Clumsy, Macau-set jockey drama makes a poor English-language debut for Mainland icon Fan Bingbing.
By Derek Elley
Wed, 06 July 2011, 04:43 AM (HKT)
Clumsy, Macau-set jockey drama makes a poor English-language debut for Mainland icon Fan Bingbing. DVD at best.
Story
France, the present day. After failing a drugs test, ambitious young jockey Christophe (Nicolas Cazalé) is suspended for six months and decides to join his friend Cédric (Cédric Segeon) in Macau, where he quickly gets work. After Cédric leaves, Christophe meets racehorse owner-cum-professional gambler Way Way (Lowell Lo) who spots a winner and takes him on a jockey. With a run of successes and under Way Way's patronage, Christophe enters the world of fame, money and women. He also gets to know Pansy (Fan Bingbing), a woman from Shanghai, who is close friends with the powerful gambler Monteiro (David Carradine). However, when Way Way instructs him to deliberately throw a race, Christophe refuses, and he comes into contact with the sport's darker side of big-money gambling. Pansy saves him through her connections with Monteiro and Christophe then starts working for Thong (Pete Teo) instead. But then Thong tells Christophe to throw the prestigious Quintee Cup race.
Review
For her English-language debut, Mainland mega-icon Fan Bingbing (范冰冰) stumbles badly, both in her own performance and in her choice of vehicle. Though partly hobbled by the death of David Carradine (seen in only two scenes) just before the end of shooting, this second feature by former jockey Charles de Meaux - who previously made the way-out-there, Central Asian-set Shimkent Hotel (2003) - doesn't score high for either coherence, English dialogue or involving drama. On the plus side, the drama about an ambitious young French jockey making it big in Macau boasts some striking cityscapes of the territory that have a coolly abstract, painterly quality, and are far from the usual bustle-and-neon images beloved of western film-makers. Material shot in Bangkok - where de Meaux has connections from being a regular producer for auteur Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul (อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล) - also doubles okay for Macau.
After a leisurely warm-up in France, the movie finally gets under way after its move to Asia; but after a reasonable start it soon becomes incoherent, with unexplained potholes in the story, an especially outré final half-hour, and an abrupt ending decorated with Mahler's second and third symphonies. Canadian novelist/cultural commentator Douglas Coupland and Shanghainese bad-girl writer Mian Mian (棉棉) are credited as script collaborators. The latter, whose books include Panda Sex (熊猫), is presumably responsible for the weird chat-up line by Fan's character, Pansy: "Chris, I'm like a panda... They only have sex once a year. Kind of like me. Like me."
Fan's other-worldly beauty survives intact but her command of English is not strong enough, especially to carry over the lines she's been given in the relatively few scenes she's in. Among the rest of the Asian cast, Hong Kong singer-actor Lowell Lo (盧冠廷) gets a sizable role and is okay as a corrupt gambler, but it's English-educated, Malaysian composer Pete Teo (張子夫) who contributes the strongest (alas, too few) scenes late on. Overall, a 3/10 movie raised to 4/10 thanks to d.p. Gustavo Habda's contribution.
Source
I didn't even know she was appearing in a movie like this.