A movie theater implicitly provides context for a film and indicates whether or not it is an independent film, a Hollywood blockbuster, a foreign artsy fartsy film or just a foreign mainstream film. AMC Loews Boston Common usually plays Hollywood films, but I’ve noticed an increase in films from East Asia that are not making the rounds in art house or independent theaters such as Kendall Square Landmark Cinemas. AMC Loews Boston Common is adjacent to Chinatown so it probably makes commercial sense to feature films from East Asia. Apple Cinemas Cambridge caters to a South Asian population by featuring films from Hollywood and Bollywood. Just because a film is from another country does not automatically make it an art house film. It could be a foreign commercial film with broad mainstream appeal in the originating region. So when I see a foreign film at Apple Cinemas Cambridge and AMC Loews Boston Common, I can only use my best judgment by looking at the audience or doing research after seeing the film whereas if it is playing at Kendall Square Landmark Cinemas, I can guess that it is probably a critically acclaimed film thus artsy fartsy.
Anyone who has been reading my movie reviews knows that I watch films from all regions, but if I’ve heard about them, they have permeated the ether of the moviegoer world because it is an artsy fartsy foreign film whereas I have not heard of any of the foreign films playing at Apple Cinemas Cambridge and AMC Loews Boston Common. I’ve deliberately been reading movie descriptions of films playing at both theaters to see if I would find a movie description that appealed to me then checked it out. I rarely watch trailers. I saw Dangal at Apple Cinemas Cambridge and was not disappointed, but I have been waiting for a similar opportunity to take a plunge into a foreign film with no preconceptions at AMC Loews Boston Common.
When I read the description for 29+1, I knew that it was finally time and even found a friend who was willing to see the film with no information other than the description. 29+1 is about two women who are about to turn 30. One decides to go on an adventure and appears in the promotional material so I thought she would dominate the film, and the other is more driven, but wonders why. The worst-case scenario was that I would unwittingly pay to see the Hong Kong version of a Bridget Jones type film. The best-case scenario was some deep meditation on issues of life and death reminiscent of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. I was a little concerned when the previews showed another film with supernatural elements that suggested that if a woman has a life devoted to her career, not family, she will not be happy. On one hand, work should not be the most important aspect of life, but on the other hand, seeing a preview like that suggests that I may have unwittingly entered a trope discouraging women from living an empty life in order to glorify traditional roles that can potentially be equally as empty.
Even after seeing 29+1 at AMC Loews Boston Common, I’m not sure how to classify it since it fits the entire spectrum of my aforementioned impressions. 29+1 is actually dominated by the driven woman, played by Chrissie Chau, who works in the professional world and regularly breaks the fourth wall by commenting to the audience about her life. I was uncertain if I was supposed to like the people in her world and was actually wrong to find them annoying because I was unaccustomed to listening to so much dialogue in a theater with a sound system designed for action films. There are several interesting mainstream scenes in the first half: the awkward bus encounter, the imagined rant against an unruly performer and the humorous exchanges with her landlord. I was very intrigued by her boss, played by Elaine Jin, but she only appears briefly in the film. When the driven career woman’s personal life gets derailed, she basically has an early midlife crisis. She moves into the second woman’s home while that woman is traveling. The driven woman mentally steps into that other woman’s shoes by reading her journal, and for me, 29+1 may have been late in capturing my attention, but it did, and I almost cried.
I was drawn to 29+1 because of this late blooming adventurer played by Joyce Cheng. Because of her late appearance, I was concerned that she would end up being a manic pixie girl for the driven woman, but she feels more real than anything that came before her. The driven woman is an empty shell in comparison, which is why she is derailed, but also that part of the narrative actually hurt the momentum of the film for me because the longer that the driven woman’s story dominated the screen, I became less engaged in 29+1. The late blooming adventurer changed the air in the theater. In one scene, the theater was still and enraptured by the intimacy of one scene between the adventurer and her best friend, played by Babyjohn Choi. That one scene could have been the entire film, and 29+1 would have been better than most films in existence-it is so emotionally intimate and powerful that it almost feels like an invasion of privacy.
29+1 is a film adaptation of a play in which the stage actor, Kearan Pang, who directs 29+1, plays both women. I wonder if she thought audiences would not be open to the late blooming adventurer’s story without framing her story within a cautionary tale of the ideal professional woman and revealing the emptiness of that life. 29+1 throws in some cinematic contrivances at the end to reveal more connections between the women, which theoretically made me want to see 29+1 again, but then I remembered how the first half grated on my nerves. 29+1 has some magical realism elements that act as transition points between the driven woman’s connection to the adventurer’s story or when she imagines the past or alternative timelines in her life.
29+1 had my friend in tears. Because 29+1 has such a powerful second half that resonated with viewers and feels real, it almost makes me forgive the discordant first half. 29+1 is an ambitious film with insanely textured characters and strong emotional depictions that feel like literal clips from life, but 29+1 undercut its momentum by feeling the need to provide an unnecessary counterpart. I understand that 29+1 wanted to depict the lives of two very different, but equally sympathetic women on a similar journey through life, but the first half while compelling, felt more common and less like a masterpiece than the second half. 29+1 is an uneven film that ends so powerfully that you may be willing to forgive the more approachable, but trite first half.