I was pleased about being invited to be ‘blogger’ for the SF Int’l Film Fest (thru May 4th), mostly because it will allow me (or force me) to watch a flurry of movies set in other cultures, told in other narrative styles based upon different cinematic tastes. Family, life, marriage, death, meaning, lonliness are universal, yet different in every culture. One of my favorite quotes is “traveling is not about seeing the world through your own eyes, but seeing the world through the eyes of others.” Watching foreign offers that same experience without having to go anywhere.

Tonight’s film was entirely made and financed in Hong Kong and stars Hong Kongnese stud, Andy
Lau. ‘All About Love‘ is a interwoven love story revolving around the life lost and gained by two young women, one who died and gave her heart for transplant and another who gained it. The recipient’s life is burdened with the sorrow of the woman who’s young life was cut tragically short. The Chinese doctors treat the saddened heart as a organ resisting complete acceptance int he new body, but all can sense that medcine alone is not assuaging the heart’s discomfort. The ‘2 couples, 1 heart’ story was a little overwrought for my tastes, but nonetheless hard to deny the living characters’ fight for life and acceptance that loving alone is ultimately better than simply being alone.

If this story was told from Hollywood I would cringe at the non-scientific plot of a re-used heart carrying the memories of it’s original creator. But the lonely characters in an austere Hong Kong drama convey to me others may not feel so sure about the essnce and even soul that the human experince carries. Death and life no longer seem so textbook-defined to me.