1/2 dbles to A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop on 13/12, WA easy email

[LilyL]

What:
A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop

When:
At Perth International Arts Festival from December 13-19

Watch Trailer:
Here

Win!
We have 2 dbls to Mon Dec 13 outdoor screening at Somerville thanks to Perth International Arts Festival. Email perth.win@rightanglestudio.com.au with subject ‘I'm one slippery customer'
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Zhang Yimou's Chinese-language remake of the Coen brothers' first film Blood Simple went by the name A Simple Noodle Story. It's a clever title that evokes its source material while ironically suggesting a slippery, tangled plot. Perhaps it also signals that this won't exactly be high art - an insinuation that was lost in the international title.

Zhang follows Blood Simple's neo-noir plot closely, but transfers the action from contemporary Texas to period China. A frontier noodle shop proprietor (Ni Dahong) suspects his young wife (Yan Ni) of an affair with the chef (Xiao Shenyang), so he hires a renegade cop (Sun Hunglei) to kill them both. But the wife has purchased a gun from a passing Silk Road trader... and the bodies start piling up.

Unlike Zhang's elegant, lyrical films, this is played as a broad, playful farce. Perhaps it's an experiment or an untranslatable homage, but I found it puzzling. Zhang even throws in a duo of comedic supporting characters (Ye Cheng and Mao Mao) whose role appears solely to slap each other and emit squeaks of terror. Stylish in its own way, this film is mostly a curiosity, and definitely not for noir fans.