A Science Fiction Noir Grotesquerie
At the drugstore Walgreens last winter, I bought three marked down DVDs for two dollars each. They have one thing, at least, in common. Badass female protagonists on the covers. I finally watched one of them, The Gene Generation, starring Bai Ling, a stunning and skinny athletic Chinese actress born in 1966. I'll write about the other two marked down DVDs in later posts.
The Gene Generation is the feature film debut by Singaporean director, Pearry Teo. The film deals with a grim future, setting of the aftermath of a man-made biological catastrophe which poisoned cities. Genetic experiments gone bad have left one of the chief scientists, Josephine Hayden (Faye Dunaway), in such an extreme state of biologic mutation that she resembles something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story, all squishy mobile intestine-like organs writhing about a torso, with the ghost-like head remnant still able to communicate (in Dunaway's voice). Her brother becomes obsessed with restoring her to normal life, employing an assassin, Michelle (Bai Ling), to eliminate "gene hackers" who can enter people's bodies genetically and kill them, making them a threat to Josephine Hayden. Michelle's neighbor, Christian (Alec Newman), is a geneticist who makes a device that could restore Hayden, but the object is stolen by Michelle's brother, a gambling addict in debt to a loan shark. Michelle ends up getting involved a great deal in rescuing her fuck-up brother from trouble. Many people drop dead with bullets inside them. Hayden and her brother are ruthless in fulfilling their aims, the world is screwed because of people like them, and Michelle struggles to hold her life together, to maintain a grip on her brother's life and freedom, even as he continually deals himself bad hands.
My summary doesn't include some of the film. It's complex and I may watch it again to grasp the plot elements I didn't understand. Still, I find it intriguing after having seen it, even though I felt some impatience while I watched. Still, as with all vivid villains, the movie is fun when Daniel Zacapa, as the loan shark Randall, is on screen. He looks a bit like Udo Kier. He's effective as a businessman who's also lacking a conscience, motivated entirely by money and in the easy habit of making threats, backed by a squad of well-armed muscular men who follow his orders to the point when they're faced by Michelle, who fucks them up badly, earning her the loan shark's enmity. All that is the younger brother subplot which careens into the genetics theme when the brother steals the sophisticated device.
Bai Ling is enjoyable, an action presence, perhaps, more than an actress, at least in this film. I would like to see her in other movies, and I would like to see Pearry Teo's other films. The Gene Generation is interesting and original enough to merit that.
Vic Neptune
At the drugstore Walgreens last winter, I bought three marked down DVDs for two dollars each. They have one thing, at least, in common. Badass female protagonists on the covers. I finally watched one of them, The Gene Generation, starring Bai Ling, a stunning and skinny athletic Chinese actress born in 1966. I'll write about the other two marked down DVDs in later posts.
The Gene Generation is the feature film debut by Singaporean director, Pearry Teo. The film deals with a grim future, setting of the aftermath of a man-made biological catastrophe which poisoned cities. Genetic experiments gone bad have left one of the chief scientists, Josephine Hayden (Faye Dunaway), in such an extreme state of biologic mutation that she resembles something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story, all squishy mobile intestine-like organs writhing about a torso, with the ghost-like head remnant still able to communicate (in Dunaway's voice). Her brother becomes obsessed with restoring her to normal life, employing an assassin, Michelle (Bai Ling), to eliminate "gene hackers" who can enter people's bodies genetically and kill them, making them a threat to Josephine Hayden. Michelle's neighbor, Christian (Alec Newman), is a geneticist who makes a device that could restore Hayden, but the object is stolen by Michelle's brother, a gambling addict in debt to a loan shark. Michelle ends up getting involved a great deal in rescuing her fuck-up brother from trouble. Many people drop dead with bullets inside them. Hayden and her brother are ruthless in fulfilling their aims, the world is screwed because of people like them, and Michelle struggles to hold her life together, to maintain a grip on her brother's life and freedom, even as he continually deals himself bad hands.
My summary doesn't include some of the film. It's complex and I may watch it again to grasp the plot elements I didn't understand. Still, I find it intriguing after having seen it, even though I felt some impatience while I watched. Still, as with all vivid villains, the movie is fun when Daniel Zacapa, as the loan shark Randall, is on screen. He looks a bit like Udo Kier. He's effective as a businessman who's also lacking a conscience, motivated entirely by money and in the easy habit of making threats, backed by a squad of well-armed muscular men who follow his orders to the point when they're faced by Michelle, who fucks them up badly, earning her the loan shark's enmity. All that is the younger brother subplot which careens into the genetics theme when the brother steals the sophisticated device.
Bai Ling is enjoyable, an action presence, perhaps, more than an actress, at least in this film. I would like to see her in other movies, and I would like to see Pearry Teo's other films. The Gene Generation is interesting and original enough to merit that.
Vic Neptune
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