys, subdued. But Thelma just chatters on through her day, ever efficient, ever busy. Director Brillante Mendoza simply follows the family members around, allowing us into their humble tenement life, the better to appreciate its stark contrast with the privileged home soon to be John-John's.

The result, though, is to make us wonder when something is going to happen. Why, for example, are we spending so much time watching one of the boys struggle to open a can? A little more exposition would have better moved the story along.

But, finally, sadness and her circumstances catch up to Thelma, when she brings John-John to the upscale rooms of his new parents. She's overwhelmed, most clearly when she goes into the bathroom and can't figure out all the faucets and spouts. This we understand because we saw her bathe John-John outdoors, using a tub of cold water.

There's sorrow and meaning in "Foster Child," but it doesn't come until the last half-hour. You've got to be willing to invest in some slow moments to get to the emotional payoff.

Also nominated

» "A Love Sarong," from South Korea; 7 p.m. Oct. 24, Hawaii Theatre

» "Blind Mountain," from China; 8 p.m. Friday and 4:15 p.m. Oct. 25, both at Dole Cannery multiplex

» "May 18," from Korea; 8 p.m. Friday, Hawaii Theatre; 9 p.m. Saturday, Dole Cannery multiplex

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Golden Orchid Documentary Nominees

'Beautiful Son'

6 p.m. Friday and noon Oct. 24, Dole Cannery multiplex

The people involved here are all filmmaking pros and apparently never let a personal minute go by without committing it to digital memory. But they're also parents, ecstatic when they give birth to a beautiful boy, which of course had to be documented.

And distraught when, a couple of years later, the healthy, happy child took a turn toward the dreadful mystery of autism. But they left the camera running.

The result is "Beautiful Son," a gorgeously filmed documentary using the scantest of resources. When Don and Julianne King's son Beau was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, they were pretty much on their own. Few courses of treatment were available, other than 'round-the-clock vitamin monitoring and behavioral therapy.

They also discovered that while no one knows much about autism, the numbers of diagnoses are either on the rise or the condition is being more widely reported. A coalition of parents and health professionals called Defeat Autism Now! began comparing results, and there appears to be a correlation between autism and high levels of toxic metals, particularly mercury. And mercury is a preservative commonly used in childhood vaccines.

At this point we're drifting into the realm of opinion because the testing simply hasn't been done. Are mercury levels causal or a side effect? Is there a political or scientific solution? Is the controversial metal-leaching process called chelation going to help or damage the child? At what point does the billion-dollar vaccine business alter its product, or is the autistic collateral damage worth it in all those other kids who are healthy?

"This isn't an X-Files episode," observes Lisa Sykes in the doc. Her son is autistic. "This is mainstream America, with very decent, very tired and very dedicated parents saying someone has deceived us."

"Beautiful Son" makes the point that it's difficult for parents to have an objective perspective on the issue. But objectivity and distance aren't what passionate documentarians are all about. The result of that tension has resulted in this passionate and, yes, beautiful film.

'Kalaupapa Heaven'

6 p.m. next Monday, Dole Cannery multiplex

Seven years after filming the fictionalized biopic "Molokai: The Story of Father Damien," director Paul Cox returns to Hawaii to focus his cameras on approximately 30 residents who still call the island home.

The resulting documentary, "Kalaupapa Heaven," is an introspective look at the lives of local residents struck with Hansen's disease, which until only about 50 years ago meant a lonely existence on an isolated island with the inevitable reality of death looming around the corner. It's an important examination of a community that faces unfathomable change when the last of its residents die in the coming decades.

Capturing equal amounts of despair and hope, Cox interviews prominent Molokai residents, including storyteller Makia Malo, Sheriff Richard Marks and Postmaster Elizabeth Bell. More than two dozen residents agreed to participate, with most appearing in front of a camera for the first time.

While the stories are saddening, the residents also provide a glimpse of the grit and determination necessary to maintain quality of life in the midst of disease and death. One of the most moving segments takes place at the end, when Puna Kaai'alii-Ramos dances hula at the beachfront grave of her husband, Nicholas Ramos.

The only disappointment comes via the credits, which reveal that the Adelaide Film Festival bankrolled production of this documentary. Where is the support from the local community to fund and produce projects like these, which perpetuate the rich culture and diverse history of these islands?

Also nominated

» "Doctor Yi-Sheng," from China; 1:15 p.m. Saturday and 7:15 p.m. next Monday

» "Feet Unbound," from China; 6 p.m. Saturday and noon Sunday

» "Invisible City Beiwangu," from Singapore; 3:30 p.m. Sunday and 1 p.m. Oct. 26

All showings at Dole Cannery multiplex