/ The beauty of double-edged The Assassin – The Progress

This is a killer, a fable of a pigment that is beyond the ordinary grammar of cinema.

Nothing to do with the bidding for swords and thrillers swordsmen: here, no tiger, no dragon, no warriors who fly through the air and pirouette on the ceiling. Everything is muffled, held in long sequence shots, themselves composed with silence and completely insubordinate purifies the usual spring of martial arts films.

A work of art and not a martial arts film

the palm magnificence goes without question to these interiors, without partitions, where curtains of silk chaloupent on camera in a ballet which sometimes obscures the vision, now let glimpse of the palace, its shadows and textures. It is mesmerizing: Taiwanese Hou Hsiao-hsien is not composed of too heady for Shanghai Flowers , its unmatched bouquet. The price of the stage at the last Cannes festival, suits him admirably. Too good to be true ? His grace, coupled with extreme restraint, is double-edged truth. Let’s say it straight out: we do not understand much about the dramatic twists and policies of this mural, which first goes to the thousand and one details of daily life in the ninth e century, the golden age of the Tang dynasty. The murderer in question, embodied the beautiful Shu Qi ( Millennium Mambo ) is charged by the empire fell a dissident governor. But the lonely avenger shares a dark secret with his prey: he is her cousin, they once loved, he had to submit to an arranged marriage, she loves probably still …

This inability to decipher what is happening on the screen, born a grueling frustration. The mystery, it will a while. The fighting scenes, filmed by far, are completed barely begun, crack, like a brushstroke we barely had time to catch a glimpse. Ditto for the actress Shu Qi, in which the filmmaker has asked to freeze its expressiveness fatal blow for the spectators. It remains to be lost in contemplation of the work of craftsmanship. A radical work of art, more than a martial arts movie.

“aerobatic scenes in The killer are as quotations traditional genre film, but certainly not the bottom of the plot. And I think the actors. Even with protection and care of all kinds, even with wooden swords, these scenes are very violent. Shu Qi, my leading lady, was covered in bruises. In fact, what influenced me the most, it is the Japanese samurai films, Kurosawa and those of others, where what matters most, not the violent actions, also often expeditious and finally anecdotal, but the philosophy of life that accompanies this strange samurai profession. “

David S. Tran