Indie road movie opens film fest
Light touch from Dave Boyle captures pulse of alternative scene
Break-ups on Skype, stolen guitars on eBay and an annoying iPhone ringtone are among the of-the-moment plot devices in the indie road movie Daylight Savings.
The movie opens this year’s Vancouver Asian Film Festival (Nov. 1, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.), and if a future archeologist were to reconstruct San Francisco’s indie music, visual arts and film scenes, circa 2012, this film could pretty much serve as a thesis on the era’s attitudes, styles and moods.
Morose would be one prevailing mood, as indie musician Goh (Goh Nakamura, an indie musician) gets that Skype breakup from his L.A. girlfriend in the opening frames.
In short order, he’s mortified at the sellout involved in the use of one of his songs in a TV ad for anti-depressants (nice ironic commentary on those indie sounds), he stammers his way through a live radio interview promoting that night’s concert, and — a break from the downbeat — he clicks with a fellow musician (singersongwriter Yea-Ming Chen) in a fleeting conversation at an after-concert party.
All of which sends Goh on a road-trip with a bad-influence cousin (Michael Aki) involving encounters with an array of well-drawn small-town California characters and locales, including the one-time filming location of the classic thriller Vertigo.
Director Dave Boyle has just the right light touch on the pulse of this alternative scene, and the indie musicians playing indie musicians acquit themselves well alongside the actors.
Nakamura has an appealingly hangdog onscreen presence. (He and Chen will be at the Vancouver screening, and performing afterwards.)
Daylight Savings is a sequel to last year’s Surrogate Valentine, also starring Nakamura, but a viewing of the earlier movie isn’t necessary to follow and enjoy this one. The new film’s last line leaves an opening for a third chapter in Goh’s fictional romantic adventures, and that chapter is apparently in the works.
The festival, in its 16th year, has become a showcase for independent documentaries, scripted features and shorts made by Asian filmmakers from Canada and the U.S.
Among this year’s documentary features is Mr. Cao Goes to Washington (Nov. 3, 11 a.m.), U.S. director S. Leo Chiang’s look at rookie Republican congressman Joseph Cao, the first Vietnamese-American elected to the House and the only Republican to vote for President Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill.
The festival closes at 8 p.m. Nov. 4 with a screening of White Frog, the fifth feature by U.S. director Quentin Lee, a perennial VAFF favourite (1997’s Shopping for Fangs).
Lee’s latest is a change of pace, starring Joan Chen, B.D. Wong, and young actor Booboo Stewart (one of The Twilight Saga’s wolves) in a family drama addressing the reality of life with an autistic disorder.