''Away with Words'' (known also by its

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

title 三條人, roughly translated as ''Three Life-stories'', and its

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

title 孔雀, translated as ''Peacock'') is a 1999

auteur An auteur (; , 'author') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded but personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, which thus manifests the director's unique ...

trilingual (

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

) film by Christopher Doyle co-scripted by Doyle and

Tony Rayns Antony Rayns (born 1948) is a British writer, commentator, film festival programmer and screenwriter. He wrote for the underground publication ''Cinema Rising'' (its name inspired by Kenneth Anger's '' Scorpio Rising'') before contributing to ...

and starring

Tadanobu Asano , better known by his stage name , is a Japanese actor. He is known for his roles as Dragon Eye Morrison in '' Electric Dragon 80.000 V'', Kakihara in '' Ichi the Killer'', Mamoru Arita in '' Bright Future'', Hattori Genosuke in ''Zatoichi'', Ke ...

, Kevin Sherlock and Mavis Xu. The film, shot in a jazzy, free-wheeling style and featuring Doyle's signature hyper-kinetic, oversaturated photography and eccentric humor, focuses on a trip that Asano's character takes to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

and his encounters with off-beat personalities populating the metropolitan landscape (among them, a

beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...

-drinking amnesiac

gay bar A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clientele; the term '' gay'' is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT communities. Gay bars once serv ...

owner portrayed by Kevin Sherlock). Another narrative thread relies on flashbacks into Asano's character's childhood in

Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city ...

. The protagonist suffers from overbearing excesses of his

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...

associations and synesthesia. The emerging human attachments provide an emotional center and a source of serenity to offset the rampage of the protagonist's mind and tame the lavish disarray of urban imagery. The film credits

Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...

(presumably '' Funes the Memorious'') and Luria for inspiration. Many aspects of Asano's character (memory excess, profound synesthesia, arranging memories visually along roads, wordplay, struggling with an onslaught of associations, comments about restaurant music and its effect on food taste, the waking-for-school scene) are directly borrowed from Luria's real life case study of

Solomon Shereshevskii Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky (russian: Соломон Вениаминович Шерешевский; 1886 – 1 May 1958), also known simply as 'Ш' ('Sh'), 'S.', or Luria's S was a Soviet journalist and mnemonist active in the 1920s. He w ...

, ''The Mind of a Mnemonist''. The film was screened in the

Un Certain Regard (, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob. The section presents 20 films w ...

section at the

1999 Cannes Film Festival The 52nd Cannes Film Festival was held from 12 to 23 May 1999. Canadian filmmaker, actor and author David Cronenberg was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the French– Belgian film ''Rosetta'' by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The festi ...

Cast

- Asano Takashi * Kevin Sherlock - Kevin * Mavis Xu - Susie * Takanori Kubo - Asano Takashi (Boy) * Christa Hughes - Christa * Georgina Dobson - Georgina

References

External links

* 1999 films Hong Kong independent films Hong Kong LGBT-related films 1990s Cantonese-language films 1990s Japanese-language films 1990s English-language films Films directed by Christopher Doyle Japanese independent films 1999 directorial debut films 1990s Japanese films 1990s Hong Kong films {{1990s-Japan-film-stub