3 NEEDLES

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Wolfe Releasing
Grade: B-
Directed by: Thom Fitzgerald
Written By: Thom Fitzgerald
Cast: Shawn Ashmore, Stockard Channing, Tanabadee
Chokpikultong, Olympia Dukakis, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, Ian
Roberts, Chloe Sevigny
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 11/6/06
Opens: December 1, 2006

It's a small world after all. Yes, people have different beliefs
according to their cultures, even within the same country.
Farmers and urbanites, secular humanists and the devout,
Americans and North Koreans. But at base, we're all human
beings and we aspire to the same goals. We have families and
we want to protect our children. These are the themes of the
Canadian film "3 Needles," which found writer-director Thom
Fitzgerald traveling about in South Africa, China and Canada in
search of actors and scenic authenticity. While his transcendent
interest is in locating similarities and differences in culture, he
hones in specifically on the AIDS epidemic, and how particular
people in three areas of the world deal with epidemic that has
found Westerners in some cases able to live for a long time
even after being infected with HIV while others in the world are
not so lucky.

Fitzgerald frames the film with scenes from South Africa, setting
up situations in the early part, then shifting to China, later on to
a long segment from Canada before returning to South Africa.
Though AIDS is the common thread, there is no attempt to
weave a tapestry as a Robert Altman might do. The three
stories are separate; the actors are different in each. There is
no reason to downgrade the pic because of a lack of connection
within the trilogy. However, there is so much going on, so many
incidents within each geographical location, that audience
members can't be blamed for feeling a lack of focus. In one
area, ignorance of the epidemic leads the afflicted to try a
bizarre, criminal "treatment" to throw the illness away. In other,
a woman making money through the black-market sale of
infected blood appears to know that what she is doing is illegal,
yet she appears as well to have no moral compunctions about
the physical problems she is causing. In the third area, a
mother, determined to protect her one twenty-something son,
engages likewise in a bizarre charade to pay him back for the
care he has expended toward his ailing father and his financial
support of the family.

A Westerner like me would likely be drawn most into the
Canadian tale, which features a young man, Denys (Shawn
Ashmore, who bears a resemblance to a young Timothy
Hutton). Denys makes a good living in the porn industry, filming
hard core pics with a company that checks his blood monthly for
signs of disease. He is HIV positive, his mother, Olive
(Stockard Channing) is for a while in the dark about this, his
boss fooled when Denys regularly gives him a blood sample
taken from his dad. Because he is a model son who has
devoted time bathing and feeding his dying father and has
contributed to his mother's upkeep, his mom goes far out of her
way to compensate him for his saintly behavior.

Saintly people of a more literal type make the scene in South
Africa, where AIDS-afflicted residents in a rural area are cared
for by white doctors and three nuns–Sister Mary John (Sandra
Oh), Sister Hilde (Olympia Dukakis), and especially Sister Clara
(Chloe Sevigny). Since money is desperately needed by the
mission (the nuns' habitation is literally built with cow dung), the
beautiful Sister Clara takes steps far beyond her training to elicit
the funds from the owner of a plantation (Ian Roberts), a guy
who could have been cast as Emile de Beque in "South Pacific."

The least dramatic part of the trilogy takes place in southern
China (actually filmed in Thailand), where a Jin Ping (Lucy Liu)
pays $5 to each blood donor, the blood later sold illegally by her
on the black market. But she reuses the needles, the
townspeople get sick, and a farmer, Ton Sam (Tanabadee
Chokpikultong) takes remedial action.

As the Austrian emperor in Milos Forman's "Amadeus" said, "too
many notes." Here there are so many incidents placed almost
haphazardly together that the film does not impact as much as it
should. Nonetheless, some of the parts are greater than the
whole, some scenes particularly absorbing.

Not Rated. 124 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online