Boarding Gate
Mar 28 - Apr 08, 2008
Olivier Assayas, France, 2007, 35mm, 106 min
Sponsored by Easy Street Records
The rising international star Asia Argento (daughter of Dario) steams up Assayas's lovingly down-and-dirty nod to Hong Kong genre films and B-movie Eurotrash. BOARDING GATE is a grimy, erotically charged mash-up of the director's earlier demonlover and IRMA VEP. Earning a midnight movie slot at this year's Cannes Film Festival (and suitably shocking most critics), the film splits its focus between the bland industrial estates of Paris and the chaotic urban clutter of Hong Kong. The two are connected through the sexual maneuverings and power struggles of the dangerously attractive drug runner Sandra (Argento), her sleazebag ex-lover (Michael Madsen) and her current lover and boss, a Hong Kong "importer" (Karl Ng). Propulsive, lurid and filled with vigorous performances (especially Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, as a Cantonese-speaking gangster), BOARDING GATE is a testament to low-budget, high-energy filmmaking and a feisty scorn for the new global marketplace (including, as Assayas notes, "the new order of film finance").
More on Olivier Assayas
Watch a clip here