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Reviews
Anna and the King (1999)
A Near Tragic Film-making Effort
One can easily poke fun at Anna and The King simply because it is not a good, or even close to resembling, an average movie. First, the script is patchy and weak at best. There was some talk about 'contemporizing' this over-familiar story to fit our own 'times'. We must remember that Anna was a Victorian lady with Victorian values. This was part of her charm (if one can describe it thus) - her arrogance, her misplaced belief in her own superiority, the 'uncommon richness' of the British (more specifically, English)way of life, so on and so forth. So attempts at 'contemporizing' Anna would perhaps be ludicrous. There are cultural aspects of her which are outdated and should remain thus - as part of long-ago history. We can now laugh at their idiosyncracies and forget about them soon afterward. And speaking of cultural singularities, what is desperately missing from the film is that unique pageantry atmosphere of this Southeast Asian monarchy and a closer study of Siamese customs. The filmmakers would have profited greatly by looking at the richness of 'The Last Emperor' or even from the splendour of 'Indochine'. The sense of epic-ness in Anna and The King is like tough dough that does not rise to the ocassion.
The 'love story' between Anna and The King was over-played; too many close-ups altogether. Ms Foster does not seem able to express deep feelings like sorrow, despair, passion so on and so forth on screen - such emotions are displayed with detachment, almost to the point of inconvenience, while her accent was rigid. She seemed to mumble her way through three-quarters of the film. It was infuriating trying to keep up with her 'speech-es!'. Chow's King, on the other hand, was fairly commendable but not enough of a commanding and majestic figure. Why the over-emphasis on his humanity, his love for his children, his people,his vision to modernize his nation so on and so forth? And as for his wives...well, they need hardly be there at all - we see them and that's all we do, just see them on parade like tired peacocks in a garden.
The set looked like sets, the costumes bland, the cinematography dull, and most of all - the absence of compelling and visionary direction. Andy Tenant failed. Two-and-a-half hours of plodding meanderings. If anything, the two subplots - Tuptim's trial and the 'military coup' - could have been explored (& clarified) further, adding to an otherwise soddenly damp tale.
The Lost Son (1999)
Absolutely appalling film that shouldn't have been made!
This film is just too painful to watch, save for Daniel Auteuil who held his own in a sea of bad script, bad direction and bad editing. The story is too convoluted, the characters are not in the least interesting except for the 'gumshoe', the acting thoroughly mediocre, and this is unfortunate given that there are some fine actors (women included) in the cast. What happened exactly to the whole project?