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Side, B Side,
Seaside
", directed by Chan Wing Chiu, was accepted
into competition at the 2005
Hong Kong
,
Pusan
and
Tokyo
festivals, though why is a complete mystery, as it
barely qualifies as a film at all. Rather, it is
an interminably long hour and a half of watching
teenagers frolicking on beaches and howling at
each other, with a complete absence of any kind of
drama or effort to entertain or engage. Perhaps
the director is trying to make some kind of
statement about childish innocence or the carefree
times of youth, though to be honest, it is
impossible to tell, as the film is an insipid
mess, languorous to the point where it seems as
though the director simply set the camera running
and, understandably overcome by boredom, simply
fell asleep.
The plot, such as it is,
follows four
Hong Kong
high school girls as they go for a graduation
holiday to the
island
of
Cheung Chau
. The main focus is on Honey (Kong Ling), who it
later transpires will soon be heading off to
Beijing
to study financial management. The trip turns out
to be a memorable one for the girls (if not the
viewer) and Honey experiences the first twinges of
adolescent love with a young man named Bitters
(Larry Chan). As the girls leave the island, the
second part of the film begins, with Baby (Dolphin
Chan), a slightly older girl returning to the
island after being away in the city for some time.
This sets in motion much reminiscing about the
past, as she meets up with a couple of boys that
she used to play with when younger.
Although the above may
suggest the presence of a traditional narrative,
the events themselves are squeezed into around ten
minutes, and the rest of the film simply follows
the characters as they wander lazily around the
island. The pace is beyond sluggish, and since
very little happens, and with no attempt made to
flesh out the characters or induce any kind of
interest in the viewer, it is hard to see the
point of the whole affair. It is apparent that
there is some kind of meaning lurking beneath the
vacuity, as evidenced by the lame structure, whose
theme is constantly underlined through the
metaphor of a VCD and its missing disc, and the
vaguely symbolic character names.
However, assigning meaning or
purpose to a film as dreary and obtuse as "A
Side, B Side, and
Seaside
" is a challenge which most viewers will
respond to in the only reasonable fashion -- by
pressing the 'stop' button on their DVD remote.
Chan's direction is painful to watch, with almost
every shot going on far too long. This is the kind
of film where the camera keeps running for several
seconds after the characters have left the frame,
whether there is any reason to do so or not, and
it is this which probably accounts for half of the
running time.
The editing is choppy, and
the obnoxious handheld camera work gives the
impression of cinematic incompetence rather than
realism. The acting is likewise awful, although
this may be mainly due to the excruciatingly inane
script, which basically consists of teenagers
squealing. Chan may have been aiming for
naturalistic, but achieves only amateurish in the
worst possible way.
The overall feeling of
watching "A Side, B Side,
Seaside
" is that of having just sat through a
particularly embarrassing holiday video, where the
token efforts of those involved only serve to make
matters worse. The only possible reason for ever
watching such a debacle would be some kind of
familial connection, and since the viewer neither
knows, nor is invited to care about the film's
characters, they are thankfully excused the
torture of having to do so.
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