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By Joe Bendel. It was smoking that brought together Cherie Yu and Jimmy Cheung, but it might be everything else in life that splits them apart. They met during cigarette breaks soon after Hong Kong workplaces went smoke-free in Pang Ho-cheung’s Love in a Puff. Unfortunately, work and time undermine their romance in Pang’s completely stand-alone sequel Love in the Buff, which opened this Friday in New York.

It seems the couple has quit smoking to judge from Buff, but that might be the only responsible thing Cheung has done in his personal life. He has gotten serious about his career, but at the cost of his relationship with Yu. She is something of his mirror image, ready to make a commitment to him, but sleepwalking through her days working retail for Sephora. Eventually, they break-up, with a shrug rather than a bang. That lack of definitive closure will become an issue for them both when they later cross paths again in Beijing.

Transferred by their companies (for very different reasons), the ex-lovers planned to start fresh on the Mainland. Each will find a significant other who would seem much better suited to their respective temperaments. Yet before long, they have reverted to form, sneaking around with each other behind their partners’ backs.

Do not get the wrong idea. The “Buff” in the title is only really there because it rhymes with “Puff.” In truth, Buff is about as risqué as an average episode of Friends, perhaps even less so. Yet it is definitely a film for adult sensibilities (in the best sense of the term). In fact, Pang’s treatment of their relationship issues and dynamics is brutally honest and at times rather caustic.

As a result, viewers will feel acute sympathy for the deceived lovers. Indeed, the earnestness of the beautiful Shang You-you and Sam, the gentlemanly divorcee, will make viewers want to see them get together instead. However, Buff is too sincere for such “change partners” gimmicks (though there are a number of novelty cameos from Chinese/HK celebrities that will be largely lost on American audiences).

Instead of trying to be compulsively likable, Miriam Yeung and Shawn Yue are consistently maddening in a very realistic, down-to-earth way as Yu and Cheung, respectively. They really convey a sense of flawed chemistry that is central to the film. Not simply set decoration, Mimi (Mi) Yang projects a tangible, needy vulnerability that should have quite the effect on audiences. As for Xu Zheng’s Sam, well okay, he is rather likable.

At times Buff approaches the edge of melodrama, yet always pulls back at the last minute, just in the way people do in real life every day. Altogether it is a well-written look at the pitfalls of romance with a highly attractive cast and an appealingly swinging soundtrack. Recommended for movie-goers looking for something smart but not too heavy, Love in the Buff opened this past Friday in New York at the AMC Empire and AMC Village 7 as well as in San Francisco at the AMC Metreon, courtesy of China Lion Entertainment.

Posted on April 2nd, 2012 at 2:45pm.

By Joe Bendel. Only a bold film would invoke the name “Ishtar,” but Victor Ginzburg is clearly a bold filmmaker. The context is much different here, of course, but Elaine May’s notorious box office dud might have been quite popular in the old USSR, since it co-starred Reds helmer Warren Beatty. As it happens, Soviet era nostalgia plays a significant role in Generation P, Ginzburg’s adaptation of Viktor Pelevin’s Illuminatus!-esque novel of late Yeltsin-era Russia, which screens this week as part of the 2012 New Directors/New Films.

Eventually viewers learn that the Babylonian goddess Ishtar has a special relationship with Russia and its secret history. Though previously oblivious to the byzantine machinations of the behind-the-scenes power players, Babylen Tatarsky has always felt a kinship to all things Mesopotamian because of his name, originally conceived as a hybrid of Yevtushenko’s poem Babi Yar and Lenin. A failed poet working in a kiosk owned by the Chechen mob, Tatarsky falls backwards into a “creative” gig at one of the upstart Russian advertising agencies catering to Russia’s nouveau riche industrial class.

Tatarsky specializes in calibrating campaigns to appeal to Soviet nostalgia. He does not believe in it himself, though, because he does not believe in anything. That ideological flexibility allows him to advance to larger, more connected firms. However, he has a spiritual advisor in the person of Gireyev, a Buddhist mystic and expert harvester of psychedelic mushrooms.

The “P” in Generation P is an ironic reference to Pepsi, the cola of Glasnost. Though it never outright glamorizes terrorism, P is not that far removed from V for Vendetta, exhibiting similar anarchistic inclinations. However, the closest comparison might be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, giving viewers a hallucinogenic tour of Russia worthy of Hunter S. Thompson.

P arguably peaks halfway through. At its most inventive, it mixes Mesopotamian and Soviet imagery to evocatively hint at ancient mystic secrets. However, once Tatarsky reaches the inner circle, the film gets bogged down in rather standard, dog-wagging conspiracy rigmarole.

Beyond its heavy-handed critique of consumerism, it is hard to get a bead on P’s exact ideology. While Tatarsky’s cynical nostalgia campaigns are clearly intended to be problematically simplistic, the only real reference to Russia’s Communist past are the fondly remembered Pioneer Days, which are presented with a Norman Rockwell-like patina of lost innocence. The film also has little love for Yeltsin, but plot developments ironically absolve him of much of his buffoonery. Likewise, there is constant white noise equating all capitalists with oligarchs, but they constantly wind up assassinated for running afoul the mob or the government.

Yet, the similarities between a blunt-talking nationalist “reformer” (literally created on a hard-drive) and the current Russian president – who refuses to relinquish his grip on power – are difficult to miss.

Amidst the maelstrom of satire and metaphysics, Vladimir Epifantsev somehow creates a memorable, multidimensional portrait of Tatarsky, the everyman turned insider. Ginzburg also keeps viewers’ feet solidly on the ground, giving them plenty of narrative handles to guide them through the complicated and surreal storyline. It is a very accomplished work, but it is not clear what it all adds up to, particularly for those coming from what the film somewhat mockingly refers to as a “Soviet mentality.” A strange, sometimes dazzling film certainly worth attempting to decode – but in no way to be considered the final word on the immediate post-Soviet years – Generation P screens this Friday (3/30) at the Walter Reade Theater and Sunday (4/1) at MoMA, as this year’s ND/NF concludes in New York.

Posted on March 28th, 2012 at 5:00pm.