By APA Staff

Road trips out to the Palm Springs International Film Festival always provide for some relaxing downtime and distinctive film experiences. APA reports.

Ploy
dir: Pen-ek Ratanaruang

Graced with a relaxed afro, dressed in hipster gear, Converse sneakers, and a gold necklace with her name on it, Ploy is an effortlessly cool, comfortable-in-her-own-skin teenager who unwittingly becomes the catalyst for intense marital paranoia. Unable to sleep after a long flight from the US to Thailand, long-married Wit meets Ploy in a hotel restaurant/bar in the middle of the night. He offers to let her take a nap in his hotel room while she waits for her mother to come pick her up. Also in his hotel room, though, is Wit's disgruntled wife Dang, a formerly glamorous actress who now lounges around in oversized T-shirts worn inside-out, and who is suspicious of her husband's spontaneous act of kindness. Just as meandering as the director's playful Last Life in the Universe, Ploy captures the essence of jet lag -- sluggish movements, sharp tempers, foggy alertness -- in a more sinister manner, while recklessly blurring the lines of dreams, delusion, and reality to the point of bewilderment. That said, with such exquisite attention to detail and composition, the murky journey from nonsensical, possibly imaginary crimes of passion to even more nonsensical, possibly imaginary sexual contortions of passion is a fascinating one. --Ada Tseng

Getting Home
dir: Zhang Yang

If there are films that can capture the loyalty of friendship while still making death seem comical and light-hearted, Zhang Yang's Getting Home, most certainly would make that list. Old Zhao (Benshan Zhao) finds himself in a most unlikely predicament -- carrying the deceased body of his friend Old Liu (Qiwen Hong) back to home for burial in China's countryside. Adventure awaits for Old Zhao when he meets a robber who comically empathizes with him about the loyalty of friendship, a heart-broken truck driver in search of his lost lover, an elderly man who fakes his own funeral, a hardworking mother who regularly sells her blood to pay for her son's college tuition (and becoming Old Zhao's brief romantic interest), and a myriad of other personalities. Actor Benshan Zhao is excellent: at once believable and touching. While known to not embrace the label of "sixth generation," director Zhang Yang (Sunflower, Quitting, Shower) combines the humanity of China's people with a bottom-up perspective on contemporary China's peasants. Getting Home is a road film about the people you meet while getting home, and the sometimes absurd sacrifices we go through to get there. --LiAnn Ishizuka

Denias, Singing on the Cloud
dir: John de Rentau

Denias, Singing on the Cloud has all the "right" elements to have been chosen Indonesia's entry for Best Foreign Film Oscar. Sweeping, National Geographic-style cinematography presents an obscure part of the world, West Papua. In this huts-and-jungle setting, Denias (Albert Fakdawer), a young boy and promising student, chases after a good education. Director John de Rantau repeatedly shows Denias running his heart out across stunning Indonesian landscapes to get to school. The energetic music soars in these pro-education and pro-Indonesia scenes. Denias has every obstacle thrown at him. His mother dies and it's his fault, his teacher leaves, and an earthquake destroys the local school. Denias decides to leave his village and travel for days (more running and more music) to get to the city on the other side of the mountain. In the second half of the movie, Denias tries to get into the private school with the help of a sympathetic counselor who pleads his case to the school board. Class discrimination against village students becomes Denias' biggest obstacle. Education reform and national pride are embedded in the story of Denias, who carries around a homemade map of the Indonesian archipelago. Based on a true story, the movie is heavy-handed in its message about working hard and climbing mountains to achieve dreams, and Fakdawer's sincere performance carries it all off. --Lisa Leong

Watching the Detectives
dir: Paul Soter

Violet (Lucy Liu) suffers from boreophobia. For Violet, adventure and spontaneity is the only formula for life. When she captures the heart of Neil (Cillian Murphy), a film buff whose routine living is characterized by watching detective classics and running his small novelty video store, Neil finds that his continual gullibility stretches the lines between what is real and what is just a fictitious adventure script with Violet as the director behind each made-up scenario. Paul Soter's Watching the Detectives is surprisingly engaging, crammed with American film references that only real film junkies know, while delighting audiences with the imaginative, wacky, and near psychotic Violet. This film marked a great departure from Liu's previous roles (Kill Bill, Charlie's Angels) where her femme-fatales were taken much more seriously. Here, Liu's playful character is all about mismatched clothing and toying with the emotions of Neil, all in the name of good-hearted pleasure. Watching the Detectives might not be the best romantic comedy, but it definitely inverts the generic make-up/break-up relationship of most Hollywood commercial flicks. --LiAnn Ishizuka

Donsol
dir: Adolfo Alix, Jr.

Donsol, screenwriter Adolfo Alix, Jr.'s directorial debut, was recently selected as the Philippines' submission for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2008 Oscars. Early in the film, Daniel (Sid Lucero) tells his little brother a fable of the butanding: two lovers are tragically separated when one dies in sea battle, but they are cosmically reunited and transformed into the butanding (the whale shark) in order to remind us of the power of eternal love. Daniel works as a tour guide in Sorsogon, the whale shark capital of the world, and his job is take visitors swimming amongst these 40-foot-long "gentle giants" that congregate along the shores of Donsol during mating season. The film pairs the mystical quality of the butanding with the cautious flirtation between Daniel and a sophisticated out-of-towner Teresa (played by Angel Aquino), two recently-wounded individuals who find indefinable solace in each other's companionship. The underwater cinematography of Donsol gives the audience a convincing reason to book a trip to the Philippines, take up scuba diving, or at least visit aquariums more often, but the awkwardly-stilted love story on land, while handled with appreciated restraint, depth, and maturity, kind of just makes us want to dive back into the serene ocean. --Ada Tseng

The Pool
dir: Chris Smith

With The Pool, American documentary director Chris Smith (American Movie) switches gears with a Hindi-language feature film that may seem languid at first, but becomes a captivating story centered on a young man's obsession with the very object of the film's title. Venkatesh is an illiterate 18 year-old hotel-worker whose discontent with his lot in life is channeled through his fixation with the pool at a wealthy man's home in the hills of Panjim, Goa. When not tending to his work duties, he sits atop a mango tree adjacent to the estate to muse about the owners and dream about swimming in the pool. His curiosity grows as he finds that the owners who finally take up residence don't take advantage of the pool. He soon finagles his way into the owner's life as an assistant gardener and even his moody daughter Ayesha's life as a friend. Smith uses the pool to depict the socioeconomic gap between Venkatesh, Jahangir, and the wealthy owner. Eventually, the pool grows to embody Venkatesh's aspirations to become the catalyst for irrevocable change in his life. --Christine Chiao

Published: Friday, January 25, 2008