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Love Suicides
USA 2007
produced by David Teague for Brooklyn Vitagraph
directed by David Teague
starring Ben Schneider, Lauren Allison, Jean Brassard, Otto Walder, Dave Krueger, Peter Judd, Olivier Conan, Sohui Kim, Scott Addison Clay, Anna Curtis, Okwui Okpokwasili, Priscilla Tsang, Kathleen McInerney, Jim Law, Michelle Morrison, Christy Pope, Dan Reiners, Tim J.Ellis, St.John Frizell, Scott Chan, Kevin Maher, Kyle McCabe, Jaime West
based on a play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu, music by Richard Marriott
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Monk Kume (Ben Schneider) is in love with Osan (Lauen Allison), and to
get him away from his monastery for a while, she has forged a letter from
her father (Dave Krueger) for the High Priest (Peter Judd), while sending
Kume a loveletter at the same time - but unfortunately the letters get
confused and thus Kume's forbidden love becomes apparent to the High
Priest. A big storm strikes down at the monastery because of that, forcing
Kume to leave the place for good. When Kume arrives at Osan's place, he
learns she is about to be wed to another man (Jean Brassard) in an
arranged marriage. In her wedding night though, Osan blindfolds her
husband and gives her virginity to Kume while faking it for her husband. Kume
and Osan decide to flee her parents place to try to start anew where
nobody knows either of them, but on their way to wherever it is, they only
see pain, death and destruction, often caused by them themselves, so in the
end they decide to kill themselves. An American film retelling a
Japanese Bunraku play with exclusively non-Asian actors in the leads, made in the style of silent movies ... now all of this sounds so
crazy it might work - yet in the case of Love Suicides it doesn't:
There is little reason to have Caucasian actors playing Asian characters
when they are all made up to look Asian, also costumes, sets and music are
as Japanese as possible (considering the film's low budget) in style. And
as for the decision to shoot the film in silent cinema mode - filmmaker
David Teague might prove that he has studied many silent films from the
East and West, yet all he does is to try and duplicate the style of these
films, he is no director like Guy Maddin who uses vintage cinema as a mere
starting point to develop his own style. Plus, unlike Maddin, Teague finds
no real justification for Love Suicides to be a silent, the film is
interrupted by so many title cards that it might just as well be a talkie. That
all said, at least the film looks elegant - but a film quite simply
is more than its looks.
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