Fantasia 2007: After This Our Exile

In terms of cinematography, hands down best film of the festival so far (festival where quality of the picture doesn't matter so much as it's gory or thrilling or both). The opening song is the same as Dog Bite Dog's ending one, while they're not in the same movie caste. Malaysia is beautiful, but Shing, Aaron Kwok's character, is one whose tragic personality drains you completely. In extremely dramatic/serious movies, some directors are able to surprise you with certain choices of meta/obscure jokes (similarly to Pen-Ek Ratanaruang of Last Life In The Universe, with the Ichi The Killer advert in a movie that happens to star Tadanobu Asano). Upon searching for Patrick Tam after watching the HK movie awards ceremony, I found out that he was a professor at City U. Qin Hailu, who plays badass madame Hsia also starred in Fruit Chan's Durian Durian as a hooker with a heart of gold, that time. Young actor Gouw Ian Iskandar playing Boy is not of mixed heritage; just another ethnic Chinese whose parents come from all over the place. :P

After This Our Exile plays again on Friday night at 8:50PM, and was far from being sold out tonight (I bought ticket 70-something two hours before the screening, for a theatre that contains 173). Last chance to catch it in a theatre in Montreal probably.