BlueNeon-2

What would you expect from a film directed by the former editor-in-chief of The Onion? Despite the budget (which might have paid for brunch at most Hollywood shoots) this film features some truly hilarious writing and perfect performances from just about everyone in the cast (even when they're not great actors, they're still perfect). If you are, by some miracle, fortunate enough to come across a copy of this film, by all means, watch. What a cruel, cruel world it is where Adam Sandler's latest piece of trash occupies approximately 1,048,576 times more space on your average video store shelf than this one would, if it appears at all.

I happened to catch this hidden gem at the Toronto Film Festival, and was quite impressed. Azucena, or "Dog Food", is about a schoolgirl named Lily and the friendship that develops between her and a dog butcher, whose profession comes to an end when dog meat is banned in the town. Lily's home life is far from ideal: her father is an abusive boor of a man who has lost his job as a policeman, and continually takes out his frustrations on Lily and her stepmother, who is of little help to Lily in such matters.

This film could have easily become a straightforward, dull harangue about any one of many social problems (animal cruelty, child abuse, etc.), but thankfully it becomes far more than that. The real subject of the film is the cycle of cruelty it depicts; it is a study of the perpetuation of abuse and violence through a society. "Dog Food" is probably a difficult find, but it's definitely worth seeing.

Is Hong Kong really the city Wong Kar-Wai depicts it to be? Is it as packed with pure stimulation? Someday I hope to find out. In the meantime, my vision of Hong Kong comes courtesy of him - I envision a 24-hour human bazaar, claustrophobic yet exhilarating. The soundtrack captures the mood wonderfully, although it features what may be a few too many renditions of "California Dreamin'" (the movie has a bit of fun with that at one point).

I was particularly impressed by how the film contains two stories which come to no genuinely climactic moment, one blending into the other. In other hands, the plot(s) may have felt disjoint, unresolved; here they work quite well, and seem entirely appropriate.