Double Happiness with Beau Travail
Double Happiness with Beau Travail
Conversation with writer/director Mina Shum moderated by Lindy Leong, Senior Film Programmer, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
Double Happiness
Sandra Oh made her feature film debut as Jade, a young woman navigating love and the expectations of her traditional Chinese family in Mina Shum’s comedy Double Happiness. An aspiring actor, Jade takes bit parts (often ones based on racial stereotypes) while working in her family’s shop and hides her white boyfriend. Using direct address and laced with meta-cinematic nods, Shum’s film explores not just romance but also familial love and self-love.
DIRECTOR: Mina Shum. WRITTEN BY: Mina Shum. CAST: Sandra Oh, Stephen Chang, Alannah Ong, Callum Keith Rennie. 1994. 87 min. Canada. Color. English, Cantonese. DCP.
Beau Travail
Claire Denis’s fifth feature film catapulted her into international fame with its lush cinematography (by Agnès Godard) and evocative story about a group of French legionnaires and their repressed desires. Adjudant-Chef Galoup (Denis Lavant) recalls his time in the army in Djibouti. When the striking Gilles (Grégoire Colin) joins his section, Galoup becomes envious and wishes for the young soldier’s destruction. Structured in an elliptical manner, Beau Travail explores the tragedy of living a life while denying oneself love.
DIRECTOR: Claire Denis. WRITTEN BY: Jean-Pol Fargeau, Claire Denis. CAST: Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin. 1999. 90 min. France. Color. French. DCP.
The Summer of Love: 1990s Romances film series is presented, in part, in community partnership with Visual Communications.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
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