UFO in Her Eyes

In a flash of light a strange stone appears to a woman in the countryside of a remote province. People interpret the mysterious event in different ways, but most - including community leaders - interpret it as a UFO sighting and attempt to milk the evolving situation for cash and manipulate the facts to support personal pet projects. Presumptive, conflicting and vague official pronouncements only add to the confusion.

UFO in Her Eyes is an alluring and whimsical parody of China's changing political climate and economy. While sophistication and depth are lacking and many scenes are awkward, this funny story and hopeful vision for China's future is encouraging and warms my heart. Seen at the Miami International Film Festival.

I saw this film as part of the Ghent filmfestival 2011. The announcement reminded me vaguely of All Your Dead Ones (Carlos Moreno, 2011), where local politicians take advantage of a mysterious phenomenon in their village, and use it for their own purposes. In other words, satire is intentional. This seems the case in this film too. Several dignitaries make their appearance, being their pompous selves. Bystanders like us cannot take them too seriously. We can only wait for their house of cards to collapse in the end. Contrary to aforementioned All Your Dead Ones, the basic idea is not exploited fully here, rather the opposite. I can imagine, however, that the underlying book did a better job (assuming here).

All in all, the 110 minutes that this film takes, are not well spent. The idea is nice, but it deserves a much better script. In spite of all the effort put in landscapes, props and mass scenes, there is not enough interesting material to keep our attention span all the time. And as far as casting and acting is concerned, satire fails here big time with a majority of personages that are not believable, due to over-acting or being too one-dimensional. The only thing I could do when leaving the theater was scoring a 1 (lowest) for the audience award. Needless to say that I was disappointed and had expected something different from the given ingredients.