Tuesday, September 12, 1989-- Ihe Michigan Daily - Page 7

Senseless

love

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* Kung Fu Master lacks meaningful message


BY MARK SHAIMAN


The middle-aged woman/teenage boy "love story"
'enigmatically titled Kung Fu Master is nearly as
poignant as the average Bruce Lee film. Those silly
Saturday afternoon martial arts flicks are dubbed badly,
but this non-violent pedophiliac film is badly in need
of dubbing. Kung Fu Master is in French, and you'll
quickly find yourself wishing that the subtitles would
at least be on the'same level of intellect as Rambo.
The opening scene does show some promise. The
15-year-old boy Julien (Mathieu Demy) enacts the me-
chanical motions of his favorite video game, "Kung
Fu Master." Knowing that this movie has already been
labeled as an "art film," you would think that it's go-
ing to be about the all-too-structured daily routines in
our lives. Any half-serious meaning is too lofty for
Kung Fu Master, however.
Anne Marie (Jane Birkin), the older woman, first
meets Julien at the birthday party she throws for her
daughter, Lucy. After thrusting her fingers down his
throat to induce vomiting so as to help relieve the
youngster from the suffering acquired from over-indul-
gence in liquor, and after watching him drop a prophy-
lactic water balloon onto one of his peers, Anne Marie
becomes infatuated with this near-infant. She finds
herself hanging around the school in order to run into
him. The film gets its sole intended laugh from the
audience with the old "literally" joke - she hits Julien
with her car. Other laughs do follow, though the
filmmakers probably didn't anticipate them.
And then things get worse. Anne Marie scours all
the video parlors in Paris to find Julien's favorite ar-

cade game and brings him there, where she stares ador-
ingly as he pumps her francs into the machine, chop-
ping and kicking his way to rescue the fair maiden.
After Julien and Anne Marie have a spat as he at-
tempts to take her to a hotel room, Julien becomes
better friends with Anne Marie's daughter, Lucy,
though she is ignorant of his relationship with her
mother. They and Lou, Anne Marie's younger daugh-
ter, all wind up going to London for Easter vacation to
visit Anne Marie's parents. Lucy catches the odd cou-
ple in an embrace and is appalled. Anne Marie's par-
ents defy the stereotype of stodgy Brits and give her
the keys to their cottage on a deserted island. Leaving
Lucy behind, Anne Marie, Julien, and Lou spend the
rest of their vacation there. In a dramatically climactic
soliloquy rivalling Hamlet's, Julien explains all the
ramifications of Dungeons & Dragons to Anne Marie,
thus providing the long-sought method of wooing a
middle-aged woman and tranquilizing an audience si-
multaneously.
When they return to France, their tryst is exposed,
and they are forced to separate. (Had they returned to
America, they would have been prosecuted.) One small
bit of information does provide a bit of twisted expla-
nation to a film that is entirely plot and a weak one at
that: director Agnes Varda is the mother of Mathieu
Demy (Julien). This may make you smirk, but just
think how much fun Freud would be having if he were
around to see Kung Fu Master. Then again, maybe
not.
KUNG FU MASTER is now showing at the Michigan
Theater.

Exene Cervenka of the now-defunct Los Angeles punk band X loses her off-key vocals but provides sophisticated
politcal criticism on her new release Old Wives' Tales.

Exene Cervenka
Old Wives' Tales
Rhino Records
If anyone deserves the blame for
the disbanding of the longtime Los
Angeles punk group X, it's that
brat-packer-with-a-word-processor
Bret Easton Ellis. Once Less Than
Zero had rendered John Doe, Exene
Cervenka, Billy Zoom, and D.J.
Bonebrake the exclusive property of
a coke-sniffing set that offended just
about everybody by their mere
presence, it was only a matter of
time before the farewell double live
album. Recorded at the Whiskey A
Go Go, the album showcased X in
top form performing most all of
their best songs, but it was just too
late. By then, guitarist Zoom had
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been replaced by Tony Gilkyson, ex-
of-Lone Justice. Gilkyson produces
this solo debut by Exene, and
supplies all the front porch twang
and strum necessary to make Old
Wives' Tales as good as it is.
Though the off-key harmonies of
Exene and ex-husband, ex-X
bassist/vocalist John Doe are indeed
sorely missing on this effort, her
new songs are as tasty and lean as
many of X's best moments on
1985's Ain't Love Grand. "She
Wanted" is laden with Christian
imagery and political realism: "She
believes the meek shall inherit the
earth, but by then it won't be worth
much." Later, she hits hard again
when she sings of "The God who
hates us all/ The Government God,

made of drugs and gold." If you
overlook two silly stabs at the
cooled rap of Laurie Anderson, what
you have is one great collection of
songs.
So give Exene more credit than
you would allow any of the Jancy-
Come-Lately earthy female singers
that remind you of Suzanne Vega.
The ex-X vocalist has been at it for
more than a dozen years, so she
sings with more wisdom than say,
Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs
whose political conscious never
seems to extend beyond disbelief.
Exene is capable of succinct, correct,
decidedly unromantic verses about
political matters big and small.
-Mark Swart.

Jane Birkin (Anne Marie, left) is the middle-aged divorced woman who falls in love with Mathieu Demy (Julien,
center) in Kung Fu Master. Charlotte Gainsbourg (Lucy, right) plays Anne Marie's daughter who's closer to
Demy's age but further from his affections.
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