There is thus in film, almost no dialogue to be strictly accurate. Even when two characters discuss, they do it without holding account of the other. This distance, James Lee establishes it in a very aesthetic way in the attention paid to framing. Thus a couple, joins together with table in an including plan, is fragmented with each pronounced sentence, a pillar masking its counterpart with each time one of its member speaks. When a gangster addresses himself to his victim, vis-a-vis the camera, this one does not answer. When one of the gangsters poses a series of questions to the one of his/her colleagues, the answers intervene only later on in film, James Lee fascinating care to divide the dialogues into as many monologues, finally addressed to the spectator, as seems to be to it the letter in mysterious Ah Beng which marks the starting point of film. In the field of the setting in scene pure - and purified - Ah Beng Returns is thus of an unquestionable interest, preceding the hypnotic control of astonishing Beautiful Washing Machine. James Lee has fun with his lack of means which it transforms into asset, its scenes of actions being played for example blows of paperboard titles instead of making speak the powder in force surround, its decorations êtant only of thin variations on the same partition, on which only a change of table imposes a variation of the environment of waiting which planes on film. The history unfortunately, loses of legibility during the experiment. If one includes/understands the stylistic step of James Lee, almost necessary to the underlining of a certain nihilism of the other - the abuse is one of the other concerns of the protagonists, like it illustrates the scene of the forced meal -, one can consider it regrettable that it is overlapping in a narration which is at the same time packing and pretext, whereas this case study is sufficed finally for it even, in a certain way, as a proclamation.
For the original article in French goto:
Sancho Does Asia
