15th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 22 - Jul 9, 2016

Photo: © 2016 Richname Limited (BVI)

New York Premiere

The Mermaid

美人魚

Stephen Chow is the King of Comedy! And his crown is confirmed with this slapstick deconstruction of The Little Mermaid featuring auto-cannibalism, mermaids launched from giant slingshots, assassination by sea urchin, China's worst museum, jetpacks, and a rousing sing-off. It's also the most subversive comedy to slip past Chinese censors, and, to top it all off, it's the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time. Liu (Deng Chao) is a rapacious businessman using sonar to kill off all the dolphins so he can reclaim the Green Gulf coastal zone and develop it into luxury condominiums. Unfortunately, the sonar is also killing the mermaids who secretly live there, and one of them, Shanshan (Jelly Lin), is selected to dress up like a hoochie mama, infiltrate Liu's luxury lifestyle, and assassinate him. With her character's tail shoved into shoes, Jelly Lin hops through her scenes like a constipated penguin, constantly upping her physical comedy game as the emotional stakes get higher and higher when she falls for Liu, dooming her people to their deaths. This delirious, sprawling comedy includes some of the funniest set pieces ever put on film—and you have to admit that the story of an endangered community of half-fish, half-humans living off the southern Coast of China, who face extinction at the hands of well-armed capitalists who want to steal their land might just be a sly statement about Chow's hometown of Hong Kong.

Director: Stephen Chow
Cast: Show Luo, Kitty Zhang, Deng Chao, Jelly Lin
Languages: Mandarin with English subtitles
2016; 94 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Saturday July 2, 5:30pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center

Q&A with Jelly Lin; Lin will be presented with a Screen International Rising Star Asia Award

Screen International Rising Star Asia Award
Jelly Lin
林允

Jelly Lin is China's newest 'It Girl' after her film debut Stephen Chow's The Mermaid broke box office records earlier this year. She was among 120,000 contenders who joined open auditions for the titular role of a half-woman, half-fish who seduces an environmentally-unfriendly property developer so that her mer-kind can assassinate him... only to fall madly in love. Lin's beguiling performance, which showed her as a gifted comedienne, has been described as the film's 'secret weapon' that catapulted it to $520 million at the China box office. Later this year she stars as the near-immortal Tianshu Youhua in L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties, Guo Jingming's motion-capture, CGI adaptation of his own novel. Next year she'll be seen in Tsui Hark's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 2 and the Hasichaolu-directed, Jean-Jacques Annaud-produced *The Legend of the Mengol King. Lin is represented by Chow's talent management agency, Worth Achieve Associates.