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Movie of the Week #30 - Luxury Car
Posting a bit early as I have less time tomorrow. We continue with Cannes films with the Chinese Luxury Car from 2006 where it was honored with the Un Certain Regard award.
Any thoughts on this film is welcome.
The rest of the schedule for May is:
- 27th: The Tree of Life
For anyone that wants to join in, the only place I can find to legally stream it is to rent it from Amazon for $3.99: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0QSR8U7X4IF3NB0SWGJ0L2UESP/
Probably the only way as the non-legal way to do it is pretty hard to find as well.
I was able to find a dead torrent by searching the original title 江城夏日. But yeah even if I search on the Chinese private trackers I don't see anything (admittedly there are hundreds and I can only search a few).
Even searching the film on the US distributor's site does not show it in its catalogue--though that is par for the course in my experience
Looks like in the US it is still available on Sling if you search for it: https://watch.sling.com/dashboard/search/1/asset/d36428a71604db94b3eb3bd3059c8f3f/browse
The first half of the film (44 minutes) is on DailyMotion--second half nowhere to be seen. Although it is available at 178 libraries and on the Microsoft App store....
There's been a handful of movies I've seen that haven't been widely watched, (that film was at less than 1k watches three years ago when I watched it. But they've been through Tubi, and are usually forgotten films from the 60s and 70s. This is definitely one of the most niche films I've been made aware of, and one where there's not even an HD version available.
I guess Un Certain Regard is in a weird position where the films in competition there only get widely watched when they're either backed by a major distributor or the filmmaker ends up getting promoted to main competition.
Just looking at the numbers of reviews on Letterboxd and IMDb, this seems like a movie that hasn't been widely watched. I guess that Cannes award doesn't quite get the same attention. Anyways, glad this was added because I would otherwise never likely never and seen this. And I am not familiar with Chinese film in general.
The story has several threads that blends together, with an aging teacher from the countryside going to the big city in search for his lost son. He gets in contact with his daughter, who unknown to him works as a pleasure girl of some sort, and she gets her gangster boss to play her boyfriend for her father. Along come a policeman who help the searching for the lost son.
It is a very lowkey film that doesn't boast about its themes, neither tragic or optimistic. There are some odd choices with regards to story telling and time jumps, and I probably miss a lot due to lack of cultural knowledge, but that is just my own blind spots.
I am looking forward to hear why you picked this @xk3 because it doesn't seem like a movie that has made much of a mark given its obscurity.
I've seen other Un Certain Regard films and I've never been disappointed too much.
My suggestion last time was "Drive My Car" so I was wondering how long I could get away with suggesting movies with "car" in the title before someone noticed...