The Children of Huang Shi Opens May 23

Roger Spottiswoode has never been what one would call a true auteur. His credits range from several gay-themed films (The Matthew Shepard Story, the still-unreleased Ripley Under Ground and, of course, HBO’s And the Band Played On) to a few high-profile Hollywood flicks (Air America, Tomorrow Never Dies) that were not exactly vehicles to display his strengths as a director. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that his newest effort, the standard true-life tale The Children of Huang Shi, will do much to reveal those strengths.

Based on the true story of George Hogg, an English journalist who led a group of orphaned children to safety during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937, the movie is a serviceable but ultimately rote biopic that takes a “just the facts” approach to its subject. Hogg (competently played here by The Tudors and Velvet Goldmine star Jonathan Rhys Meyers) goes from a selfish reporter out to get a story to a wanted man who discovers the meaning of responsibility while forced to hide out among the orphaned children of Huang Shi. When the children’s lives are threatened, Hogg leads them on a perilous journey across the mountains with the assistance of an Australian nurse (High Art’s Radha Mitchell) and a Chinese partisan soldier (Yun-Fat Chow).

It’s a great story, but one that is played out in such typical Hollywood fashion that one may be left feeling unsatisfied by its supposed-to-be-bittersweet ending. The cinematography is certainly nice, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Michelle Yeoh is a welcome presence in a rather thankless role. But the movie follows such a predictable trajectory that all the wide shots of the gorgeous Chinese landscapes, and the efforts of a talented cast, can’t lift the film above “average” quality. It’s certainly worth seeing for its historical importance, but one hopes that Spottiswoode soon finds a feature that will give him a chance to show us what he’s really got. B
—Ken Knox

Reprise Opened May 16

The coming-of-age story—in books, in plays, in film—is one of the oldest, most tried-and-true of narrative threads. You could say it’s as old as the Bible itself. But that period afterwards, beyond the creation of identity and character, has always been problematic for story-tellers.

Reprise, the feature-length debut of Norwegian Joachim Trier, starts where most narratives end. What happens, it asks, after we come of age? It’s answered with a near-Godardian mélange of techniques and spirit—which means it’s full of digressions and the sublime messiness of actual life.

That’s not a dig. For this story of two young Oslo authors—Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) and Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie)—the flashbacks and flash-forwards and meditations of what might have happened and what may still occur are the devices of solid narrative. Though only 34, Trier knows what he’s doing structurally. Reprise begins and ends with flash-forwards—the realm of possibilities when the friends mail their manuscripts at the same time, and the wide-open future long after the drama that action renders.

Reprise is neither comedy nor drama, though it’s both funny and bracingly dark, with many emotional hues in between. Trier melds tones that are hard to pull off; at times, it’s hard to see how he gets his effects. (At other times, it’s too obvious; but that’s the folly of youth.) Still, Erik and Phillip and the gang of friends that surround them spill over with life—everyone is interesting to Trier and, therefore, to us. As a filmmaker, he expands his characters instead of diminishing them. Where most films offer us little to latch onto, Reprise shows us people on a screen that can hardly contain their hopes, dreams, disappointments and adjustments. It’s a remarkably assured debut by a man who could turn into a major international talent. A-
—Dan Loughry

Sangre de mi Sangre Opened May 16

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” That’s from A Tale of Two Cities, though it could be the epigraph for Sangre de Mi Sangre (“Blood of My Blood”), except for one thing: The times aren’t that great for Pedro and Juan, two Mexicans smuggled in a semi to New York.

Christopher Zalla’s assured debut is a dark tale of stolen identity. Juan (Armando Hernández), a thief with daddy issues, befriends Pedro (Jorge Adrián Espindola), a country kid looking for his own father. They bond in the truck, yet when they arrive in Brooklyn, Pedro wakes in an empty semi, his bag stolen with his father’s address. He has it memorized, but there’s more than one 12th Street in the boroughs, which sets him on a difficult odyssey through—as one wise soul put it—the mean streets of New York. Juan—with nothing but an address—assumes Pedro’s identity to con Diego (Jesús Ochoa), Pedro’s thick-skinned, distrustful father.

Sangre di Me Sangre’s not a happy film; it’s the polar opposite of La Misma Luna (“Under the Same Moon”). While La Misma Luna is the crowd-pleaser of the two, Sangre di Me Sangre’s unflinching portrayal stands little chance of finding an audience. That’s unfortunate because—in most ways—Zalla’s film has more psychological insight and artistry. Igor Martinovic’s cinematography, especially, is superb—he creates bottomless nightscapes with remarkable depth of field. It’s like looking at harsh paintings on black velvet. And the leads couldn’t be better. Hernandez’s Juan is a closed-in con with glimmers of his own abusive past. Espindola’s Pedro is a sweet-natured rube with the high-fashion looks of James Franco. And Ochoa’s Diego is a portrait of a walking heartache. He’s the dishwasher you ignore at your local restaurant with a rich and mysterious history. B+
—D.L.