NGYUEN’S LATEST FILM SOARS
Hummingbird Project very funny
Kim Nguyen may have found his ticket to ride.
The Quebec director’s career could jump a few significant notches with The Hummingbird Project, which had its world première Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
The very funny, highly entertaining and surprisingly poignant movie is Nguyen’s best since his Oscar-nominated (for best foreign language film) Rebelle in 2012.
It has star power to spare, with Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård playing cousins Vincent and Anton Zalesky, who want to run a fibre-optic cable from Kansas City to New York to save precious milliseconds that could earn them millions of dollars on the stock market. Salma Hayek plays their former boss turned rival, Eva Torres. All three were present at the première on Saturday.
“It’s my first world première at TIFF,” Nguyen said Monday morning. “We always knew we wanted to open the film at TIFF; it’s set in America and is such an American film that talks about America. I thought it would be fitting to launch it here.
“And I love the public in Toronto. People are really generous, with no pretensions while they’re watching the film — it’s almost the contrary of Cannes.”
Nguyen was given the royal treatment Saturday afternoon at the historic Princess of Wales theatre. Throughout the screening, there was one marked difference between this film and Nguyen’s previous work: people were laughing. The Hummingbird Project is a smart, snappy film, with the director in complete control.
It’s a marked change of pace from the existential leanings of Rebelle and his last two projects, the arctic reverie Two Lovers and a Bear, and the Middle Eastern-American cyber-romance Eye on Juliet.
Nguyen, who also wrote the screenplay, was intent on pushing the action ever forward, leaving behind the esoteric and fantasy touches sprinkled through his earlier works.
“It was a long script, 140 pages,” he said. “I knew I wanted the film to be 100 to 115 minutes long, to give it the sense of a heist movie. It’s far from Oceans 11, but I wanted the ongoing tension of (the cousins) finishing the project, and (hoping for) the payoff at the end, sort of like when you’re preparing the robbery of a bank.”
Speaking of banks, the film’s idiosyncratic premise offered a way to explore the excesses of the stock market, placing it in a genre that includes The Big Short, The Wolf of Wall Street and many more.
“I was interested in talking about the madness of our financial system,” Nguyen said. “It’s hard to find something visually compelling and cinematic when you’re talking about finance. I started reading up on it, and this obsession over gaining milliseconds was a revelation.
“The idea of people digging tunnels to run fibre-optic cables across the country provided a real opportunity — as a director, you wish for visual metaphors. I got to drag my protagonists through mud and swamps and horrible places that came to represent their whole inner ordeal.”
Nguyen draws memorable performances from his actors. Eisenberg is on fire as the motor-mouthed Vincent, the project’s mastermind. Skarsgård is utterly transformed as the balding, reclusive genius Anton. And Hayek is a riot as their hard-nosed former boss, who is not about to let her old charges saunter off and strike it rich without her.
“I knew the tone of the film had to be constantly redefined,” Nguyen said, “especially by the actors. It was tricky to build because of the balance between levity and drama.
“I was talking to a producer of Up In the Air, who was saying that at its best, humour becomes a leverage for drama, and drama becomes a leverage for humour; if you do it wrong, humour becomes a barrier for drama, and drama becomes a barrier for humour. There’s no recipe for it, you’ve just got to feel it.”
Nguyen was obviously feeling it during the filmmaking process, as was the audience at Saturday’s première. The big question now is where the movie goes from here.
“We will know in about a week,” Nguyen said. “Not all the reviews are out. We’ve got mostly really good feedback from buyers. I’m really happy and proud of the film, but the next key element is the U.S. sale, which is being negotiated.
“If we can get a really good U.S. (distributor) and a theatrical release, that will be great. There has been a lot of interest, but I don’t know the details.”
I got to drag my protagonists through mud and swamps and horrible places that came to represent their whole inner ordeal.