Director Viv Li looks at the state of her life, specifically he life in Berlin, her family in China and her uncertainty about he sexual orientation and let's us into her uncertainty.
Full of life and the occasionally amusing musings of a young woman TWO MOUNTAINS is going to play best for young people who are mulling over the same things she is pondering. This is a film that is very much a film that is being made for the "kids" of today who have her sensibilities about life and art. Its a film that is for people who grew up on the internet watching clips on computers of phones. There is nothing wrong with that, but it's something that is going to distance some of the audience.
I fully understand that this film was not made for me. I'm an older guy who is several decades past the questions being raised in this film. It's great that Li is sharing her life with us and I am thrilled that I get to see how younger people connect with the world today. At the same time the revelations and uncertainty is nothing new since its the same thing people have been pondering for decades.
I know that makes me seem like an old man saying "get off my lawn", but I'm not. Rather what I'm trying to say, however badly, is that this is a sweet little film that is stuck in the wrong film festival. Li's film needs to be away from a festival as full of pretentious twaddle as this year's NDNF. Li has no pretentions, only a sense of life and wonder that is refreshing. I love that she doesn't know or have answers-which is diamentrically opposed to pretty much every other film in this years festival. There is ultimately a sweetness and an honesty to it all that needs to be seen away from the bullshit nonsense the current programmers of this festival lay on it. (The festival hasn't been the best of the new directors or films in the world in several years unless you think art house films that are never seen after screening here is an achievement - seriously most films at NDNF over the last few years seem to die after playing here). What should have happened was TWO MOUNTAINS needed to play at Sundance or SXSW or some other festival with real people and not rich patrons. It needed to go to where the right people could have seen it and connected and gotten word out and it found it's audience. I would have been delighted to find this at say Tribeca where I could have gone toe to toe with people who fell all over it critically and had arguments. People could have found the true wonders of the film and the people in it. Instead I find myself stuck wondering what sort of art house programmer found in this small bundle of humanity and instisted on directing it from the people who would truly love this film and be changed by it.
Weirdly I am left feeling that the NDNF's programmers have made some terrible mistake and run a real live film made by a real live human being with feelings about trying to explain her world instead of an art house director trying to show they and they alone know the world.
Seriously TWO MOUNTAINS is the only damn film that is alive and extra special that is playing NDNF. While far from perfect it is the only film out of the 11 I've seen to date that feels like a person made it because they wanted to figure something out and not because they wanted to tell me how great they were.
Yea, Viv Li is going to change the world, if we can just get her out of the art house and let the kids and grownups who need to see her films do so.
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