18/05/2007

Asia Argento’s masturbatory performance in the film’s opening moments will certainly give a commercial push to the latest endeavour by Olivier Assayas, Boarding Gate [+see also:
trailer
film profile], presented out of competition at Cannes in a special Midnight Screening (and on release from August 22 in France by ARP Distribution).

At the end of the film’s press and market screening some spoke of a “B movie” but in this case it was purely intentional programming on the part of the highly sophisticated 52 year-old director, who began writing the screenplay for André Téchiné and has also published books on the films of Ingmar Bergman and Hong Kong.

And Hong Kong is the setting to the story of Sandra (Argento), a former prostitute who leaves London in search of a new life in the Chinese metropolis. Made on a €22.5m budget, Assayas’ English language project changed production companies during production – eventually passing to Margo Films, in association with Canal + and TPS Star – and is being sold internationally by Memento.

The director, who was at Cannes in 2002 with Demonlover [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and 2004 with Clean [+see also:
trailer
film profile], is already working on his new, $6m film Springtime Past (produced by MK2), which stars Juliette Binoche and will begin shooting at the end of the month.

(Translated from Italian)