ONLY CLOUD KNOWS (ZHI YOU YUN ZHI DAO)

Stars: Xuan Huang, Caiya Yang, Lydia Peckham and Xun Fan.
Writer: Ling Zhang
Director: Feng Xiaogang

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

There are two clear reasons for Only Cloud Knows to exist – to wring distraught tears from every ounce of its ill-fated romantic melodrama and to sell the spectacular New Zealand countryside as the best possible backdrop to said sadness. Veteran filmmaker Feng Xiaogang is working on a smaller, more intimate scale than some of his past populist pics (Aftershock, 2010; I Am Not Badame Bovary, 2016; Youth, 2017), but the director’s feel for sellable sentiment and capital-E emoting remains as solid as ever.

Based upon the true story of one of the director’s friends, Only Cloud Knows follows distraught widower Sui ‘Simon’ Dongfeng (Xuan Huang) as he recounts a life spent loving his late wife Luo ‘Jennifer’ Yun (Caiya Yang) across both islands of Aoteoroa. The diaspora experience has been a central theme of many of Feng’s works, dating back to his directorial debut, the TV series A Native of Beijing in New York (1993); others include the LA-set rom-com Be There or Be Square (1998) and If You Are The One (2008), featuring Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido.

Working from a script penned by acclaimed author Ling Zhang, the narrative is split in three distinct acts. The first hour covers those happy days spent by the lovers in the Otago township of Clyde, making enough of a living from the small berg’s only Chinese restaurant while coping with an increasing number of existential tragedies (not least of which is an extended sequence in which the pair weep tears for days as they cope with their old dog’s particularly painful passing).

The second hour recalls the earliest days of their romance in late 1990s Auckland, when Simon had a mullet and played the flute, Jennifer thought herself unfit for marriage only to be won over by his persistence and some spontaneous gambling sets them up for life together. The final passage relentlessly pulls at the heartstrings, with the cancer-riddled Jennifer being held in her final hours by a distraught Simon (all of which he recounts to a very patient charter boat captain, who responds appropriately by taking a big swig from his hip flask).

Support players liven up the occasionally heavyhanded scenes between the lovebirds, notably the terrific Lydia Peckham as waitress-turned-bestie Melinda and renowned Chinese actress Xun Fan as landlady Ms Lin, whose own sad memories supply a rewarding subtext. Shot through the prism of grief and memory, Oscar-nominated DOP Zhao Xiaoding (House of Flying Daggers, 2004; Children of The Silk Road, 2008; The Great Wall, 2016) borrows a rich, primary-colour palette from the master of grand weepies, Douglas Sirk; plot wise, the other clear inspiration is Arthur Hiller’s Love Story (1970). 

Those not in tune with the ripe pleasures to be had from time-shifting romantic tragedies will struggle to make the final handkerchief-filling scenes; if The Notebook, The Lakehouse and/or Somewhere in Time are kept in a drawer under your television, Only Cloud Knows is for you.   

Despite the cast and crew’s best efforts, the true on-screen stars are the green fields, rugged mountains and autumnal shades of The Land of The Long White Cloud; shepherded into life with the aid of The New Zealand Film Commission, the dreamy drama represents another international co-production triumph for the progressive local sector.

HOUSEBOUND

Stars: Morgana O’Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru, Cameron Rhodes, Millen Baird, Ross Harper and Wallis Chapman.
Writer/Director: Gerard Johnstone

Screens as the Opening Night film of the 2014 Sydney Underground Film Festival on Thursday, September 4.

Rating: 4/5

That moment of indescribable horror when you realise that your only option in life is to move back in with your parents proves a grand premise for Gerard Johnstone’s debut outing, Housebound. Exhibiting a bold visual style and a natural flair for funny, character-driven dialogue, the New Zealander has delivered a giggly, gory romp that both honours and enhances his native film industry’s love of the macabre. In tandem with Taiki Waititi’s vampire comedy What We Do In The Shadows, 2014 has proven to be a banner year for the New Zealand sector and its grasp of what constitutes marketable, fresh content (take note, Screen Australia).  

Miserably failing as a petty criminal, angry young woman Kylie (a terrific Morgana O’Reilly) is ‘sentenced’ to eight months in an ankle bracelet under the care of her upright and old-fashioned mum, Miriam (comic great Rima Te Wiata). The dark and dusty family home, its countryside setting ensuring Kylie has nowhere to run, seems cursed by unexplainable phenomena stemming from its past as a refuge for wayward teens. When things start to go bump in the night, Kylie reluctantly teams with self-proclaimed ‘ghostbuster’ Amos (Glen-Paul Waru) to unravel decades of small-town secrets and lies.

Years as one of the creative forces on the hit Kiwi sitcom The Jaquie Brown Diaries has served Johnstone’s comedy timing well; he establishes key characters with a swift, confident series of broad brush strokes that are funny and insightful. Less assured is the film’s central second act, when an extended sequence between Amos and a creepy neighbour provides little pay-off and Rima Te Wiata’s comic presence as Miriam disappears for far too long.

All shortcomings are forgiven when the frantic third act kicks into gear, with every energetic blast of increasingly off-kilter exposition scaling giddy heights in gleeful terror and icky comedy. The nerve-shredding creepiness of the first act is largely jettisoned by the film’s denouement, which utilises some well-timed tech wizardry to transport the audiences into every nook and cranny of the grand mansion. The frantic final moments also serve to cover up some gaping holes in logic and realism (the interior of the home starts to take on Tardis-like qualities, for example), but Johnstone has earned so much audience goodwill that such concerns barely register.

Comparisons to countryman Peter Jackson’s early works Bad Taste and Braindead are inevitable, given the high-energy inventiveness and consummate technical skill displayed by the first-timers. But Johnstone’s film is a far more polished undertaking, which also benefits from not relying upon the kind of one-joke local flavour that proved the undoing of Jonathan King’s Black Sheep. More accurate comparisons include such off-shore efforts as Steve Miner’s 1986 cult item House (the artwork for Housebound’s one-sheet echoes that film’s poster font), Tony Williams 1982 gothic-horror Ozploitation favourite, Next of Kin, and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Addams Family films.