FESTIVAL ’90 : MOVIE REVIEWS / L.A. FESTIVAL : Delicate Taiwanese Delight in ‘Sandwich Man’
Films and videos representing 25 Pacific cultures screen through Sept. 16. Highlights of today’s and Friday’s programs are reviewed here:
Today: The Sandwich Man
Taiwan Screens at 6 p.m., Laemmle Grand, 349 S. Grand Ave. The short film by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien is a delicate vignette based on a short story by Huang Chunming, and serves as the title episode in a three-part movie. (The print screened had only two, however--Hou’s segment and a minor but likable finale by another director.)
Like most of Hou’s work, “Sandwich Man” takes a subject that might easily lurch into bathos--the plight of a poor city family, whose slightly foolish father earns a modest living carrying movie ad sandwich boards while dressed as a clown--and treats it with exquisite subtlety, convincing detail and luminous human perception.
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