Month: April 2025

Tale of love and loneliness set in massage parlor

Immigrants and massage parlor workers Amy (Ke-Xi Wu, left) and Didi (Haipeng Xu) share a happy moment in Blue Sun Palace.

By Richard Ades

When you’re living in a foreign land, human connections can be as precious as they are rare. Maybe that’s the message of Constance Tsang’s debut feature film, Blue Sun Palace.

Then again, maybe it’s not. Writer/director Tsang doesn’t force an interpretation on you, any more than she tells you what to think of her characters, all Chinese or Taiwanese immigrants eking out a living in Queens, New York. She merely invites you to sit back and watch their stories unfold.

In the case of one of them, their story doesn’t unfold nearly long enough.

We first meet a young woman named Didi (Haipeng Xu) when she’s sharing a restaurant meal with Cheung (Kang-sheng Lee), a somewhat older man who seems to be a good friend and maybe a future boyfriend. The two clearly enjoy each other’s company, and Didi even invites Cheung to spend the night after he misses the last bus home.

The next morning, however, the couple’s relationship seems less certain. When Cheung begins talking about possibly sharing a home someday, Didi jokingly shuts him down, saying her ultimate plan is to move to Baltimore and open a restaurant with her friend Amy (Ke-Xi Wu).

We then learn that Didi and Amy, along with two other immigrant women, manage and work at a massage parlor—a neighborhood business that claims it doesn’t offer sexual services even though we’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Since Cheung is one of the parlor’s clients, the exact nature of his relationship with Didi becomes even more nebulous.

What isn’t nebulous is that Didi is the heart and soul of the parlor’s little community, keeping the other women’s spirits up and organizing dinners that remind them of the traditions and families they left behind. This makes it all the more devastating when Didi suddenly disappears from the story due to a tragic development that thankfully is left off-screen.

Amy (Ke-Xi Wu) wonders what to do about the leaking ceiling in her Queens massage parlor.

From then on, the film changes its focus to Amy and Cheung and their struggles to deal with Didi’s departure. In the process, they reveal a little more about themselves. We learn, for example, that Cheung has a wife and daughter in Taiwan but seems either unable or unwilling to be reunited with them.

Tentatively, Amy and Cheung begin spending time together. Do they feel a real connection, or are they merely trying to fill the emptiness left by Didi’s loss? Tsang’s script neither judges the characters nor explains all their motives, but it does supply an ending that ties up enough loose ends to be satisfying.

A film that avoids overt sentimentality and proceeds at its own pace, Blue Sun Palace is not for every taste. But it has multiple charms, including a wonderful cast giving understated, naturalistic performances.

Mix in Sami Jano’s subtle musical score, Caitlin Carr’s unhurried editing and Norm Li’s elegant cinematography, and you end up with a calm viewing experience that may remind some of the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu.  

Who knows? Maybe someday people will be talking with equal reverence about the films of the great Chinese American director Constance Tsang.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Blue Sun Palace (no MPA rating) opens April 25 in New York and Los Angeles, with further screenings planned in subsequent weeks. It is scheduled to screen at 9:30 p.m. May 9 at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus.

Deneuve as a first lady out to reinvent herself

Catherine Deneuve stars as the title character in The President’s Wife, a fictionalized biopic of French first lady Bernadette Chirac. (Photo courtesy of Cohen Media Group)

By Richard Ades

What’s it like to be the wife of a leader who forces you to live in his shadow and ignores your political advice? The President’s Wife answers that question with its feminism-informed biography of former French first lady Bernadette Chirac.

But don’t expect a sober-minded piece of historical revisionism. The film, directed and co-written by Lea Domenach, refuses to take itself too seriously, and it’s clear from the first scene that we shouldn’t, either.

As Bernadette (the legendary Catherine Deneuve) makes her way to a confessional booth for a heart-to-heart with her priest, the church choir informs us that what we’re about to see is based only loosely on reality. In fact, the singers warn us, it’s a “work of fiction.” 

Still, it’s hard not to hope that what follows is least partly true, because it’s a delicious story of self-reinvention and political comeuppance.

We first meet Bernadette in 1995, when her husband, Jacques Chirac (Michel Vuillermoz), is on the verge of winning the presidency. A politician in her own right, Bernadette has worked hard to bring about this long-sought victory, but once the new administration takes office, she’s quickly pushed to the background.

With her dated wardrobe and occasionally loose lips, Bernadette is seen as a liability by both her husband and her younger daughter, Claude (Clara Giraudeau), who works as one of his chief aides. The two even go so far as to assign a communications adviser named Bernard (Denis Podalydes) to help Bernadette hone her image. The idea is to keep the first lady from embarrassing and upstaging the president.

However, the plan soon backfires.

After a series of events provide proof of (1) Bernadette’s political smarts and (2) Jacques’s marital unfaithfulness, Bernard switches his allegiance from the husband to the wife. Together, Bernard and Bernadette begin working to improve her image through such tacks as promoting charities, rubbing elbows with celebrities and, mostly, just being herself.

To put it mildly, their efforts prove fruitful for Bernadette and entertaining for the audience. (Watch for the trained bear!)

Anyone who’s less than fully knowledgeable about French politics might lose a reference here and there, but it’s just a slight inconvenience. Thanks to Domenach’s witty script and playful direction—and thanks to a great cast and especially to Deneuve’s droll and assured performance as Bernadette—The President’s Wife is one history class you won’t want to skip.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

The President’s Wife opened April 18 in major cities and will expand to other markets beginning April 25. It is scheduled to open May 9 at Columbus’s Gateway Film Center.

West Bank tale doesn’t pull its punches

Basem (Saleh Bakri, right) offers comfort to distraught student Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) in The Teacher. (Photos courtesy of MPI Media Group)

By Richard Ades

The Teacher takes on one of the most divisive issues in the world today: the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians. And it does it in a way that is thoughtful, provocative and dramatic.

The title character is Basem El-Saleh (Saleh Bakri), who teaches in a poor community in the West Bank. Anyone who’s seen the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land—or the final episodes of the Netflix series Mo—won’t be surprised to learn that Basem’s students have more to worry about than passing tests.

Two of them, brothers Yacoub and Adam (Mahmoud Bakri and Muhammad Abed Elrahman), return from school one day just in time to see their home torn down by Israeli forces. “It was just their turn,” Basem explains to British social worker Lisa (Imogen Poots), noting that most houses in the village have been marked for demolition.

Adding to the residents’ worries are the Israeli settlers whose red-roofed homes can be seen multiplying in the distance. Though the settlers have moved to the occupied territory illegally, the residents know the government is likely to take the newcomers’ side if any dispute arises. 

And soon a dispute does arise, with tragic consequences. When a group of settlers sets fire to Palestinian-owned olive trees, Yacoub tries to intervene and is killed for his trouble. Community members vow to seek justice, but they know it may be beyond their reach.

Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman, left) shares a couch with his teacher (Saleh Bakri) after watching his home be demolished by Israeli troops.

Making her feature-length film debut, British-Palestinian writer-director Farah Nabulsi doesn’t shy away from showing the hardships West Bank residents face under Israeli occupation. Nor is she afraid to take the story into controversial areas.

A subplot that eventually melds with the main storyline involves an Israeli soldier being held hostage by a resistance group that hopes to exchange him for Palestinian prisoners. The soldier’s American parents (Stanley Townsend and Andrea Irvine) pressure the government to approve the exchange, but Israeli officials seem more interested in finding and punishing his kidnappers.

Leading the cast, Bakri is slightly hampered by director Nabulsi’s tendency to exploit his movie-star good looks (i.e., he takes off his shirt a lot). Still, he’s stalwartly effective as the teacher who tries to give his students the help that, as flashbacks reveal, he was unable to give his own son.

As Lisa, Basem’s colleague and possible love interest, Poots projects courage, sincerity and a useful amount of wiliness. As young Adam, who becomes increasingly distraught following his brother’s death, Elrahman provides some of the tale’s most unsettling moments.

Gilles Porte’s cinematography and composer Alex Baranowski’s score perfectly complement the film’s perilous setting and changing moods.

Though some may quibble that its ending is overly tidy, The Teacher is a brave and nuanced attempt to reveal the humanity lurking beneath one of the world’s most intractable political standoffs.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

The Teacher opens April 11 in New York City and expands to other markets beginning April 18. It is scheduled to open April 25 at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus.