A kleptomaniac uses a stolen camcorder to spy on a newly arrived immigrant in Toronto's Tibetan community.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Kunsang Kyirong
Starring: Tenzin Kunsel, Sonam Choekyi, Tsering Bawa, Lobsang Tenzin, Tsering Gyatso
Any movie that takes us inside a very specific world is already off to a good start. There's always something intriguing in seeing how others live and how different societies function. Writer/director Kunsang Kyirong immerses us in Toronto's tight-knit Tibetan community with her debut feature 100 Sunset. As a glimpse of a largely unexplored micro society it holds a documentary-like fascination, and the cast of non-professionals are surprisingly natural in front of the camera. But as a narrative piece there is little to cling onto here.
The film revolves around Kunsel (Tenzin Kunsel) a taciturn college-aged Tibetan-Canadian who is something of a kleptomaniac. At the many social gatherings within her community she likes to dip her hands into unattended purses and handbags, pilfering their contents. When she finds an old-fashioned camcorder in someone's bag, Kunsel uses its zoom lens to spy on Passang (Sonam Choekyi), a newly arrived young immigrant from Tibet who is in a loveless marriage to an older man.
When the pair are introduced by Jusang's parents, who are sick of her moping around their apartment, the slightly older Passang becomes something of a mentor to Kusang, helping her out with her English lessons. Passang openly confesses her waning interest in her marriage, and flirts with an interested suitor. Kusang is fascinated with Passang's brazenness, and there is a certain irony to this newly arrived immigrant having a far more liberal attitude than a woman born and raised in the West.
As a protagonist, Kunsel barely speaks, preferring to observe from a neutral vantage. You can't help but wonder if there is an autobiographical element here, if the director herself was once a shy teen who preferred to view the world through a viewfinder. There are some cleverly edited moments in which Nikolay Michaylov's crisp cinematography is intercut with footage from Kunsel's stolen camcorder that are perhaps purposely inserted to support such a thesis. These moments remind us that video footage can possess a crude beauty in the right hands. Speaking of crude beauty, the film's imagery of Toronto's dystopian tower blocks wouldn't be out of place in a Cronenberg thriller.
Kunsel's voyeurism evokes Hitchcock and De Palma, but there is no mystery to be solved here. There isn't really much of a plot either, and while its immersion in an unfamiliar setting initially grabs our attention, the lack of narrative impetus ultimately proves tiresome. If your protagonist does little other than observe throughout your movie, you have to give her something more interesting to look at than what's on offer here.
