Sometimes great filmmakers make less-than-great films. Most powerhouse oeuvres harbor a dud somewhere-it comes with the territory. But even amidst critical calumniation and bitter grumblings from disgruntled fans, devoted audiences commonly exercise clemency and manage to place at least some of the blame elsewhere; whether it's a link to the dubious studio system, or (gasp!) a calamitous tie to Harvey Weinstein, even auteur lovers are willing to admit the collaborative nature of filmmaking if it allows for the exoneration of a favorite director. But every once in a while, things just don't line up and there's no easy way for a filmmaker or his fans to save face. Sometimes great filmmakers make less-than-great films, and sometimes they make mind-boggling mistakes.

Such is the case with Chen Kaige's Killing Me Softly (02) a deplorable straight-to-video english-language production from one of China's finest filmmakers that plays like a soft-core porn you might catch after hours on a naughty cable channel. This multi-million dollar schlock proudly bears the we-couldn't-give-you-this-film-but-sex-sells mark of death on its "Unrated Version" packaging and stars Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes in the least estimable performances of their barely-there careers. Beyond that, the astoundingly clichˇd narrative and listless dialogue of this visual panegyric to Graham's breasts should easily cement a two to four a.m. slot on Cinemax.

Kaige, one of China's famed Fifth Generation directors, has made some of the most remarkable films to come out of his country in the last two decades. With Yellow Earth (84), Farewell, My Concubine (93), and only three years prior to Softly, the notable period epic, The Emperor and the Assassin (99), he's gleaned a number of distinguished awards and accolades on the international circuit. Needless to say Killing Me Softly came as a surprise and left those that were at all familiar with his work dumbfounded. But word of his next film, Together, a Chinese production about a young violinist, sounded promising enough to keep critics and audiences at bay, at least for a year.

Together tells the story of young prodigy Liu Xiaochun (Tang Yun) and his single father Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi), who decide to move from their tiny traditional village to the budding metropolis of Beijing in hope of finding a first-rate instructor for the thirteen-year-old. After a few days in the big city, the two convince a lonely professor, Jiang (Wang Zhiwen), to teach the boy for a nominal fee; Xioachun and his father struggle financially throughout the film, and the latter lovingly works odd-jobs to pay for his son's tutelage. Lost and lonely amidst the modern miscellany of the big city - Kaige litters the film with cell phones, designer clothes, and sports cars - Xioachun befriends a neighborhood woman played with infectious vivacity by Kaige's real-life wife, Chen Hong, whose new-world sensibility immediately intrigues the youth. In between music lessons, the boy begins to fall for the capricious twentysomething as she invites him to play at her parties, takes him shopping, and involves him in her tawdry romances, much to his pre-adolescent delight.

Xiaochun's teacher, a melancholy man who lives with his cats in a ramshackle home among various articles of nostalgia, doesn't offer the boy much more than some feel-good advice about "the power of music," and Kaige invests himself in a stock student-teaches-teacher relationship which manages only occasionally to offer some genuinely funny material to counter the grating histrionics of the boy's goofball father. But by the time Xiaochun's inspiring presence incites his instructor to take an interest in teaching again (throughout their entire time together, Jiang never utters a word of technical instruction) his father has finagled an audition with the prestigious professor Yu, played by Kaige himself, and the father-son duo soon leave for a bigger, better, career-oriented apprenticeship.

Following a tangential blunder in which Xiaochun sells his prized violin to buy a designer coat for Lili, Professor Yu accepts him as a student under the condition that the boy move into his home; before too long, the callow Xiaochun, taken by "new-world" amenities, can't divert his eyes from the television and trades his "old world" look for a clean-cut makeover. But when the boy learns of his father's plans to move back home to the village, he is forced to make some monumental coming-of-age decisions for himself, and realizes that in falling for professor Yu's selfish and superficial world of metropolitan glitz, he's sacrificed a relationship with the only family he's ever had. It's exactly the kind of foreign fare mass audiences tend to gobble up, and there is enough satisfying sap here to please everyone.

Though Together offers a few genuinely heartwarming moments, a slick, Disney-infused cheesiness quickly takes over and by the film's denouement - a montage complete with requisite teary-eyed performance by the young violinist - the only trace of familiar Kaige is some quick flashback footage in washed-out colors and grainy film stock that will undoubtedly leave the director's fans longing for the good old days. Even the old world/new world leitmotif which one would expect him to execute with grace, is overstated, and offers only a transparent backdrop for the father-son relationship; it's no Killing Me Softly, but Together seems equally devoid of the Fifth Generation's subtle candor, opting for in-your-face sentimentality.

The question is, then, what's happening to Chen Kaige? Once a major presence in international cinema, his latest offerings - to put it mildly - haven't come close to the standards set by his previous work. And unlike most misfires by lauded auteurs, a frightening awareness possesses both of them, an unmitigated confidence in the major aesthetic and thematic shift from earlier films. Kaige himself is quoted in the press notes, as saying, "For years I confused suffering with death, and felt admiration for many artists who mastered this in their work...And so many Chinese films - some of my own, for that matter - have sad, tragic endings. But I see now, especially now that I'm a father, that we have a right to be happy... I can say, for the first time, happiness makes us stronger." Though his point is well-taken, most would argue that those years of "confusion" yielded far superior films, and we can only hope that Together's unabashed "happiness makes us stronger" attitude is not the only quality we can come to expect from Kaige's maturation as a filmmaker.

In truth, it's much scarier to suffer the earnestness of Together than it is to watch the far more excoriating Killing Me Softly. Where the latter defies explanation altogether, the former is the kind of film for which its creator cannot escape responsibility. Like most fans and film lovers, however, I'm always willing to give someone with Kaige's track record another chance; we all endure certain cinematic digressions at some point, and there is always reason to hope for a return to form. But in all honesty, considering this pair of dire disappointments, I'm not going to hold my breath. - MATTHEW PLOUFFE

© 2003 by Matthew Plouffe

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