Floating is considerably more ambitious in scope than Autumn Moon, taking a global view of the Chinese diaspora. Although it deals with the trauma of uprootedness, emotional breakdown and the recognition of the transience of life, Law has woven the strands of comedy and tragedy together very effectively for a surprisingly lighthearted effect.
With its broad theme and Law's characteristic attention to detail, Floating is an excellent sketch of immigrant trauma, but with so much to deal with, it fails to probe more deeply, making it less satisfying Autumn Moon.
The Goddess of 1967
女神1967
Australia, 2000, 35mm, 118mins, color
Clara Law's most recent film sees her making the full transition from Hong Kongese to Asian-Australian filmmaker. In this highly visual film featuring the Australian outback, Clara Law returns to exploring the relationship between two people cut off from their environments.
JM, a young Japanese man, leads a solitary, uneventful life in Tokyo. A representative of the e-generation, he is wedded to gadgets and dreams of owning a very special car, a 1967 Citroen DS (Deesse/Goddess). He locates one in Australia but when he shows up to buy it he finds the seller dead.
A 17 year-old blind girl tells him she can take him to find the owner. Together they embark on a strange and erotically charged journey into the arid Australian desert, populated by abandoned mining towns -- a desolate land and a dark haunting past. Estranged from their environment, one by unfamiliarity and language, the other by blindness, they discover a similar goal: a shared desire to transcend the past and find redemption.
By using the outback as a kind of post-modern stage, Law is able to push her exploration beyond immigration to the fundamental issues of the human condition.
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