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By Justin Lowe | Special to AsianWeek

Top: Before they can adopt a human child, young professionals Marcia (Tamlyn Tomita) and Roy (James Saito) must prove themselves by taking care of a robot baby in Robot Stories, photo by Wesley Law. Bottom photo: Still from Bend It Like Beckham.

Although Sundance usually proves a reliable bellwether for titles appearing throughout the remainder of the year, a look back at late-2002 festivals generally provides a better indicator of Asian Pacific American and Asian films to watch for this year.

One exception screening at Sundance is Bend It Like Beckham, an audience favorite at September’s Toronto International Film Festival and a 2002 box office sensation in the U.K. This third feature from British director Gurinder Chadha (What’s Cooking) offers a family drama with a comedic touch, focusing on Jess, the rapidly assimilating daughter of a traditional Indian British family, whose obsession with pro soccer player David Beckham and her own skill at the game force her to choose between her beloved sport and the wishes of her disapproving parents.

Bend It Like Beckham goes on to open the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), March 6 to 16, headlining a special program of films from the global Indian diaspora.

Among APA features at the SFIAAFF, writer/director Eric Byler’s debut feature Charlotte Sometimes receives its San Francisco premiere.

The critically acclaimed feature film winner at October’s San Diego Asian Film Festival and the 2002 South by Southwest Film Festival’s audience award recipient, Charlotte Sometimes is an incisive, occasionally dark, ultimately uncompromising story of four APA Angelenos and their intertwined search for love and personal identity.

When Michael (Michael Idemoto) meets the secretive Darcy (Jacqueline Kim) in a downtown bar, her beguiling appeal draws him out of his infatuation with his sexy but unavailable neighbor Lori (Eugenia Yuan). But Darcy’s appearance upsets a delicate balance of feelings, compelling Michael to examine the emotional cost of his isolated life.

The SFIAAFF closes with Robot Stories, Greg Pak’s quirky first feature, consisting of four futuristic tales examining how the lives of various APA characters intersect with robots, featuring Tamlyn Tomita, Sab Shimono and Pak as “Archie,” an android office worker. As writer/director, Pak brings sharp observances and offbeat humor to his narrative debut, which will show concurrently with Sundance at the Slamdance Film Festival.

Films from Asia made a strong showing at the American Film Institute’s AFI Fest in November, where APA performer Shawn Ku took the best actor award for his outstanding portrayal of a Buddhist monk in Indian filmmaker Pan Nalin’s contemporary morality tale Samsara, shot in the spectacular Ladakh region. When an unexpected romantic encounter with village girl Pema (Christy Chung) disrupts his cloistered existence, Tashi (Ku) disrobes and abandons his monastery to experience secular life. After marrying Pema and taking up farming, Tashi’s loyalty and integrity are tested by an increasingly dramatic succession of worldly conflicts and temptations. Samsara is likely to be released in theaters by mid-year.

Award-winning Japanese actor Eiji Okuda struck gold with his directorial debut Shoujyo: An Adolescent, which won the Grand Jury Prize in the AFI Fest’s feature competition. Okuda plays the middle-aged Tomokawa, an unscrupulous provincial cop preoccupied with shaking down petty criminals and bedding lonely women. When teenage Yoko (newcomer Mayu Ozawa) turns the tables by seducing Tomokawa, her secret agenda draws the officer into an obsessive affair, pitting the two lovers against family, friends and small-town morality.

With DreamWorks’ acquisition of Satoshi Kon’s Millenium Actress, American distributors continue to snap up Japanese anime titles for the U.S. market. A clever and engaging departure from the violence of Perfect Blue, Kon’s engrossing 1997 anime noir, Millenium Actress, tracks movie director Genya Tachibana’s fanatical quest to complete a documentary on the life and career of reclusive silent film star Chiyoko Fujiwara. Kon’s technique of inserting the hapless Tachibana and his assistant as characters in scenes from the fictional Fujiwara’s most famous period films creates an amusing and thrilling whirlwind tour of the themes and imagery of early Japanese cinema.

Independent Chinese features, meanwhile, continue to seek circuitous routes to reach international audiences. Author and filmmaker Dai Sijie found funding for an adaptation of his international best-selling novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress in France, where he currently resides. Shot in the spectacularly remote mountains of Sichuan province, Balzac recounts Dai’s youthful experience as the son of a “reactionary intellectual” exiled to the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Along with his banished best friend Luo, Dai discovers a suitcase full of classic and illicit European novels in Chinese translation, a treasure trove that provides their introduction to the region’s most beautiful girl (Zhou Xun), the granddaughter of a renowned tailor.

One of only two dozen films selected for last fall’s New York Film Festival and a standout in the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s “New Chinese Cinema” series, Springtime in a Small Town is another title likely to find further play on this year’s festival circuit. After a ten-year hiatus, China’s Fifth Generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Blue Kite) returns with his remake of a classic 1948 Chinese drama about the provincial life of a sickly intellectual and his loyal wife. Tian’s direction, with sumptuous cinematography by Mark Lee Pin-bing, is nearly faultless, trapping his characters in a romantic quagmire of tragic dimensions.

With the opportunity to catch these and other compelling films in upcoming months, as well as the likelihood that several new APA features will go into production in 2003, viewers can look forward to another exciting year of moviegoing.

Reach Justin Lowe at nextwavve@yahoo.com.