My Life as McDull2001, 90 minutes / 26th Hong Kong International Film Festival: FIPRESCI PrizeDialogue: Cantonese | Subtitles: English Synopsis (From Chinesecinemas.org)Surprise winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the 26th Hong Kong International Film Festival (2002), the animated feature My Life As McDull will soon charm international audiences, a reception anticipated by the Udine Far East Film Festival, whose booking of McDull reportedly denied it a place at Cannes. Based on characters from a successful series of comic books by co-creators Alice Mak and Brian Tse from the early 90s, the film is told in voiceover by the mature McDull, a piglet in a world populated by both cute animals and humans. The narrative is constructed from several intertitled set pieces involving McDull's birth, education, and training as would-be Olympian, with excursions to his mother's TV cooking show, the Maldives, and other bits of whimsy. Musical accompaniment is provided by a series of adorably jovial nonsense songs set to ruminatively elegiac classical piano pieces by Schubert and Schumann.There is always a dumber pig. - McDull [ More ] |