SPARROW 文雀

In one of the harsher reviews of "Au Revoir Taipei" one critic compared our film unfavorably to "Sparrow", Johnnie To's 2008 homage to French Cinema and classic American Musicals - a breezy caper film about a gang of Hong Kong pickpockets falling for the same mysterious girl.

Though I'm a pretty big fan of To's films, I had actually not seen "Sparrow" until just recently, and I think the critic was right on. "Sparrow" has an amazingly light-touch, assured but playful, and it's super-elegant. The treatment of the bumbling but endearing gang of pick-pockets, and most notably, Hong Kong as a magical little city rather than an oppressive Asian metropolitan, is something which we were definitely going for in "Au Revoir" (though admittedly to less success).

The last major sequence in the film is a slow motion, rain-soaked, musical-inspired, pick-pocket showdown in the middle of Central...pure cinema magic.