SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: Nuanced, detailed and unapologetically emotional, writer/director Pauline Chan’s first feature in quite some time will inevitably go down, for some, as a peculiar hybrid of crime movie and domestic melodrama. Still, this Chinese-NSW co-production (the first) has a mood and style that’s recognisable to any punter familiar with Asian cinema, which often freely mixes seemingly disparate dramatic strategies.
It’s highly worked and intricate narrative, full of asides, sidetracks and subplots, deals with the idea of home, and the desire to belong – to a family, a culture, a lifestyle. The plot, about a teenage orphaned Chinese girl’s ultimately heartbreaking adventures in Sydney, sneaks in some sly, and then again, not so subtle commentary about the casual racism that visitors here can (and certainly are) subject to. But then, the point of the film doesn’t seem to be concerned with social questions about immigration and Australia’s treatment of so-called 'outsiders’. Indeed, amongst the film’s most sympathetic characters are authority figures holding social service positions.
Chan’s shooting style, working with the fine cinematographer Toby Oliver, is straightforward, almost wholesome; it’s as if she wants nothing to get in the way of the actors. This is a movie of faces, looks, and feelings, mostly intense ones.
Sixteen-year-old Mei Mei (Zhu Lin) has come to Australia as part of a choir group. For years, ever since she was little, she’s had this fantasy about meeting her sponsor and pen-pal family man Dean (Guy Pearce). She’s shattered and confused when she finds that Dean is actually in Long Bay Gaol doing time for manslaughter, and that everything he has ever said about himself and his world was untrue. Relentlessly upbeat and optimistic as only the truly hopeful and naïve can be, Mei Mei pursues a familial/friendship relationship with Dean anyway, that he at first resists, which is kind of understandable; besides the fact that Dean is conscious enough to recognise he’s a bad lot, there is Mei Mei’s personality. In Mei Mei, Chan and Zhu Lin have created a character that, while sweet, has an emotional intensity (and neediness) that can be at times truly alarming. Still, once Dean’s case officer, Barbara (Claudia Karvan), discovers the backstory to Mei Mei’s prison visits, she encourages the relationship as it may have a positive impact on Dean’s upcoming parole.
While all this is evolving, Chan and co-writers Philip Dalkin and Martin Edmond pursue a harsh and violent gaol subplot revolving around prison top dog Tommy (an excellent Matt Nable) and his stand-over racket. This in turn has a direct link to Dean’s past and crime boss Terry Serio. Through a complex tangle of cross-plots Mei Mei is drawn directly into a criminal underworld. This is a story manoeuvre that seems at first outrageous, even perhaps ridiculous; but then Chan and co. sell the premise quite successfully. Mostly because there is after all a rigorous dramatic logic at work here that may strain plausibility; but you believe it since the motivations and events seem to have a powerful momentum.
33 Postcards isn’t all talk and long, meaningful looks; Chan stages some strong action, though very brief, in the film’s closing segments, and even the melodramatic scenes have a tough edge that offers a sharp counter point to the heaving sentimentality that lies at the core of the film.
The acting is fine, especially Guy Pearce and Claudia Karvan in roles that could look really silly. This is because a lot of the time they are asked to look embarrassed and helpless, in the face of a needy and vulnerable teenager.
33 Postcards has a got a lot of charm, and is, in its way, rather tough minded. I’m not at all sure whether plot is intended to be read as realist; indeed there’s a fairytale aspect here that’s present but not emphasised. Once upon a time this kind of picture was called 'heartwarming’, but given this movie’s idiosyncrasies of tone I’m not at all sure that’s what Chan and co. had in mind at all. The movie is about a life lesson all right, and it’s hard one.
