Toronto-based filmmaker Cuong Ngo, left, must be a VERY persuasive individual. Somehow, he was able to convince a coterie of Vietnamese movie stars and world-class composers Alex Pauk and Alexina Louie, to work for nothing or nearly nothing on his first feature film, Pearls of the Far East. The movie receives its world premier at Toronto’s Reel Asian Film Festival November 13, which is thrilling for Ngo who cherishes the festival and attends it each year with great enthusiasm.
Ngo’s career has been helped enormously by Toronto’s robust film fest culture. His 2009 film, The Golden Pin, was named Best Canadian Short two years ago at the Inside Out LGBT Film and Video Festival.
“I’m so proud to be part of Reel Asian because they’ve done so much to support Asian Canadian filmmakers,” says Ngo. “I hope the festival will be a springboard because this is an art house film and it’s a foreign film. But I really want an audience to see the film and see Vietnam portrayed like this by a Vietnamese director.”
Pearls of the Far East is a languid, luscious movie, a collection of unrelated shorts adapted from the stories of author Minh Ngoc Nguyen who does a star turn of her own in one episode about a woman who is successful in business but thwarted in love.
The idea of unattainable love is a theme that threads its way through most of these stories. Nguyen’s work is focused on the struggles of women, on their successes and failures and especially the grey area in between. Cuong is an unabashed admirer of the writer’s work and after sifting through more than 30 stories in search of a subject for his first feature, he concluded that he could not restrict himself to just one tale.
“I felt greedy,” he tells me as we talk in the living room of a friend’s Toronto apartment, borrowed for the occasion. “The stories were all so beautiful, I wanted to tell them all. She’s writing and fighting for women’s rights, feminism, gay and lesbian rights in Vietnam. Women are the focus of her work, so I needed to make a film about women in Vietnam.”
Vietnamese stars, from left, Nhu Quynh, Truong Ngoc Anh, and Ngo Thanh Van
Beyond the subject matter, Cuong’s film is united by the sumptuous cinematography of Mikhail Petrenko and Pauk and Louie’s delicate, emotive score. The music is doubly important in the film because Cuong keeps dialogue to a minimum.
“I love inner dialogue,” he says, “and in this film I use music as a language for the characters. This film is about my desire for utopia. After the war in 1975, Vietnam was a third world country, very poor. And I wished my country could be beautiful, that the people could be beautiful, that I could speak the language of beauty. That’s my dream and I put everything into this film.”
“When Alex and Xina saw the completed film they cried,” he adds. “They said they’d never seen Vietnam portrayed like this. This film is like a marriage between West and East so they were the perfect composers, I’m so grateful they said yes.”
Cuong’s achievement is all the more impressive considering that Pearls of the Far East is the first feature for most of the crew involved. It is a remarkable calling card that will doubtless launch many of them onto even greater things.
WHERE/WHEN: The Reel Asian Film Festival runs November 8 – 13 in Toronto and November 18 and 19 in Richmond Hill, at various locations: Pearls of the Far East screens November 13 at the Royal Cinema (608 College Street), 5 pm.
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Great article and a beautiful description of a beautiful film!